天下制覇

EYES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!

Impressions:

I can’t help but think that they wasted a huge shameless fanservice opportunity here by not airing it on Watanuki’s birthday (April 1st). I mean… the dude is named after the date. Throw him a bone, he deserves something.

I’ll keep this relatively short since this is a sequel series and I wouldn’t really recommend watching it without watching the first. It picks up more or less where the previous left off and goes right into the Spider Queen arc and the first of Clamp’s many eye eating escapades. What’s with Clamp and eye eating recently anyway? First Syaoran eats Fye’s eye, then Watanuki loses an eye, then… well… I’ll be nice with the xxxHOLiC future spoilers for the moment. It continues to follow the manga relatively closely, and while I haven’t reread this particular part recently, it did seem like it went through a couple chapters this time instead of just one or two.

Happily, the production values seem a bit higher this time around… at least for now. Yeah, people are still all lanky and look like clowns on stilts, but they at least move a lot more and Watanuki doesn’t look like he’s having a seizure every time he flips out at Doumeki. There were a lot of hints in the OP that they’ll get around to covering future arcs, like Himawari’s past, so I’m hopeful that they’ll move right along… though it’ll be interesting to see what they do if they do move at a decent clip without all the Reservoir Chronicle crossover stuff. I’m not a huge fan of the OP though… very much prefer the first season’s, but it still does fit the show relatively well.

Anyway, I’m going to be following this, but I’m not sure yet if I’ll be covering it. I know Totali will, and Omni is at least interested. There’s also Kaiba and Library Wars starting next week on Thursdays (and To Love-ru later today… oi…), but I’ll probably keep on with at least short summaries and my impressions because I’m an incorrigible Clamp whore.

xxxHOLiC OP

Preview:

The demon world takes notice of Watanuki’s missing eye.