Both series start out with deceptively simple storylines.
In xxxHolic, high school student Watanuki is plagued with the ability to see spirits. He stumbles into a strange shop owned by Yūko Ichihara. She grants wishes for whatever price she names. Watanuki wishes to be free of the evil spirits; Yuko offers to grant that wish after he has served as her personal assistant for an unknown period of time. Watanuki cooks, cleans, and accompanies Yuko occasionally to help with granting wishes.
In Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, CLAMP is apparently reusing the characters Sakura and Syaoran from their previous series Cardcaptor Sakura, now cast in a new dimension. Sakura is a princess and Syaoran is an archaeologist who secretly loves her. While visiting Syaoran’s latest find, Sakura is subject to a magical attack which scatters her soul and memories across the multiple dimensions in the form of feathers.
The two series cross over when Syaoran, with the comatose Sakura, begs Yuko for the means to save Sakura. For a price, Yuko provides the ability to travel the dimensions and communicate with her via a Mokona creature. Syaoran and Sakura are joined by a magician, Fay, and a ninja, Kurogane. The four of them and the black Mokono start their travels, running across alternate versions of characters from previous CLAMP series.
(At this point I thought CLAMP was trying to apologize to the characters they had created and then done horrible things to: for example the travelers met two happy couples who’s previous incarnations had been left in some combination of broken up, dead, or insane.)
Two fairly simple but interesting and well drawn series. But this is CLAMP and they don’t do simple.
So there have been twists and turns and insanity and true love and lies and confusion and secrets and lost memories and eyeballs being ripped out and souls torn apart and souls put back together and all the fun stuff CLAMP is known for.
They may even finish these series.
Manga and Graphic Novels @ Duluth 