I thought I’d end the xxxholic roundtable by highlighting some of the more interesting comments it generated, both here and on other sites.

Starting off, Kristy Valenti had a longish and thoughtful defense of the series.

I personally enjoy xxxHolic very much. The first few volumes made it as an honorable mention, paired with Petshop of Horrors, on my 2006 TCJ best of lists: at the time, I praised their low-key, late-night cable horror-anthology feel (something that the critics in this roundtable have also identified, as a fault) and wrote, “these are not significant works by any means, but they are good reads and an interesting study in rhythm and narrative structure.”

I find this rhythm to be key to xxxHolic (I realize that a strong argument can be made that if it doesn’t grab you from the beginning, it’s not worth your time, but xxxHolic, in particular, is quite the slow-burn: as Melinda pointed out, it founders a bit for a while, and shifts gears, but then it begins to build to the show-stopping, stunningly drawn Vol. 12 (though no, the philosophical and existential themes in Vol. 12, and of the work overall, are not particularly novel or complex (one’s ability to affect one’s own destiny, how even our tiniest actions affect ourselves and others, hence the butterfly motif (which: not new)); but I appreciated the getting there. My patience was rewarded).

There’s a certain coldness, or distance, about the work which is tonally in concert, considering that it’s concerned with the supernatural and the inhuman. Equally, my attachment to xxxHolic isn’t particularly sentimental: it’s the only thing I’ve ever read from Clamp that I liked, and I don’t particularly even care for the characters (well, Yuko is entertaining), even 13 or so volumes in. I also wasn’t able to stomach Tsubasa.

That’s why I find it somewhat perverse to review only the first three volumes of this series (or for the majority of the critics to have only read the first three volumes). I realize it’s from a practical standpoint, and I realize that a strong argument can be made that if it doesn’t grab you from the beginning, it’s not worth your time, but I do hope that one forthcoming roundtable participant has read the series to date and will look at the first three volumes in retrospect.

Narratively, xxxHolic is a genre work in which I derive pleasure, as a reader, from seeing the ways in which genre conventions are or are not fulfilled, side-swiped, or discarded in favor of other genres. (Suat explains that there much better works in this genre; I submit that it’s no accident that I followed xxxHolic for as long as I have because I can get it for free at the public library.) And I confess that, after having my eyes assaulted by hundreds of hideous comics with absolutely zero literary or artistic merit, sometimes I find it aesthetically soothing to look at lovely art for art’s sake.

Matthias Wivel had several interesting comments discussing his lack of interest in manga. For example:

I wonder too about the blandness of most manga criticism, but my focus was clearly narrower: it basically concerned what I can’t help but see as an idealisation amongst certain critics of shojo and yaoi especially, simply because, it seems, they’re different from American comics.

Inspired by this enthusiasm, I’ve tried to read a bit of it, and definitely recognise the mastery of, say, Ai Yazawa, but at the same time it’s not only clearly targeted at a completely different audience than me to an extent where I can’t sustain even my intellectual enthusiasm for it, but it also only goes so far.

What I’ve read — and perhaps it’s not a sufficient amount — has been rather formulaic, even if driven by a different (and initially fresh-seeming) cultural coding than the one that makes a lot of American and European comics so instantly dull.

At the same time, like Suat, I find much more to think about, much greater emotional resonance when I read a comic by Dan Clowes or, say, Yoshiharu Tsuge. A comic not only more clearly directed to me, but one invested by much more careful attention to emotional reality.

This prompted a reply from Vom Marlowe:

“A comic not only more clearly directed to me, but one invested by much more careful attention to emotional reality.”

I think that says more about your perception of emotional reality than it does about the comics.

I hate to point out the elephant in the room, but you know, what a lot of this boils down to is that Matthias and Suat are arguing that girls comics aren’t getting criticized hard enough, that if they were held to the same standard as the lit comics, more critics would be saying the comics suck.

This is the same argument that is leveled against romance novels all the time. There’s a reason that almost all deep-level romance novel criticism takes place in female-dominated, frequently locked realms. That’s because if you do it in the “mainstream” the criticism tends to boil down to: Girl stuff (like, say, romance itself) is icky (or emotionally shallow). I hear that enough already, and I’m really not interested in hearing it again. If I thought romances were emotionally shallow, I wouldn’t be reading them. Arguing that they’re worth reading is EXHAUSTING.

I’ll just say that I actually read a LOT of good, thoughtful, fierce criticism of shojo, and most of it is in locked spaces where the boys aren’t allowed.

Pallas provided a really sharp assessment of the differences between Japanese and American comic art:

This is so subjective. Its kind of apples and oranges. Clamp’s art suits the stories they do- I think if they were assigned Captain America: the Return #1 to draw, it would be a disaster.

I think that many American comics tend to have more complex character designs and more complex backgrounds- certainly, the use of color alone adds a lot of complexity. I get the impression the ideal in American art is closer to realism than the ideal in a lot of manga.

I think there’s a number of shoujo with very muddled storytelling- some shoujo creators try to do action oriented material but fail at it, because the minimalism that can work for emotional storyline doesn’t necessarily work for an adventure. (Are Clamp fight scenes ever engaging? I remember absurd proportions in Tsubasa fight scenes ticked me off. Actually, I’ve barely read Sailor Moon, but I got the impression it would fall into the muddled fight scene category.)

I think that you can argue that American comics are far more “plot” oriented while manga is more “emotion” oriented.

Its interesting that I think Takahashi it at least somewhat impressed with the art in American comics:

Question: Do you read American comics?

Takahashi: There are a number of titles that I collect. One of them is, of course, Spider-Man.

Question: Using Spider-Man as a reference, what do you think are the differences between manga and American comics?

Takahashi: Hmmm… In a certain sense, the quality, the art of American comics is very high. I think the element of storytelling through images is strong with American comics. Japanese manga are really… manga can be created even without drawing any action into them. Even boring everyday things, such as portraying that it’s a really hot day or that something is really hungry- even just that is enough for manga. I guess it’s a difference of how people see the world, what people think makes a story. I believe that’s where the difference lies.

And Shaenon Garrity chimed in:

Argh…I have so many nerdy, nerdy thoughts on this subject. To me, American comics, even most “art” or “literary” comics, are very external and plot-oriented in their storytelling. This is even true of comics that go in for a lot of visual experimentation; Acme Novelty Library, for instance, never gets inside the characters’ heads in a visual/visceral way, and in fact all its brilliant formal tricks seem designed as distancing mechanisms, like the comic-book equivalent of a Stanley Kubrick film.

Which is a perfectly legitimate approach, of course, but one of the things that draws me to manga is that even the most formulaic genre work is so internal and character/emotion-oriented. By comparison, manga makes American comics look dry, disengaged, and emotionally stunted. I guess a lot of American comics readers see the emotional intensity of manga as silly or shallow or embarrassing, but my reaction is the opposite; to me, American comics are shallow and silly for shying away from any deep depiction of the characters’ internal lives.

Look at the Takahashi quote above: she comes from a comics tradition where a character being hot or hungry can be depicted in a visually rich, exciting way. To me, that’s interesting and worthwhile, and a “genre story” that successfully captures such moments is possibly more interesting than a “literary” work that stays safely confined to the cerebral level.

Elsewhere on the interwebs, David Welsh responded to the accusation that manga critics are too nice. And Bill Randall, in response to the same discussion, posted his decidedly not nice review of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s Good-Bye.

There’s lots more of interest in comments; among others, Melinda Beasi (whose own lengthy discussion of xxxholic on her own site is here) chimes in frequently. Thanks again to Kate Dacey and Adam Stephanides for their guest posts, as well as to all the commenters and readers. Again, if you missed it, you can read the entire roundtable here.

Update: Melinda Beasi provides some more thoughts on the roundtable and on manga reviewing.

Update 2: Coffee and Ink weighs in with a scathing assessment of the roundtable.

This is the latest post in a roundtable on Clamp’s xxxholic.
______________________

That’s a sequence from the Lee/Ditko Spider-Man Annual #1. I first saw it when I was 8 or so, and it’s stuck with me to this day. Not that I especially loved it or hated it — it’s obviously a fairly bland and pointless sequence.

That very blandness, though, was what arrested me. I couldn’t figure out why I was reading this. Okay, there’s a Spider-Man story…and then Dr. Strange shows up, and walks through four panels — and then he leaves. At other points in the story, Thor passes through in a similar way, as do the Avengers, as do the Fantastic Four. I think I knew even back then who all these characters were, but having them used in this way, for background cameos, left my eight-year old self completely non-plussed. What was the point? Was I supposed to enjoy this? How come?

Of course, I get it now. Dr. Strange walked through so that they could put “Special Guest Stars: Thor! the Avengers! Dr. Strange!” or some such on the cover. It’s a bait and switch.

Or is it? Not exactly, I don’t think. It certainly is a marketing gimmick, but the gimmick isn’t a cheat. Yes Dr. Strange is promised, and you barely get Dr. Strange at all. But I don’t think that’s likely to have been a disappointment to the readers. Rather, the very gratuitousness of the cameo — the fact that Dr. Strange doesn’t do anything and really has no reason for being there — is the point of the whole exercise. He’s trotted out so Marvel loyalists can basically say, “Hey! I know Dr. Strange! There he is! Right in the same world as Spider-Man! Whoo hoo!” The exercise is validated by the little frisson of pleasure you get from catching an allusion. If Dr. Strange were actually part of the plot, if Lee and Ditko had to explain what he was doing there and why he was involved, he wouldn’t work nearly as well as fan-service. He’s an extra bonus for true-believers — the crossover equivalent of a panty shot. The cutesy crassness isn’t a bug; it’s a feature. You pander to let your audience know you’re pandering. It’s a way of saying, hey, plot, theme, character…who cares? The point is that I know you’re reading, you reader you, and I’m looking out for you. Kawaii lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!

This kind of crossover porn has largely been replaced in American superhero comics by continuity porn — an altogether more depressing line of country. But at least for the first three volumes I read, xxxholic keeps things old school: the series is filled with allusions to other Clamp titles, but those allusions are all deliberately and even egregiously shallow. A glimpse of Cardcaptor Sakura’s staff shows up here; a purchase is made from Legal Drug there, little fuzzy bunny things show up from some other Clamp series there.

Even when Clamp flirts with continuity (as when characters from the simultaneously serialized Tsubasa pop in for an inter-dimensional walk-on) it’s very circumspect. Obviously, Clamp would like you to go buy Tsubasa as well as xxxholic, but they’re not going to be pushy about it. Instead, they’re going to be cute:

Yes, the little bunnies are a kind of dimensional vortex; you feed a useful item to the black bunny in xxxholic, it pops out of the mouth of the white bunny in Tsubasa. Watch bunnies ingest and egest from multiple angles when you collect them all!

There’s a kind of brilliance in that; the Dr. Strange cameo is cutesy in a somewhat sublimated, nudge-nudge way . So why not just drag that out in the open and have the container be as cutesy as the content? Clamp is better at being Stan Lee than Stan Lee ever was, in some sense. The clubby Marvel in-group of true believers could never attain the insular hothouse fervor of the fan-fic doujinshi circles that spawned Clamp.

I can admire that about Clamp. There’s something almost awe-inspiring in the way they combine the blatant enthusiasms of the amateur with the absolute polish of a professional. They give their audience what they want, and they do it without the audible grinding of gears you always got from those old Marvel comics. When Dr. Strange trots across the page, you can see Stan behind him pushing; the whole thing smells of greasepaint and pasteboard. In Clamp, on the other hand, the crossovers slide across the page so sinuously that if you’re not in the know you’ll never see them. Kinukitty, for example, had to point out the Legal Drug reference to me.

Even though I’m impressed with the craft, though, I have to say that, overall, I still agree with my eight year old self. I mean, yes, I enjoy hearing a familiar sample in a hip hop song, and I liked some of League of Extraordinary Gentleman. But there’s more happening in hip hop or Alan Moore than just dog whistles and secret handshakes. I don’t really open a comic to see Dr. Strange trotted out clumsily, or Legal Drug trotted out subtly. I don’t really want to be nudged by the writer and told that he or she knows these characters too, and isn’t that great. I don’t go to art to be inducted into a club — or, I don’t know, maybe this is just the wrong sort of club for me. In any case, the crossover porn in xxxholic had more or less the opposite effect on me from what was intended. Instead of convincing me want to go out and read the other Clamp series referenced, it made me want to avoid them all, even those, like Cardcaptor Sakura, that I had already read and enjoyed.
______________________

I also wanted to respond to Suat, who, along with Matthias Wivel in comments wondered why critics in general, and me in particular, weren’t harder on mainstream Japanese comics and more appreciative of American literary comics. Suat suggested the leniency might be attributable to some kind of Japanophiliac “cultural forbearance”; Matthias countered with the theory that it was a species of hipster contrarianism. (Update: Altered somewhat for clarity.)

Of course, my last mainstream manga review wasn’t lenient at all. In fact, it was so unlenient it prompted Suat to intimate that my perspective might actually be racist.

But the real point, I think, is that there’s a tendency when you don’t agree with someone on aesthetics to assume that they’re putting you on. Oh, you can’t possibly like Mariah Carey more than Dirty Projectors, you’re just saying that to be contrary. This despite the fact that Mariah Carey actually has a bigger audience than the Dirty Projectors overall, and therefore you might reasonably conclude that liking her more is the default position, and liking the Dirty Projectors the contrarian one….but I digress.

Anyway, I explain at some length starting here some of the reasons that I find shojo more appealing than American literary comics. Also, just on a basic level, I tend to be more impressed with the craft in manga than with that in American comics, though obviously there’s a lot of individual variation. Japanese illustration is an amazing tradition, richer in many ways than the Western one, and it shows.

Despite all that, though, I still don’t like xxxholic much.