XxxHolic

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The manga series xxxHolic begins with Kimihiro Watanuki, a high school student who sees ayakashi spirits that nobody around him can see. The spirits torment him, and all he wants is for them to stop. By what looks like pure chance, he stumbles into a shop that grants wishes. Its owner is Yūko Ichihara, a witch of many names and esoteric renown. She agrees to hear his request, but the terms of the deal are not what he expects. This documentary asks what a wish truly costs. It asks why a woman who fulfills everyone else's desires might have none of her own. It also asks how one boy and one shop became bound to a separate fantasy series, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, and to the fate of that series' hero.

  112326

• 2. The Price of a Wish

  ›

  Equal value is the rule that governs Yūko's shop. When Watanuki asks her to take away his sight, she agrees on one condition: he must pay for the wish with his own effort. His payment is service. He becomes her temporary, part-time cook and housekeeper, and at first the work is ordinary household chores. As the series moves on, Yūko increasingly sends him out on errands of a supernatural or spiritual kind.

  Two people sometimes join him at her request. Himawari Kunogi is the girl Watanuki loves. Shizuka Dōmeki is a classmate Watanuki starts out detesting. Dōmeki keeps annoying him, yet the three grow steadily closer. Watanuki comes to treasure the new friendships and his days at the shop. Each strange encounter also leaves him more familiar with the spirit world and more connected to it.

  A quieter worry takes shape beside this growing comfort. Watanuki begins to wonder whether Yūko, who grants wishes for strangers, has anything to wish for herself. He answers the question with a promise: if she ever has a wish, he will try to grant it. He cannot yet know that the answer to his question sits inside a second series, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle.

  4010057

• 3. Crossing Worlds

  ›

  The truth about Yūko arrives through the crossover with Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle. She is on the verge of death. Long ago, the powerful wizard Clow Reed accidentally froze her personal time, and that is the only reason she is still alive. As the magic holding her in time begins to dissolve, her ability to sustain the shop's magical existence weakens. She dies, and her parting words promise Watanuki that he will finally lose his ability to see demons. He refuses the gift. Watanuki keeps his sight so that he can maintain the shop and take over her role as its keeper.

  Further crossover plotlines uncover the secret of Watanuki's own origin. A client of the shop, Syaoran from Tsubasa, once wished to turn back time. Syaoran succeeded, but the price was steep: he was removed from his timeline and imprisoned by the sorcerer Fei-Wang Reed. Watanuki was born to fill the void in timespace that Syaoran left behind. The two are different people, yet they share a single existence.

  Near the end, Fei-Wang traps both young men in a void, and each must pay a price to go on existing. Syaoran decides to keep traveling through dimensions and never stay in one place. Watanuki decides to remain in the shop as its owner, granting wishes until the day he sees Yūko again.

  Years pass, and Watanuki works on without growing older. Dōmeki, now his assistant, visits often, and the habit passes down to Dōmeki's descendants. After 100 years, Watanuki dreams of Yūko. She tells him he has become powerful enough to leave. He chooses to stay and keep waiting for her. How its creators wanted that choice to be read is a story of its own.

  28722

• 4. Clamp's Blueprint

  ›

  After finishing Chobits, the manga group Clamp pitched xxxHolic to Young Magazine. The group had an aim in mind: to tie its supernatural and fantasy series to a realistic one. Yūko Ichihara was created to be the bridge between xxxHolic and Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle. The creators decided to run both series in weekly magazines, which they felt would make serialization easier.

  The title went through a change. Clamp first considered "addicted" and then settled on the less ambiguous "holic." The "xxx" in front works like a blank to fill in, as in alcoholic or workaholic. That hints at the cast of clients, each with a different obsession. Like Clamp's earlier Tokyo Babylon, xxxHolic looks at social pathologies, though with a more esoteric tone.

  The link between the two series had its skeptics inside the group. Nanase Ohkawa, who writes the scripts, worried about the strain that a weekly pace would put on the artists. She still approved of the plan whole-heartedly. She also wanted each story to stand as a well-organized whole, so Clamp avoided cross-references that came too often. The goal was two protagonists with different personalities and designs who are revealed at the end to be the same person on separate paths.

  Tsubasa leaned toward action, so Clamp sometimes paused xxxHolic or wrote self-contained stories to keep the two storylines in step. In April 2010, the group admitted that xxxHolic was taking longer than expected and had delayed some of its other work. When serialization ended, Clamp felt that the real ending belonged to xxxHolic Rō, since xxxHolic itself had already finished. Clamp said Watanuki's choice to stay in the shop may look sad to readers. For Watanuki, however, it was his happiness, and the group enjoyed how readers began asking what happiness means to them.

  341020

• 5. Ink, Gold and Words

  ›

  Clamp takes roughly two days to draw a chapter of about twenty pages, though that pace differs from the group's other series. The art draws on ukiyo-e wood prints. The creators chose Japanese and Chinese motifs and avoided screen tones. Before the artists begin drawing, they bring any confusion to Nanase Ohkawa, who wrote the script.

  Each artist has a role. Tsubaki Nekoi does most of the illustration and character design, with help from Mokona. Satsuki Igarashi draws various parts as well. Mokona mainly designs the female characters, while Nekoi draws the male characters and every spirit that appears.

  Mokona is a fan of the Czech artist Alphonse Mucha, and his influence shows in the artwork. It also explains why every tankōbon cover is gold or silver, with color printed over the metallic base.

  Words carry as much weight as images in this series. Yūko speaks directly and with certainty, so her dialogue always changes the people she addresses. In an early chapter, she meets a woman addicted to the internet and calls her husband and child "other people." That line conveys a philosophy of individualism and the power the client holds. Another client habitually lies, and her lies bring her misfortune.

  783

• 6. From Magazine to Bookshelf

  ›

  The 24th of February 2003 marks the debut of xxxHolic in Kodansha's seinen magazine Weekly Young Magazine. It ended there on the 20th of March 2010. Then it moved to Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine on the 8th of May 2010. A special 26-page one-shot ran in Weekly Shōnen Magazine on the 19th of May. The final chapter appeared on the 9th of February 2011.

  Kodansha gathered 213 chapters into 19 tankōbon volumes, merging some of the original serialized chapters. The first volume came out on the 25th of July 2003 and the last on the 9th of March 2011. From volume 16, the series carried the title xxxHolic Rō, a change tied to Watanuki taking over the shop.

  In January 2004, Del Rey Manga licensed xxxHolic for North America as one of its first four series. The others were Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, Negima!: Magister Negi Magi, and Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle. Del Rey released the first volume on the 27th of April 2004 and the nineteenth on the 21st of February 2012. Kodansha USA reissued the series in 3-in-1 omnibus editions in 2014. In the United Kingdom, Tanoshimi published the first nine volumes, starting on the 3rd of August 2006.

  A second series, xxxHolic Rei, was announced at The CLAMP Festival 2012. It was meant to start in Weekly Young Magazine in February 2013, but a month's delay in issue dates moved the start to the 4th of March 2013. It then ran from June 2016 to March 2017 before an indefinite hiatus. In April 2022, Clamp announced plans to resume in 2023, which did not happen. The series finally resumed on the 21st of April 2025. As of the 28th of November 2025, five volumes of Rei had been released.

  1214171925

• 7. Beyond the Page

  ›

  On the 20th of August 2005, Production I.G's animated film xxxHolic: A Midsummer Night's Dream premiered alongside Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle the Movie: The Princess in the Birdcage Kingdom. In the film, a woman asks Yūko to help her enter a mansion that will not let her in. Because Watanuki brought the client to the shop, Yūko insists he grant the wish, and Dōmeki comes too. Yūko herself has been invited to the mansion by a letter, along with many other famous collectors. There is no host, only strange rooms and mysterious letters that tell guests what to do. The film was a finalist in the Feature Films category at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in 2006. The winner that year was Renaissance.

  Production I.G also made two television series, both directed by Tsutomu Mizushima. The first ran for 24 episodes on TBS from the 6th of April to the 28th of September 2006. The second, xxxHolic: Kei, ran for 13 episodes on TBS from the 3rd of April to the 26th of June 2008. Funimation licensed the first season in July 2007. The series reached North American television on the Funimation Channel on the 26th of January 2009.

  Original video animations arrived bundled with the manga volumes. xxxHOLiC Shunmuki came in two parts with volumes 14 and 15, following a quest for four items that leads Watanuki into the Dream World. An OVA called xxxHolic Rō shipped with volume 17 on the 23rd of April 2010 and is set after Yūko's death.

  Live-action versions followed. WOWOW broadcast an eight-episode drama on the 24th of February 2013, starring Anne Watanabe as Yūko and Shota Sometani as Watanuki. A feature film directed by Mika Ninagawa opened in Japanese theaters on the 29th of April 2022, with Ko Shibasaki and Ryūnosuke Kamiki in the lead roles.

  The franchise also reached other media. Nisio Isin wrote the novel ×××Holic AnotherHolic Landolt-Ring Aerosol, published in Japan on the 1st of August 2006, and its first story adapts the series' first chapter. Marvelous Entertainment released a PlayStation 2 adventure game on the 9th of August 2007. An all-male stage play began in Tokyo on the 17th of September 2021, with Motohiro Ota as Yūko and Shōgo Sakamoto as Watanuki.

  4142436773

• 8. Readers and Critics

  ›

  By May 2015, Kodansha announced that xxxHolic had 13.7 million copies in print, and by January 2025 the figure stood above 14.5 million. In Japan, volume 13 placed 43rd among the top 50 manga sold in 2008. In North America, the first volume ranked sixth on Nielsen Bookscan's best-seller list during its first week. Volume 13 reached No. 6 on the New York Times manga list in April 2009. The Times named xxxHolic the sixth best-selling manga in the United States for 2009. Mania Entertainment gave it the Best Mature award in its 2005 manga awards.

  Critics split over details but often praised the manga. Megan Lavey of Mania Entertainment liked its comedy and its focus on people's thoughts. Michael Aronson of Manga Life found some characters "gripping." Dan Polley of the same outlet said Watanuki "does seem a little bit weak to be the lead character." Carlo Santos of Anime News Network said later volumes became stronger once the story entered the world of dreams. Santos also found the Tsubasa connection confusing for readers who had not followed both series.

  Yūko's fate divided reviewers sharply. Holly Ellingwood of Active Anime called the events from volume 15 onward "tragic, inspiring, and beautifully, breathtakingly sad." Santos described much of volume 16 as "an exercise in getting back on one's feet after a heartbreaking loss." Matthew Alexander of Mania was harsher and called the story "an ultra serious downer" without its recurring comedy. Reviewers praised the "striking designs and patterns built into the images," though some noted pages with no backgrounds. Rebecca Silverman gave the first volume of Rei a B+, calling it "a little too mysterious in places."

  The anime drew mixed reactions. Casey Brienza of Anime News Network liked how faithful the first season was to the manga. Santos criticized animation moments in which the characters' limbs grew unnaturally long. Jeff Harris of IGN questioned whether the blank backgrounds were artistic choices or a way to save money. Chris Beveridge of Mania still concluded that "everything about the visual design of the show is very appealing." He also praised the way the series balances the light and dark sides of its stories.

  9397992240