xxxHOLiC Manga Chapter 200

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis: The young woman states that the noise Watanuki had heard was the man she lived with jumping off the balcony. Watanuki is stunned that the reason the man jumped was his fear of the young woman. She states that her beatings were the result of that fear and that her injuries would heal in time. She continues to stun Watanuki by revealing she is immortal and had lived with the man for forty years. Initially, he was happy that she would never grow old but as he grew older and she did not, he began to abuse her. She tolerated it as it might help with his fears.

The young woman removes her bandages and clothing, instantly recovering and revealing hair longer than her body. Watanuki asks what she is, but she doesn’t have an answer. She believes she was human once. She sheds a tear of blood (?) which forms the crimson pearl. She says the a crimson pearl is formed whenever someone she has spent time with dies. Watanuki understands this to be the woman’s method of grieving the loss of others, which she agrees with, saying she still feels sorrow. She gives Watanuki the pearl, recognizing him as someone like her.

Thoughts/Review: Man, this didn’t go anywhere like I thought it might. I couldn’t begin to speculate on what might happen based on the previous chapter’s end, but it seemed to me that we might have another supernatural being living in that apartment. To have it be a 62-year old man committing suicide stunned me as much as it did Watanuki in the story. Kudos to CLAMP for that mind rocking.

This chapter made me sit and think for a while. I thought about how a 22-year old man might meet some super-hottie and fall in love with her. For whatever reason, she apparently falls in love with him and they get together (whether married or not). He finds out that she will never age and thinks, “I’ve scored big! For the rest of my life, I’ll have sex with a hot babe.”

CLAMP doesn’t go into any details, but I imagine that when the man turned 42, he was no doubt still happy to be with someone young and hot. However, he sees himself getting older while she is still young and hot. He sees mortality in the distance, something unseen in your 20’s and most of your 30’s. He begins to ponder dying, to say nothing of getting older and more frail.

As the years pass, his fears grow. He’s afraid this beautiful girl will leave him. After all, he’s turning into an old man and she’s still young and fresh. So, he attempts to do things to insure she won’t leave by dominating her and physically abusing her. Take off some of her beauty, then other guys won’t be looking at her with lustful gazes and she won’t have anyone willing to take her away from him.

Eventually, his fears and rage consume him, though for some reason, I imagine this person also feeling somewhat guilty as well. Regardless, he’s at his wits end and kills himself. The young woman sheds a tear for the man she loved and spent 40-years with as she restores her appearance to normal.

I don’t know if CLAMP will explore this couple’s relationship any further than what they’ve done, leaving us to fill in the blanks as I did above. The big question is what her relationship is with Jorô-Gumo. For Jorô-Gumo to know a Crimson Pearl was coming suggests to me that the young woman must have known her companion would soon die. What I don’t know is why Jorô-Gumo is going through Watanuki to gain a Crimson Pearl when she seemingly could obtain one directly from the young woman.

Since CLAMP decided to introduce Himawari-chan into the current storyline, I wonder if that will tie in somehow. Watanuki won’t die providing he doesn’t leave the store but Himawari-chan will get old and die. I wonder if that’s the tie.

There seems to also be a connection with Yuuko-san’s death but we’ll see.

So in the end, I found this to be a rather thought-provoking chapter. Too bad the next edition of Young Magazine doesn’t go on sale until March 1st, so no xxxHOLiC for a little while.