xxxHOLiC Movie: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Alt title: xxxHOLiC Movie: Manatsu no Yoru no Yume

Movie (1 ep x 60 min)
2005
3.999 out of 5 from 5,690 votes
Rank #1,003

Watanuki faces challenges in every area. Spirits chase him, his best friend Doumeki isn't really a friend, and his boss Yuuko seems to have mistaken him for a servant come housewife. When Yuuko requests that both of them join her in accepting a special invitation to a collector's house, he can just hear the trouble coming. Upon arrival, the house proves to be more than a bit unusual, and the other guests are almost scary with their fanatical collecting. But, the worst thing about the situation is the knowledge that for all the weirdness Watanuki can see, it is absolutely certain that the mysteries are way more complicated that he thinks. Depending on Yuuko's arcane knowledge may be the only hope.

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Reviews

angelsreviews
9

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. <input id="mac_address" type="hidden" value="">

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