About Tsubasa and xXxHolic, you can say it’s actually the same movie. Both movies are connected, just like the Mangas are too. It’s better xXxHolic if you ask me.

On a related note: hate to say it, but I think the Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE television series is pretty terrible… Rather than coming across as an impressive cross-universe epic feature CLAMP’s latest and greatest heroes, it often feels like a generic, fantasy mish-mash. The dialogue isn’t that great either.

I have the Digital Meme boxset, and these cartoons are fascinating–a strange and wonderful mix of traditional Asian art styles sometimes mixed with American-style animation reminscent of Fleischer or Terrytoons. Also, a mix of media–conventional cel animation, paper-cutout animation, live-action, stop-motion, etc. Some are done in entirely in silhouette, like Asian shadow-puppet plays. Subjects run from traditional Japanese folklore to baseball games (with some gags uncannily similar to those in US cartoons).

Too bad that I don’t live in the East Coast. If I had access to either one of the showings, I would select Japan Society’s showing of prewar Japanese animation. Why? It would be interesting to see how prewar Japanese animators made animations before Osamu Tezuka cut corners.
Despite the technical mastery of Production I.G., I really think that CLAMP animations are overrated and they became a kind of brand name for stereotypical Japanese animations.

On Aaron H. Bynum’s comment, I can’t agree with him more. Seriously, dialogs used in many Anime titles are sound immature and generic because there aren’t good screenwriters in Japan. From what I read from a Japanese source, many young creative people in Japan want to be comic book artist rather than screenwriters. Vice Versa in America. When Manga makes transition to animated film, there aren’t good enough screenwriters who can improve existing comic book dialogs to better format.