Yuko Ichihara
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| Yūko Ichihara | |
|---|---|
 Yūko Ichihara, as seen in the manga. |
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| First appearance | xxxHolic |
| Information | |
| Aliases | Yūko Ichihara The Dimension Witch The Far Eastern Witch Witch lady |
| Species | Human |
| Gender | Female |
| Age | Unknown |
| Occupation | Sorceress Wish-granter |
| Created by | Clamp |
Yūko Ichihara (壱原侑子 Ichihara Yūko?) is a fictional character from the manga, xxxHolic, created by the manga team Clamp. Yūko, an enigmatic, powerful and fashionable sorceress, is one of the principal characters in xxxHolic and a very important person in the storyline of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle. She is known by many names throughout the multiverse, most notable as "The Dimension Witch" —a title that reflects her unique reach in time and space. She has also been called The Far Eastern Witch as one of her aliases. However, she also claims that her name, "Yūko Ichihara", is just an adopted name, meaning her true name is unknown. The "侑" character of Yūko's first name translates as "to help, assist, repay kindness" coinciding with her role in the manga, xxxHolic, as Watanuki's mentor. In the anime, she is voiced by Sayaka Ohara in Japanese and Colleen Clinkenbeard in English.
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[edit] Role and actions
Yūko is the owner of a mysterious shop in Tokyo. She is a dealer in wishes as she will grant the sincere wish of anyone who is willing to make an appropriate sacrifice in return. Although this never involves money, the price is usually so high that it is frequently unbearable. In the case of Kimihiro Watanuki, who sought to be rid of the evil spirits that plague him, the price was a long period of frequently demeaning servitude. As a result, she now has Watanuki as a sort of "personal assistant" to clean, cook, and perform other tasks she considers beneath her. In the shop live two child-like beings created with Yuko's magic known as Maru and Moro, whose full names, Marudashi and Morodashi, translated roughly, mean streaking and flashing, a play on the "xxx" in the title. According to Yūko they cannot leave the shop or touch the Mokanas because they have no souls. The two have the function of grounding the shop to its unique location between universes. In later chapters Moro and Maru are seen sleeping and Yūko comments that they are focusing on keeping the house in place. Apart from this function the two greet visitors, assist Yūko, and annoy Watanuki.
Yūko is apparently one of the few people with the power to send people to multiple worlds, such that she has been aptly named the Dimension Witch. The travelers Syaoran, Fai D. Flowright and Kurogane, the protagonists of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, are sent to her from their respective home worlds in order to gain this ability. However, to gain the ability to traverse dimensions and the related abilities embodied in a being known as Mokona Modoki, they are required to pay a price that equates the power required to grant the wish. After giving what is most precious to them, which is for Syaoran, it is his relationship with Princess Sakura; for Fai, it is the tattoo on his back of which keeps his magic in check; and for Kurogane, his sword Ginryū given to him by Princess Tomoyo.
[edit] Powers and abilities
Among her other abilities beside granting wishes, transversing dimensions, she can also create gods for other worlds, which was a wish made by Ashura-o of Tsubasa, and speak through Maru and Moro as well through other people's minds. In the anime, when she sends a letter to Watanuki, her responses to him are in "real-time", depending on Watanuki's reaction. In the xxxHolic movie, she gives a glimpse of how powerful she can be when she faces the Collector. She dodges most of his attacks and is seemingly unscathed from a direct hit.
All of Yūko's customers must pay such prices in order to grant their wishes, which can be no more or no less that the one demanded. She is not one to tell the customer the most direct way to solve their problems because in the end, it can only be solved with that person's own realization and resolution to change themselves. Often if the person lacks the sincere determination to change themselves, an ironic disaster, that even Watanuki, who wishes to stop them from hurting themselves, will inevitably befall them. In Volume 8 when the Tengu-Karasu seek her help to save the Zashiki-warashi, their payment; the Tengu Fan was more than the required price. To balance it out, Yūko sent out Watanuki to assist them.
[edit] Shop
Yūko's shop is located in Tokyo, Japan. From the drawings Clamp made, the store is located in the middle of high rise buildings. She, Black Mokona, Maru and Moro also reside there. Part of her shop is her main residence and also has a koi garden and a back well. Yūko's shop is said to exist for some unknown reason or made to specifically for that purpose. The shop also hold many valuables and artifacts that were used in the manga's storyline.
Some of the items in the store are from other Clamp work, such as the vase from Gohou Drug, which she claims she acquired it from the "anything goes" store, but Watanuki thinks she stole it, Sakura's staff from Card Captor Sakura, but only a replica, and a stuff toy resembling Kero, found in the back of her shop. She also has Fai of Tsubasa's magical staff and Kurogane's Ginryuu sword, ear headphones resembling the persocom ears in Chobits, a Birdcage containing birds similar to the birds in Clamp's Clover, and 12 jars of pure water taken from a well at a mansion. The two Mokona's were originally stored in there in the beginning of the series, but the white one was given to the Tsubasa group.
Other xxxHolic items used in the storyline were the Monkey's Paw, a red aluminum bat inscribed with the characters for "Zantetsuken" (Japanese for Executioner's Sword), used to cut through a woman's laptop computer and for beating a carpet with a living butterfly pattern, a picture frame that contained the moving picture, the ring used for a girl with a bad lying habit, swords given as payment by Ashura-o in the Tsubasa group and xxxHolic crossover, and another picture frame that has an Akari image in it.
The shop keeps its secrets and seems to be selective in its clientel. When Shizuka Dōmeki could not enter the shop and only see Yūko's store as a vacant lot, Yūko explains in volume 8 of the manga that since Dōmeki does not need anything from her or the shop, it does not physically or visually exist to him. As a result, he cannot enter her shop like Watanuki and must arrange to meet her outside of it. For a shop that can grant any wishes, only a few seem to have taken notice of it, though she believes it is Hitsuzen that makes it possible for those few to set foot in it.
[edit] Personality
Yūko's personality is one of Clamp's most deep and profound yet. Though she acts very sarcastic, annoying and bossy around Watanuki, she has a wise understanding of the human nature - their sorrows, joy and love. Yūko has a wildly eccentric personality in many respects. She has a decidedly nasty streak, as evidenced by the humiliating tasks she frequently assigns to Watanuki. Yet she is also capable of showing affection for him as well. She is lazy and whimsical, carrying out her tasks in an off-handed manner much of the time and expressing little concern over what happens to her clients once her job is done.
She is also fun-loving, witty and humorous. She has a great fondness for alcohol, which results in sending Watanuki to the pharmacy for hangover cures whenever she drinks too much. She is frequently seen with a pipe of the type used in the 19th Century for smoking opium, but it is never specified what she is actually smoking in the manga. However, in the first episode of the xxxHolic TV series, it shows her filling the pipe with tobacco, though in her typical eccentric fashion she uses a cigarette cut rather than a cut for pipes.
[edit] Relationship with Watanuki
Yūko's relationship with Watanuki is sometimes difficult to understand. She is obviously very interested in him but that interest is neither shown to be romantic nor sexual. At times, she acts as a mentor to Watanuki, letting him experience and understand the world of the unnatural as well the diversity of the human kind.
Yuko's playful side with Watanuki involves in tricking him into minor wishes for additional service. For example, in volume 1, when she showed her fortune telling abilities, she took Watanuki's watch as payment. Her signature characteristic is always asking for food and sake or wine, using different excuses to drink sake. She also gives him humiliating or life threatening assignments. For instance, when Watanuki had to deliver a birdcage, he needed to play Shiritori in order to repel the evil spirits. When he was investigating the rumors of classmates playing Angels at night (Japanese equivalent to Ouija), a giant snake guardian nearly ate him and when he helped Ame-Warashi, a dead girl nearly lead him to his death. He also had to go inside a vase, where the Tengu-Karasu chased him before he could get back home. Finally, when he went to the 100 Demon parade for nectar, Watanuki was nearly mauled by 100 demons.
On Watanuki's side, his attitude towards Yūko begins as a mixture of annoyance, contempt, terror, and gratitude. He would often warn Himawari and other clients to beware of her because she is "ensnaring them in her clutches", and Yūko would respond to this with a verbal outburst or by striking him in a comedic fashion. However, Yūko never leaves Watanuki fully incapable in a time of need. She nurses him from time to time when he is injured, such as when she gave him half of Dōmeki's sight in Volume 8, where Watanuki finally realizes his self importance and collapses shortly afterwards in Yūko's lap. As the series goes on, it is not stated that because of how much work and time he spent at Yūko's store that Watanuki sleeps over ever more so often as the series progresses.
As time passes, Yūko allows Watanuki to receive payment for the various jobs that he had done in which her own involvement was minimal. She never mentions any form of payment or rental fee whenever the Kudakitsune tags along with Watanuki. In Chapter 120 of the manga, Yūko gives Watanuki an egg for him to hatch and care for as her payment to him for the water he had fetched for her.
[edit] Connections
Although Yūko's actual age is unknown, she has evidently had contact with most of the important mystically-oriented characters in the various Clamp series. She has in her possession a replica of Sakura Kinomoto's first Clow staff and has been known to complain mightily about her annoyance with Clow Reed's personality, though it seems that they were preparing for the arrivals of the characters of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle and Watanuki. She has also mentioned being acquainted with Sumeragi Subaru and his sister and has been aware of the Sakura Kinomoto of Cardcaptor Sakura for some time claiming that one day she wants to meet both Sakura and Syaoran from Cardcaptor Sakura's world.
Additionally, several characters in Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle are familiar with Yūko. Sorata and Arashi Arisugawa of the Hanshin Republic mention that they are indebted to her, Seishirou from Ōto has been given the ability to travel because of her, and Ashura of Shurano is seen speaking to her through a reflecting pool. The mysterious antagonist, Fei Wong Reed, and his assistant, named Xing Huo in the anime, are both aware of Yūko's powers and abilities and how she intends to derail them. In the anime, Fei Wong Reed even remarked when Yūko succeeded in derailing his plans that he has "fixed" the problem already since there will be something else that Yūko and even Watanuki will be dealing with.
As well, many items in Yūko's shop appear to be from other worlds in Clamp's works, or at least act as references. The High Moon Urn used in volume 5 is the same vase recovered by Kazahaya Kudō and Rikuō Himura in volume 2 of Legal Drug. In volume 3, Moro and Maru are seen reading "A City With No People" by Chitose Hibiya from Chobits while Watanuki sports headphones that bear more than a passing resemblance to Chi's ears in the same volume. In volume 6, Yūko sends Watanuki to deliver a cage of mechanical birds which can also be found in Clover.
Since part of Clamp's stated intention in xxxHolic was to unite their body of work into a single universe/multiverse, it seems quite likely that Yūko has a more than passing awareness of the events of Cardcaptor Sakura, Tokyo Babylon, and X/1999, and that while she may not have visited Cephiro herself, she is almost certainly aware of its existence. In a special manga released in Japan about the origins of the two Mokona's, it was mentioned that Clow Reed and herself met the original Mokona of Cephiro thus making it the model for building the two smaller Mokonas.
[edit] Fanwork and speculation
When xxxHolic first came out, there was a burst of fanfiction written on the premise of a past romantic relationship between Yūko and Clow. They were clearly contemporaries and quite possibly magical rivals. Some suspect that Yūko remembers Clow with bitterness because of a failed relationship as Clow Reed was known to be quite the womanizer, or because she has not forgiven him for effectively committing suicide with his powers.
There is also speculation that it is the burden of her immense power that compels Yūko to self-medicate herself with alcohol and whatever other drugs she may be using. Furthermore, it is possible Yūko Ichihara is not her true name, but a name she adopted to protect herself; in the anime, she actually says it's an alias in the first episode. Very few know her true name and she apparently has many aliases according to Tsubasa's Sorata Arisugawa of Hanshin, who refers to her as the Dimension Witch, Witch Lady, and the Far East Witch in addition to just "Yūko". As Yūko states in volume 1 of xxxHolic, once a person knows a man's true name, the person may discover everything about the man; once he knows the man's birthday, he can take control of his destiny. This theme has appeared in previous works, specifically Tokyo Babylon.
[edit] Trivia
- The alias Yūko uses for a family name, "Ichihara" is similar to the name of another Clamp character, Professor Ichiro Mihara who developed the Angels Battle game seen in Angelic Layer, and later, in Chobits.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Official website (Japanese)
- Official movie site (Japanese)
- Del Rey Manga (English)
- Link: xxxHolic News & Episode Guide (English)
