X/1999 Vol 9-10
People kept saying “there can be only one.” It made me think of Highlander.
So…uhm…somewhere in volume 9, I think the book crossed from “melodramatic, but pretty genuinely tragic and angsty” and into “so angsty it’s almost unintentionally funny.” I blame the endless spreads with feathers and clockwork gears. Pretty, but also a little on the pretentious side.
I finally got to the head hugging and screaming. It no doubt says concerning things about me that I’ve been anticipating that, despite being very fond of Kotori. (Actually, I think things are slightly less interesting with her gone.) It remains a fine moment of screaming romantic angst, but thanks to Tsubasa (for the angst) and Claymore (for the head hugging) it doesn’t have quite the “oomph” that it did when I first saw it in the anime.
Kotori’s wings and the scene where she says goodbye to Kakyo were as gorgeous as the dreamworld spreads in previous volumes, but the other dreamworld spreads weren’t as pretty. Did I mention that they started getting a bit pretentious at about that time?
And why did they let Kamui keep Kotori’s head after bandaging him up? (Not that I’m complaining about the angst there…) And for that matter, how did Kamui survive getting stabbed with so much glass?
Karen is still lurking around, sitting on tree branches and showing off her garters. I do love Karen. I love Sorata saying that hiding the sword in a fountain is silly almost as much. Though even better was Arashi facepalming in the background when Yuzuhira said the secret chamber looked like a super-robot launching bay.
And the flashbacks! Kusanagi and Yuzuhira bonding over Inuki was cute, but I suspect it will result in my being scandalized by Clamp’s age-inappropriate pairing tendencies again. And there was wee!Arashi! So cute!
Oh, and wee!Fuma picked up his mother’s head and licked her blood off his fingers. I’ll get to work on banishing that one from my head now.