Time for some more anime I’ve watched. The only good thing about being sick is that I had time to watch a fair amount of anime.

xxxHOLiC 19 — This is adapted from manga volume 8 chapter 96, which was a pure filler chapter in the manga. It also take tiny references from chapter 95 and possibly later references. During a snowy day, Yuuko-san is drinking and as Watanuki cleans, he comes upon a box which can’t be opened. The next day at school a letter from Yuuko-san instructs him, Doumeki, and Himawari-chan to come to the park. When they come to the park, Mokona is already there. An irritated Ame Warashi is there as well as a shy Zashiki Warashi. Yuuko-san has the box, which is a prize for the winner of a snowball fight — a fight done by the snowman creations of each of the people. The box will grant a wish to the one who wins the snowball fight.

Even after Yuuko-san decides to participate, Watanuki ends up winning the fight and thus gets to open the box. Unfortunately for him, he is distracted by Yuuko-san. As such, he ends up the loser when the box ends up granting what Yuuko-san wants when she asks him what he’s planning to make for dinner– nabe. So now with a kind of igloo made, Watanuki prepares nabe with Ame Warashi, Zashiki Warashi, and Himawari-chan having run to the convenience store to pick up extra ingredients.

I admit that the episode is humorous and I love Zashiki Warashi and Ame Warashi, but like the manga, it is pure filler. And Yuuko-san just seems so much less impressive in the anime than she is in the manga.

xxxHOLiC 20 — Its Valentine’s Day Eve and Yuuko-san has Watanuki making chocolate fondue. A woman comes to Yuuko-san’s shop and needs a wish granted. She has a photo that she no longer wishes to see. However, the photo seems normal enough. At school, Himawari-chan eats Watanuki’s chocolate fondue and Doumeki eats the one Watanuki was going to eat. Doumeki gets a bag full of chocolate, but Watanuki only gets the one from Himawari-chan. Despite the fact that she gave one to Doumeki, he’s in a good mood. He returns to the shop to see that the picture frame Yuuko-san had put the woman’s picture in was melting and a woman in the picture begins moving. The woman who brought the picture to Yuuko-san returns and the picture now shows her in the picture and the picture woman fall off the cliff in a way that might be an accidental push from the customer woman. Yuuko-san grants her wish to destroy the picture with a price that she can never have her image captured by any photographic equipment of any kind, but not before it is revealed that it wasn’t an accident but murder over a man.

With this, the anime writers pull back the pieces of the Valentine’s Day manga story and merge it with the picture story in the manga AND give the woman customer a motive for murder, something the manga doesn’t care about.

xxxHOLiC 21 — Watanuki finishes working for Yuuko-san and puts on his new shoes. He’s warned about it being bad luck. He ignores the warning, trips on his shoelace, and falls on his face. He has the next day off, so he reads some manga Yuuko-san lent him while lying in his futon at his apartment. He’s considering what to eat when he notices Doumeki in the room reading his manga. After getting ticked, Doumeki offers him a gift — some Matsusaka Beef which is high quality stuff. Doumeki wants sukiyaki and Watanuki agrees. They disagree about the kind of sukiyaki to make, and Watanuki goes nuts at how Doumeki takes over the preparation. Eating to their full, Watanuki wants to go to sleep on a full stomach but is warned not to because of the superstition of becoming a cow. He ignores it, and pays for it be having cow nightmares, having his body feel heavy, and having other cow-related issues. That night he spends the night with Yuuko-san and is remembers the superstition about not cutting ones nails at night. He ignores it and is nearly killed by a creature with giant sheering “pincher’s.” He’s save by Yuuko-san and taught that superstitions, whether bad or good, are real. She then has to perform a rite on Watanuki to “cleanse” him.

Bah! The manga story was one chapter and didn’t say anything about the turning into a cow element. Indeed, most of this was made up by the anime writers save for Watanuki spending the night, doing his nails, and nearly being killed. So the manga made it much more sinister and a lesson to Watanuki to listen to warnings given no matter how foolish they seem. The anime story went for a “all superstitions are real” element and that didn’t sell with me.