I liked TRC a lot better this time around. It's pretty fascinating how many different worlds CLAMP's come up with for the series and just how many twists they tried to throw in (a bit too much, but well). It made reading xxxHolic feel very peaceful...kind of like reading a shadow of a story. I kept feeling like something was missing. I suppose it does contain a lot of back story after all, but TRC characters in xxxHolic feel so jarring, like they don't quite belong. xxxHolic characters in TRC didn't feel that way to me though.