xxxHOLiC Movie: Manatsu no Yoru no Yume

Summer break has arrived, but while his other classmates are out having fun, Kimihiro Watanuki continues to work as compensation for the eccentric Yuuko in her shop. With the spirits and supernatural phenomena that bother him lessening, he pays his dues by cleaning, cooking, and doing whatever else the apparently lazy Yuuko needs.

Watanuki, however, gets involved in a new predicament when Yuuko receives a mysterious invitation to a mansion whose owner seeks Yuuko's wish-granting ability. When he, Yuuko, and his classmate Shizuka Doumeki make their way to the peculiar residence, they meet others who were summoned by the same strange invitation. All of them are collectors of various unique items, drawn there by the chance to expand their collections. But as the collectors begin to disappear one by one, Watanuki and his companions must solve the mystery and put the case to rest, or find themselves in risk of danger.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Ichihara, Yuuko Main

Ohara, Sayaka Japanese

Watanuki, Kimihiro Main

Fukuyama, Jun Japanese

Doumeki, Shizuka Main

Nakai, Kazuya Japanese

Syaoran Supporting

Irino, Miyu Japanese

Sakura Supporting

Makino, Yui Japanese

Modoki, Mokona Supporting

Kikuchi, Mika Japanese

Daidouji, Tomoyo Supporting

Sakamoto, Maaya Japanese

Kunogi, Himawari Supporting

Itou, Shizuka Japanese

Maru Supporting

Kojima, Kazuko Japanese

Moro Supporting

Mochizuki, Hisayo Japanese

Clinkenbeard, Colleen Producer

Cook, Justin Producer

Iwasaki, Yoshihiro Producer

Kawaguchi, Tooru Producer

Reviews

Aug 26, 2022

Animelover875

Recommended

I find that this movie is highly skilled in not only telling an appealing story, but also simultaneously proves that a unique and clearly defined premise is not always necessary to draw viewers in. While the main concept is relatively tame, the story truly comes together thanks to its artistic appeal; much of the movie is eye candy with wonderfully creepy and deceptively abstract and surrealist imagery designed to play with perspective (among other factors), which adds a highly admirable amount of stylistic and aesthetic appeal. The characters all appear in the same vein as they do in the original, though truthfully the series has ... always been more focused on spirits and contemplation and questioning of humanity, life, morals, and other factors than specific character development. Even the collectors are overexaggerated, shown to their most extreme extent to care about pride and conceit only artificially, finding themselves unique because they believe they have a collection rarer than others. While it may be interesting to have a rare collection, the item being rare in itself is not what should be praised; rather, what should is the dedication to keep collecting and bettering one’s collection, disregarding to a respectable degree the actual gross value. It’s fittingly contradictory of the homeowner then, who collects other collectors and even seemed to wish to “collect” Yuko, who seems immune to him. I believe that Yuko is immune to his efforts primarily because most of the collectors seem to be lacking an implied sense of fulfilment, needing to fill this with material objects. However, Yuko lacks this as she gives others what they desire most. I highly recommend watching this movie if following the series and even if not for this reason, if anything for the aesthetic and stylistic value as well as warped view on perception of humanity and pride, among countless others, that the movie showcases. 9/10.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Dec 23, 2013

angelsreview

Recommended

Addictions… they are something that you can put your whole life and wellbeing into, not caring who you harm and sometimes even forgetting why you started it to begin with. No, this is not a two step ‘drug addiction’ seminar; it’s the start of a strange twist of fate for Watanuki and his friends. The movie starts out like any other episode of the anime really, with Watanuki being loaded down with a mass of spirits who all seem to want his attention up till he finally reaches the place that he works at, Yuuko’s wish granting house where he works like a slave for ... her. I can understand why they started it out with this as there is a need to explain who the characters are within the movie, but for people like me who know the story from both the anime and manga, it feels like a cop out. The reason why Watanuki is working at Yuuko’s place is so he would not have this trouble with spirits hanging on him all the time, but here we see that even though he has been working there a little while, the spirits do bother him. I can feel a little bit of annoyance when Yuuko talks about how he doesn’t see them that much but that’s because he is working at her place. Outside of that, nothing has changed at all (At least that’s how it feels).

Surprisingly, most of my problems with this Movie were only in the first few minutes of it, up till we have them going to a mansion that a woman had asked Yuuko to help get into (besides some animation hiccups I guess). The storyline was very well thought out and the characters were as loveable and funny as in the anime. Some minor problems of the show were pushed off to the side because of the rest of it being rather good. I felt like I was watching part of the anime without the cuts from it having to go into the next episode. I know some people get mad when a movie doesn’t feel like a movie but to me, I was happy to see this. Since I loved the anime already so it was nice seeing they had not changed anything.

The mansion was pretty creepy and was a lot like the Winchester mansion with doors and staircases leading no where and the ‘room within a room’ aspect but I had to wonder slightly why it was like that. I felt like we were going threw a ton of dimensions, rooms that felt like the outside, rooms so small you could hardly walk into, and even a really strange tiny tunnel that Watanuki had to crawl through to get to the restroom (and make himself look like a walking stick the whole way with his strange limbs). Then we have a strange feeling of a murder mystery where everyone was given an invitation to be there and then people start disappearing starting with one person and then going on to more. All of them had a common intrest; all of them collected things like an addiction. Now you can understand why I brought up the addiction part in the beginning of this review. And even in the end of the movie, I felt that I had still questions that were left unanswered and no closer to them. I’m not against not having all the answers, but there was one that bothered me and sadly, I can’t say it or it will be a large spoiler.

The artwork is really strange, and sometimes goes overboard compared to the anime. We do have the long limbs and over exaggerated faces that Watanuki is known for, the overly Slenderman look-a-likes of all the characters and the sometimes overly barbaric proportions of head to body ratios everybody whines about. But then we have some creepier looking things in the movie then just how the characters look. There are times when we are given CG rendered rooms that look almost perfect to the cartoon aspects and then they are placed next to rather low detailed objects like the characters for example. Sometimes it didn’t work but I found that most of the time it did as it would give you a very chilling feeling and add to what I believe the creators wanted.

I was not disappointed in the slightest of the movie and that’s surprising as my expectations were pretty high seeing as I liked the anime and manga both. If you are in the same book as me, I think you would really enjoy it as well.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Jul 28, 2013

Were_Vampire

Recommended

xxxHolic is probably my favorite manga and one of my favorite animes. My experience with anime movies has never been too promising; for example, I've seen and hated 5 of the Naruto movies, the Tsubasa movie was dreadful and so the Fairy Tail one, some Digimon movies were also quite bad (though there are some that deserves to be recognized as very good). So I avoided the xxxHolic movie for quite a while, and when I finally made up my mind into watching it I decided not to expect that much from it. However, I'm glad I did, because I had a great time. It's ... not perfect, but it's pretty great mixing good comedy with some very disturbing (and quite effective) thriller moments.

Story: It's quite simple, there's a request from a woman because her key won't unlock her mansion, and Yuuko sends (as per usual) Watanuki to handle the job. Now, while the premise is pretty much the case of the week format of the manga and anime, the development is quite clever and has distinctive elements that make us feel that we are watching a movie and not just an extended episode, which is quite important; many anime based movies feel just like an extended episode, but here the storytelling takes different paces. While usual episodes tend to move a bit slowly to introduces us to the problem before speeding up in the end, here the pace is way more regular, speeding just a bit in the end, little by little, until it creates a perfectly balanced climax.
Now, there are some flaws here and there: mostly the villain at the end is not very compelling, but the way Yuuko and company takes care of him is quite brilliant.
Mostly, it's very cleverly handled, but the ending could have been better handled; it's not that it's bad (not at all!), it is that you feel like "ok, this was a good film, but that's it", it doesn't feel transcendent. Still, you are up for bid enjoyment if you like xxxHolic.

Character: xxxHolic strongest point has always been character; we get to explore them in depth, we get to know what is right and wrong with them, what are their strengths and their weaknesses and the movie is live ups to the anime/manga character treatment, with the sole expectation that the villain (as mentioned before) is a bit rushed, but that's a minor flaw to an otherwise greatly developed cast of characters, including Watanuki; I mention him because it's not rare for main characters to actually go out of character in movies, but he still feels the same and he reacts as we could expect, and for me that's a winner.

Sound: Marvelous, xxxHolic has always had a great track (and so its sister series, Tsubasa) and the movie doesn't fall behind. Not just the music, background sounds are in complete sync; there's a moment when a ghost appears out of nowhere at Watanuki's back and the track there just lands perfectly. When scenes must be bizarre, the track is right, when there's need for comedy, drama or thriller, the track is still right.

Enjoyment: I had a great time! It's the best anime based movie I watched thus far, and this actually encourages me to see some others out there that I haven't checked out because of my bad luck with anime based movies. Though it's certainly not the best I've seen, it's still pretty damn good. If you are a fan of xxxHolic, I'm quite sure you'll like it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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	Do I need to watch Tsubasa Chronicals for this? Yuri_Niji - Jul 30	5 replies	by 5Reinheit »» Jul 31, 2:46 PM
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