When CLAMP kicked off xxxHOLiC and Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-, it was always with the idea of the two series crossing over, to say nothing of CLAMP bringing back a whole host of characters from their other different series. While the two TV anime series were divorced from each other, the mangas continued to link more and more to the point to where future anime titles would have to be linked as well. That’s where the two-episode xxxHOLiC Shunmuki and two-episode Tsubasa Shunraiki OAD’s (OVA’s) come into play.

Because the OAD’s were released with a volume of its related manga (rather than release this as a pure OVA), the decision was made for the Tsubasa story to simply skip everything from after the Acid Tokyo Arc (which was covered in Tsubasa: Tokyo Revelations OVA) and go straight to the end of the Celes arc. If you haven’t read the manga, you are in for a head-scratching time, but then again, the production teams releasing these as OAD’s are assuming you already know the manga story since OAD’s are purchased with a manga.

Story-wise, Tsubasa Shunraiki is a fairly straight-forward, accurate adaptation of the source manga story where the group is returned to Kurogane’s world after escaping Celes until they are sent to the land of Clow. This includes Watanuki’s crossover from xxxHOLiC where he meets Sakura-chan in the dream world. Because of the faithful adaptation and excellent animation during the fights between Syaoran and Syaoran-clone, this OAD comes off quite well and would have been better had all the stories after Tsubasa: Tokyo Revelations hadn’t been dropped.

For xxxHOLiC Shunmuki, it is a different story as the production team takes several manga stories and then changes things about them. For example, in the manga, Zashiki-Warashi and Ame-Warashi visit Watanuki on his way to school after his injury and Watanuki gets to notice how Zashiki-Warashi has changed. For this story, they just appear while the characters are in the middle of a non-manga quest. Their appearance seemed so pointless (even though I like both characters a great deal).

Heck, the whole non-manga quest to find objects came off as pretty pointless in the end as it was mainly designed to be a way to bring in manga stories and kill time before bringing Sakura-chan from Tsubasa over.

In terms of viewing, it really makes the most sense to watch the first episode of xxxHOLiC Shunmuki, then the first episode of Tsubasa Shunraiki, then the second episode of xxxHOLiC Shunmuki followed by the second episode of Tsubasa Shunraiki. That’s because the first episode of xxxHOLiC Shunmuki only has a small back-reference to the real Syaoran arriving to link it with Tsubasa. The fist episode of Tsubasa Shunraiki is where the crossover begins with Watanuki coming into the dream world with Sakura.

Watching this first before watching the same event happen in xxxHOLiC Shunmuki‘s second episode makes more sense in my opinion because of other crossover characters also arriving in the Tsubasa OAD. Thus Watanuki’s arrival can be seen as just another arrival whereas if you watch the xxxHOLiC version first, it makes no sense for Watanuki to go over there.

In the end, the Tsubasa OAD’s come out ahead of the xxxHOLiC OAD’s as they feel like the superior product in terms of story and animation. The OAD’s also bring to light just how much xxxHOLiC has to mark time while the Tsubasa story goes forward (which is another reason why so much of the Tsubasa story had to be trashed).

As to whether these will be licensed in the U.S. or not (whether by FUNimation or some other company), who can say. Because OAD’s aren’t sold as stand-alone products like the OVA’s are, the Japanese may well go weird on whether they’ll allow a license or not as the purpose of the OAD is to reward manga tankoubon purchasers.

We’ll see what happens.