xxxHolic: AnotherHolic by Nisioisin

CLAMP has got to be one of my favorite manga groups that ever existed. Not that I've ever read any other manga that a group did; usually I read those single-artist jobs. But I'm a pretty decent CLAMP fan: I loved Cardcaptor Sakura, and my favorite manga of all time is Tsubasa RESERvoiR CHRoNiCLE. So when my boyfriend and I were at the anime store the other day and saw xxxHoLic: AnotherHoLic sitting on the shelv, I practically fainted.

xxxHoLic is CLAMP's companion series to Tsubasa RESERvoiR CHRoNiCLE, set during the same time and parallel to TRC. The two main characters - Watanuki and Yuuko - both appear in TRC, though xxxHoLic is at once less serious and more philosophical than TRC.

I'm rambling. Regardless of its background, xxxHoLic: AnotherHoLic isn't another manga or graphic novel: it's a novel written by pop author Nisioisin, who wrote and released Death Note: Another Note around the same time as xxxHoLic: AnotherHolic. He's done some other stuff, but nothing I recognize in particular.

The novel is split up into three parts: OuterHoLic, InnerHoLic, and OtherHoLic. The first short story is about teenage Kimihiro Watanuki (that's in Western-style, with his given name first), who works for the Dimension Witch Yuuko in order to rid himself of his supernatural ability to see spirits. Watanuki is assigned to purchase a cheap pair of fake glasses. He thought it was just something weird that Yuuko wanted - she often asks ridiculous things of him - until he sees a young woman throw herself in front of a moving scooter.

The second part, InnerHoLic, revolves around the mysterious case of a woman receiving text messages from her dead friend. This part of the book was, by far, my favorite. While all of the parts made me think, this one made me think the most. It brought this to mind: when a friend dies, do we mourn for their sake, or for our own? Is our mourning simply something selfish? Or is it something more?

The third part, OtherHoLic, brings another young man into play, one searching for Watanuki and trying to recruit his "awesome eyes." Watanuki finds something about him very repellant, but there's much more to him than meets the eye.

Final Say: Overall, I think I'd give the book a good rating. It wasn't as good as the original manga series - though its story line was different than any of the manga - but for a stand-alone book, it was pretty good. My only issue was the loss in translation: there's a lot of wordplay in xxxHoLic that simply can't be translated into English. I'd recommend xxxHoLic: AnotherHoLic to all CLAMP fans and those interested in Japanese lore. If you're not into that kind of thing, though, this might be a good book to skip.