Caught up on xxxHolic.

[snarp]

Re Chapter 206: Did we seriously just have a whole plotline about how awful abortion is.

Re Chapter 208: Watanuki's outfits are getting remarkably silly. I think he's wearing one of Sakura's Cardcaptor costumes. If if I were Doumeki, I'd stage an intervention.

(The art's gotten really sketchy, too, but the silliness of the costumes is an independant problem.)

Comments

[snarp]

Well, not a lot's happening right now!

WATANUKI: Observe! I am melancholy and sneaky!
DOUMEKI: ...
WATANUKI: *episode of passive masochism*
DOUMEKI: *forboding gesture involving an egg*
ATMOSPHERIC SUPERNATURAL THING: HEY GUYS I JUST HAPPENED

I'm not sure the storyline's intent is didactic, specifically, in the sense that they may feel that "abortion is in some way corrosive to the world" is an idea so obvious that no one needs instruction in it. But I think it would definitely read as a guilt pile-on for someone who's had an abortion.

Unrelatedly, the pilot chapter of Gate 7 does not fill me with optimism.

[mikkeneko]

"Well, not a lot's happening right now!"

I am puzzled because the way you phrase this makes it sounds like anything happens in this series ever.

[starlady]

Stuff used to happen! I swear! Or maybe that is just a trick of my memory.

[starlady]

I've only unzipped and looked at Gate 7 and gone, "Kyoto! I used to live there, you know!" ;_; not actually read it yet.

Yeah, I sort of think that chapter was yet another way for CLAMP to be mean to their readership. Oh CLAMP. (I mean, I don't know, abortion is so common in Japan, and so is the whole Jizô/mizu no ko complex. Not to deny that it is an affecting experience for a woman who undergoes it, or not, but I persist in thinking that the story might not have the same cultural valence in a society where it is so common. But I don't actually know.)