Woops I have more cage thoughts!
I keep thinking about how Yuuko and Watanuki end up being narrative opposites. Not as people, but in the way that in the final sections of xxxholic their character arcs are mirrors to each other moving in opposite directions.
And I want to say this happens 'despite' Watanuki’s continuous attempts to emulate Yuuko and her way of life, but I actually think it’s closer to because he’s doing that.
To start in a slightly abstract place, let's look at the "intro speeches" that each of them have in each era of the manga. Yuuko’s is about how mysterious humans are:
This is the big opening page of the series but it also provides some of the keys to Yuuko’s outlook. She is enthusiastic about humanity and their place in the universe. She words it like she finds them fascinating - and more than a little like she’s on the outside looking in. Which she practically is - as someone who is already mostly dead watching the living, she appreciates the nature of humanity, perhaps especially since she can observe it but never have that same experience for herself anymore. Even so, there’s a verve for life in her lines, and human life in particular.
And then there's Watanuki! While his post-Yuuko life starts with Yuuko's same introduction again, eventually it gets replaced by a new one:
This speech works in the opposite direction than Yuuko's - it’s focussed back on himself instead of out toward the world. It’s boosting his own mystique in the supernatural realm rather than his outlook on life.
And the difference in passion between these two matches both of their arcs. Yuuko was always looking outward, at other people and other worlds, while Watanuki's path lead to him closin himself more and more away from the world, staying rooted in the store and letting his human connections dwindle.
Yuuko's speech didn't even mention the store, it was so focussed on the bigger picture of the universe, which matches her goals! Yuuko spent hundreds of years looking forward. She fought to save the future, and all existence, and spent her life setting up the store at least partially for Watanuki to inherit.
Meanwhile Watanuki spent hundreds of years looking backward. Even when Yuuko tried to set him free, he spent his life chasing something that was already gone - which means even the person he was waiting for didn’t want him to do this, but he chose the inward route and walked it anyway. Even at the very end, he insists there is something else he can keep waiting for and continues to do that instead taking Yuuko's advice to look forward instead.
And by the end of this journey the amount of people we see around Watanuki is one (1) person, or maybe more accurately the one most recent person in the line of people dedicated to maintaining him. Even Mokona is completely absent from his final chapter, as are Maru and Moro. Meanwhile over Yuuko’s chapters we see the number of people around her actually grow. She starts only with Maru and Moro, but by the end she has relationships with Watanuki, Doumeki, Himawari, Kohane, the older fortune teller - but also Sakura, Syaoran, and countless other (importantly human, living) people she knew across the worlds.
AND, I think importantly, this WAS the same for Watanuki at this point in the story. His life was ALSO growing in scope and connection, he was expanding his heart, and this is what Yuuko wanted for him too.
But instead we get the reverse journey, with Watanuki starting his tenure as store owner already with a wealth of connections and losing them on purpose. He works backward from where Yuuko left him in order to get back to where Yuuko was at the start, with few connections and very little to fill his life with that isn’t in service to a far off dream.
And it’s so interesting that even though Yuuko’s life was ending her connection to life was growing, whereas Watanuki’s life was only just beginning and he dedicated it diminishing his connections instead. Yuuko's symbol is the moon, and specifically the shape of a waning crescent, the final stage before the moon disappears, which aligns with her life approaching its end point. Yet even so she shines brighter than Watanuki as the sun, who hid himself indoors instead.
Which is reflected in their magic as well, I think. Yuuko was immensely powerful from the beginning, but by the end she gives away her power to help people survive. She knows it's the end so she does as much good for others as she can while she still can. There is no use to power once you're dead - but it can benefit the living, and she gifts Sakura an entirely new life as a result.
Watanuki’s power is the opposite, where it starts small but grows phenomenally over the cage arc. But it’s a more insular kind of power that we only see measured against a remnant of Yuuko’s memory. He has centuries to grow this power, and he eventually DOES end up stronger than Yuuko, but the only thing we see him use his greatest level of power for is his own motivation fulfilled. In his final chapter the only person he helps is himself - which I don't mean to sound like so much of a criticism, but it is still a huge contrast to our final moments with both the real Yuuko AND the memory Yuuko, who both spend their last moments wishing for someone else's happiness.
BOTH of those are aimed at Watanuki. Both times Yuuko spends her final moments urging Watanuki to do the opposite of what he’s doing and free himself. Which he chooses against.
And I don't think I have any concluding thoughts other than how interesting it is that Watanuki spends so much time trying to be like Yuuko, and DOES end up exactly where she was, but he ends up where she started and not where she ended.
Yuuko's arc ends triumphantly, if sadly. Yuuko ends, but she saved everything.
Meanwhile Watanuki's cage arc ends infinitely less dramatically than the main story, but his ending is tragic. He himself continues endlessly, but gave away everything to get there, and still didn't get what he wanted.
