The Essentials
Name: Cardcaptor Sakura
Genre:: Fantasy, Adventure
Episodes: 70
Released: April 7, 1998 - December 29, 1998 (season 1); April 4, 1999 - July 13, 1999 (season 2); September 7, 1999 - March 21, 2000 (season 3)
Based On: Cardcaptor Sakura manga by CLAMP
Director: Various
Produced By: NHK Enterprise 21
US Distribution By: Pioneer/Geneon
Major Japanese Cast
Sakura Kinomoto: Sakura Tange
Small Kero: Aya Hisakawa
Kerberos: Masaya Onosaka
Tomoyo Daidouji: Junko Iwao
Syaoran Li: Motoko Kumai
Meiling Li: Yukana Nogami
Eriol Hiiragizawa: Nozomu Sasaki
Yukito Tsukishiro/Yue: Megumi Ogata
Toya Kinomoto: Tomokazu Seki
Fujitaka Kinomoto: Hideyuki Tanaka
Kaho Mizuki: Emi Shinohara
Naoko Yanagisawa: Emi Motoi
Rika Sasaki: Tomoko Kawakami
Chiharu Mihara: Miwa Matsumoto
Takashi Yamazaki: Issei Miyazaki
Nakuru Akizuki/Ruby Moon: Ryoka Yuzuki
Spinel Sun (small): Yumi Touma
Spinel Sun (big): Katsuyuki Konishi
Sonomi Daidouji: Miki Itou
Clow Reed: Kazuo Hayashi
Major English Cast
N/A
Scores
Animation: 9/10 (x 4 = 36 pts)
Story: 8/10 (x 4 = 32 pts)
Music: 9/10 (x 4 = 36 pts)
Coherency/Story Arc: 9/10 (x 2 = 18 pts)
English Dubs: N/A
Gut Score: 10/10 (x 5 = 50 pts)
Total: 172/190 (90.5%)
Review
Cardcaptor Sakura is a cute little story about a girl named Sakura who accidentally breaks a seal on a set of 52 magical cards called Clow Cards, scattering them all over town. The guardian of the Clow Cards, Kerberos, who Sakura usually just called Kero-chan, enlists Sakura as the official Cardcaptor - the one who has been chosen to collect the Clow Cards before a catastrophe hits the earth.
Sakura’s friend Tomoyo quickly discovers Sakura’s secret job due to her desire to obsessively film her. As a result, Tomoyo has Sakura dress up in a wide variety of outfits so that Tomoyo can fulfill her dream of video recording Sakura capturing Clow Cards in them.
Soon after she starts collecting the Clow Cards, someone else arrives to challenge her, however. A decendent of Clow Reed, the creator of the Clow Cards named Syaoran Li arrives from Hong Kong both demanding Sakura’s collected Cards and starts competing with Sakura in attempting to capture the remaining card, though soon they start working more than against each other.
The first season covers the first 35 episodes and runs while Sakura and Syaoran are in 4th grade. During this time, the two capture most of the Clow Cards, but finishes with Sakura capturing the 3rd of 4 “elemental” cards.
The second season is 11 episodes long and runs through the rest of the Clow Card arc, finishing up with the second guardian of the Clow Card - Yue the Judge - determining whether either Sakura or Syaoran is worthy of becoming the new master of the Clow Cards. It also answers most of the answers left unanswered after the first season, and the series could have probably ended after this season.
The third season is 24 episodes long and runs through the Sakura Card arc. In this season, Sakura can no longer use her staff or the Clow Cards, which becomes a problem when new mysterious magical things start happening around town. Sakura must discover what spell she has to use to activate her magical staff as well as figure out what she must do to use the Clow Cards again. On top of this, a new student - Eriol - transfers into her class. Sakura must fight the new mysterious magical menace and her own lack of magical powers in order to save the city.
Often when a series wraps up well, and a new season is added, the new season doesn’t add to the series, and often takes away from it. In this case, I think it works very well. It probably helped that there was still manga material that the TV series could still be based from.
If you totaled up the episode count, you can see that Cardcaptor Sakura is a pretty long series, coming i at 70 episodes. I have to say that despite it’s length the story held together pretty well. Many series that have this many episodes often start trailing off into oblivion but Cardcaptor Sakura didn’t.
If there is a negative about this series that I have to mention, is that it suffers from the same problem as most “monster of the week” type anime in that it can become repetitious after a while, in both the Clow Card arc and the Sakura Arc because the premise of each episode is essentially the same: In the Clow Card arc, it’s Sakura has to go out and stop whatever mischief a Clow Card or Cards are making and to seal them away. In the Sakura Card arc, it’s to stop the mysterious magical happenings going on around town by changing her Clow Cards into Sakura Cards.
However, I think this repetition is alleviated somewhat by the fact that, even though each episode essentially has the same premise, each episode is also rather unique, just like how several movies spanning the same genre often all have similar plot lines, yet each of them are uniquely entertaining because each tells a similar story in different ways.
Getting to the technical aspects of the show, the animation is pretty crisp and smooth throughout the series. The music is also lively and fits each situation well. The coherence of the series is excellent, considering the fact that it is 70 episodes long. I did not watch the English language Cardcaptors version, so I cannot judge the dub that Nelvana put on their take of the series.
First Watched: April - August 2006
Do I Own: Yes
Do I Recommend: Yes
