I just read the ending and I was curious about what other people think, it seems most people are not happy about it. haha Although I think maybe my experience with Clamp's works might insert some closure to some minds, so I decide to say something.
I don't think the ending of xxxholic is bad, comparing to many works in the past this one is quite satisfying. Since we can all pretty much take it for grant that xxxholic universe is in the same universe as other mangas they've written, for me it's quite a happy ending. You see (as much as I don't want to admit, but I have read their works since I was a kid up until now. T.T I don't even like them all that much anymore, but it's hard to get rid of my childhood...), Clamp has this tendency to solve a relationship if only one of them is immortal by making another person reborns and meet him/her again. If you have read Wish, you will know exactly what I mean. (Like going to sleep for one hundred years while some unknown grandchild just showed up being the reincarnation of the destined person. lol) >.> They make the eternal love/bond works out this way. lol So I think it's nice that even if Watanuki cannot die, Shizuka (whichever reincarnated form he takes) will always be there with him.
No, I don't think that Shizuka had married or anything. We never know anything about his family members so it was left ambiguous for a reason. (I don't know if most people here know this, but the term grandfather used in Japanese is not strict. For example, if Shizuka happened to have siblings and they got grandchildren, the grandchildren will also call Shizuka grandfather.) It'd be hard for Shizuka to marry, it would, in fact, make no sense, because Shizuka *lived* at the shop with Watanuki. He basically chose the job he deemed helpful to Watanuki and allowed him to be close to him at all time after he graduated, and practically lived there after a while, it'd be hard for him to marry. >.> It's absurd to think that he just one day got married, and then left his wife home while he lived at the shop? XD lol Not to mention that Clamp made it so that Watanuki behaved like a wife in traditional japanese style, most housewives in japan prepare a bath for her husband and serve sake during dinner and after bath, and no, it's very very abnormal for a friend to do that to another friend. Or the fact that Shizuka tried to put the thimble in his ring finger. (No normal male friends will do that in Japan...) The hints are way too obvious to think otherwise. I am very inclined to this train of thoughts because that's what Clamp always do to their homosexual/male-asexual/asexual-asexual pairs in their mangas. When I first read this manga, I feel that the relationship between Watanuki and Doumeki is very similar to the one in Gouhou Drug (before it was dropped and picked up again with a different name. lol)
It's okay for Watanuki to never want to forget Yuuko, isn't it? Because it also means Yuuko's wish is fulfilled so that Watanuki will live on and cannot die. And as it is, Shizuka's reincarnation/descendants will never use that egg anyways. Watanuki himself also said that he would never see the real Yuuko again, he will just live on like that.
So I think it's quite a happy ending, can't see how this is tragic. Maybe Yuuko's death is tragic to many people, but without her death, the story could not move on, and watanuki could not be a sucessor and continue to live (sort of) forever while taking care of the shop. And knowing Clamp, we know that Yuuko existence could not really disappear in this universe, after all everyone always reborns or exists somewhere in some plane (like ashura and yasha from rg veda somehow managed to appear in Tsubasa/many other characters. lol).
If anything I think X is the most screwed up as well Tokyo Babylon, damn annoying. We can't 'read' their last moments together. lol |