Xxxholic 5

This is the third volume in a shojo manga (female-oriented Japanese graphic novel) series by the popular author/artist collective known as CLAMP, chronicling the adventures of magic shop proprietor Yûko and her much put-upon servant Kimihiro Watanuki, a high school student who sees spirits. Watanuki is reluctantly paired with his rival Dômeki as they investigate a haunted school. Next, in a nod to a classic British short story, Watanuki is unable to convince a confident graduate student that she risks becoming cursed by the wish-granting monkey's paw she found in Yûko's shop. And finally, Watanuki encounters a great cook and gains a new young friend when he visits a food stall run by fox spirits. As in the previous two volumes, the storyline crosses over with another CLAMP title, TSUBASA. The black-and-white art in this series remains consistently lush and somewhat stylized. The book reproduces the original Japanese right-to-left orientation, and contains a four-page color insert as well as short guides to Japanese honorifics and cultural references used in the text.