Morio Asaka

Cardcaptor Sakura is a magical girl TV series that originally aired in Japan in the late ‘90s and, in heavily edited form, in the US from 2000 to 2001 (according to Wikipedia - I could have sworn I was younger when I watched it, but apparently my memories are faulty). I caught a tiny bit of it back when it was on TV, but for some reason it never captured my interest.

I was excited to learn that this series was finally being released in the US in unedited form, but I was a little wary. I had fallen in love with it via the manga but wasn’t sure the anime would be to my tastes since, like I said, what little I’d seen of it on TV hadn’t gotten me hooked. Buying the full thing (because I almost always buy the full thing) would be a serious monetary commitment. But then Right Stuf had their anniversary sale and I finally caved.

Cardcaptor Sakura stars Sakura, a 10-year-old girl. She lives with her father, who’s a professor (of ancient history? Egyptian history? not sure), and her older brother, Toya. Her mother died when she was very young. One day, Sakura finds a book in her home’s basement. It contains Clow Cards, almost all of which escape. With the help of the cards’ guardian, Kero, Sakura is able to capture one of the cards. Kero tells her that she is now a Cardcaptor and must collect all the rest of the cards before they do any harm - all the cards have some sort of magical ability and some of them can be very mischievous and/or actively harmful. Each card she collects gives Sakura new abilities that can help her capture more cards.

Along the way, viewers are introduced to other characters: Yukito, Toya’s best friend and Sakura’s not-so-secret crush; Tomoyo, Sakura’s best friend; and Xiaolang (I prefer Syaoran, but I’ll go with the romanization these DVDs used here), Sakura’s rival for both Yukito’s affection and card capturing. Most of the episodes are very “Card of the Week,” but some of them focus more on Sakura’s relationships and family history.

I loved this first boxed set and pretty much raced through it. I’m a little bummed that I won’t be able to continue on with the next boxed set for at least a few weeks. This series is fluffy sweetness and light so far.

I liked Sakura. She was super athletic, and yet she still needed to build up her confidence and knowledge as a Cardcaptor. Also, she was still a kid: she had to worry about homework, her older brother annoyed her sometimes, and ghosts scared her. It’s been a while since I read Cardcaptor Sakura, and my more recent memories of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle messed with my head a bit. It was a little odd seeing Sakura as a kid, but it was even weirder seeing Xiaolang as a kid. He spent most of his appearances scowling, but I couldn’t dislike him. He was separated from his family and trying so hard to do his duty and capture cards. And there were moments when, like Sakura, he was just a cute little kid. He’d get excited over zoo animals, or blush over Yukito and hand him the first thing he could think of that he might like.

By the way, I had completely forgotten about his crush on Yukito. I remembered that Sakura had a crush on him and that Tomoyo’s affection for Sakura was intense enough to also be interpreted as a crush. I had thought that the few mentions I’d seen of Xiaolang’s crush on Yukito were wishful thinking on fans’ part, since I couldn’t recall it at all, but nope - he definitely had a crush on Yukito and viewed Sakura as his romantic rival. Tomoyo even called the two of them romantic rivals. I do wish the anime hadn’t introduced Meiling (who was never in the manga). In this boxed set, at least, she was more annoying than anything. Her jealousy of Sakura was an attempt to underscore a romantic pairing that didn’t even exist in the series yet.

This first boxed set is almost entirely sweetness and light. I could see kids watching it, although some adults might be uncomfortable with the series’ large number of children with crushes on older characters: Sakura and Yukito, Xiaolang and Yukito, and one of Sakura’s classmates and their teacher. Knowing what I know about how things eventually work out (assuming the TV series follows the same overall storyline as the manga), I’m perfectly fine with Sakura and Xiaolang’s crushes. Lots of kids and teens have crushes on people older than them, and it’s harmless as long as the people they have crushes on don’t do anything. Pretty much every scene with Yukito in it was fun, considering what I know about who he gets paired up with later. The thing that might really turn viewers off is the storyline involving one of Sakura’s classmates and the teacher. There are hints of it in this boxed set, but I don’t know yet if it all works out in the anime the way it did in the manga. I’ll talk about that when I get to those episodes.

One thing that annoyed me about these early episodes was the way Toya was handled. I recall two episodes that were particularly devoted to Sakura’s family history: one in which Sakura met her mother’s cousin and one in which she met her grandfather. Both of these episodes focused entirely on Sakura and her mother’s connection to those people. I kept wondering if anyone would remember that Sakura wasn’t her mother’s only child, but it was like Toya’s existence had been forgotten. Maybe Toya wanted to meet those relatives and maybe he didn’t, but he was never even given the chance to decide. If he’d already met them in the past, I’d have felt better about it, but even that wasn’t mentioned.

As far as the artwork went, the backgrounds and most of the characters looked great. There were times when characters were a bit oddly drawn, though. The animators seemed to have the most problems with Toya - they just could not figure out his eyes (and sometimes his whole face).

All in all, this is a “warm fuzzies” sort of series that works great for both binge-watching and occasional watching with breaks in between. I’m looking forward to the next boxed set.

Extras:

Two clean opening versions and one clean closing. The boxed set also includes an English dub. I watched part of one episode with the English dub turned on, and I was not impressed. Most of the voices annoyed me, and I disliked the way Meiling pronounced Xiaolang. I swear, it sounded like she was calling him Sharon.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (més)

Takeo Goda is the kind of guy other guys look up to: strong, honorable, and kind. Unfortunately, he’s also the kind of guy girls steer clear of. Even though he’s just a high schooler, he’s huge and looks like he might be some kind of gangster. For years, every single girl Takeo has been interested in has fallen in love with his handsome best friend, Suna, even though Suna always rejects them. It’s gotten to the point that Takeo is resigned to this.

Then one day Takeo comes to the rescue of a girl being molested on the train. The girl, Rinko Yamato, brings Takeo baked goods as a thank you, but he immediately sees what’s really going on: she must be interested in Suna, just like all the other cute girls Takeo has liked in his life. Takeo really likes Rinko, so he decides to do the honorable thing and act as matchmaker between her and Suna. But does Takeo really understand Rinko’s feelings as well as he thinks, or is something else going on?

I’ll just come right out and say it, since it’s revealed so early on in the series: Rinko actually likes Takeo. Really, really likes him, from the moment he first came to her rescue on the train. When I first started watching this, I assumed that she initially liked Suna and came to like Takeo the more time she spent around him, but nope. She really, truly likes Takeo a lot. His looks, his personality, everything.

I was iffy about this series at first, but gradually grew to like it, although I did still have some issues with it by the end. The things that bugged me at the beginning: the feeling that Takeo would have dated literally any cute girl who asked him out; Rinko’s excessive cuteness; and Suna’s kind of blah personality.

I could understand why Rinko fell for Takeo. He helped her out during a scary situation, he could swoop to the rescue like an action hero, and he was completely unashamed of his love for her homemade baked goods. It also helped that guys like Takeo were apparently her type. However, as far as Takeo’s feelings for Rinko went, viewers were shown that Takeo had previously fallen in love with lots of other cute girls. What made Rinko any different? Later in the series, another cute girl developed an interest in Takeo, presumably as a way to show that Takeo was really interested in Rinko in particular and not just cute girls in general. Still, it made me wonder if it was all just due to timing. Would Takeo have fallen just as much in love with that other girl if she had asked him out first?

Rinko’s cuteness put me on edge at first. Surely she couldn’t be as sweet and nice as she seemed? Like Suna’s older sister, I doubted her. Surprisingly, I grew to like her a lot, and I appreciated that she and Takeo made an effort to involve Suna in many of their activities. Considering how lovey dovey they were, they could easily have opted to ditch him, and Suna, being who he was, probably would have let them.

As for Suna, he gained a lot of depth as the series progressed, eventually becoming one of my top favorite characters. He was unusual for a romance series character, even a relatively minor one: handsome, yet completely uninterested in romance. Fans have apparently head canoned him as either gay or aromantic. I consider aromantic to be more likely. Early on, he tells Takeo that he’s just as interested in girls as the next guy, but that dating and romance seem exhausting.

I was a little worried that he was going to be paired up with one particular character later on in the series. I absolutely didn’t want that to happen, and I’m a little appalled that there are fans out there who rooted for them as a couple. First off, had the genders had been switched, most people would have considered that girl to be creepy. Even she admitted that she was a stalker. Second, I actually liked things the way they were, with Takeo and Rinko in a happy romantic relationship and Suna enjoying their happiness and also occasionally enjoying some alone time with a good book or three.

While the series sort of went in the direction I hoped it would, I was disappointed in the way every single character hoped that Suna would one day end up in a romantic relationship, even if it wasn’t with that particular girl. A little explicit recognition that it’d be fine if Suna continued to be single would have been nice. After all, at no point in the series did he seem at all unhappy about being single. In fact, he even asked Rinko and Takeo not to play matchmaker with him.

Although I found the way Suna's potential romance was handled to be slightly disappointing, I was absolutely horrified with the “practice kiss” bit. At the end of episode 6, Takeo decides that he needs to practice kissing so that he’ll do a decent job when he and Rinko get to that point...so he tells Suna that he’s going to practice on him, and he should be a man and not complain about it. He then covers Suna’s face with plastic wrap so that their lips won’t touch. The actual kiss isn’t shown, but it’s still an incredibly awful couple of minutes.

I have no idea why anyone thought this would be an okay thing to include. I suggest skipping to the end of the episode as soon as this scene starts - it’s only brought up one other time in the series. Which, honestly, is another reason why it shouldn’t have been included in the first place. It should have been traumatic enough to affect Suna and Takeo’s interactions in the next few episodes, and yet for some reason it wasn’t brought up again for quite some time.

A review that mentioned the “practice kiss” was actually a large part of the reason why I waited so long to buy this series. Overall, though, it was pretty good. Takeo and Rinko were incredibly nice and sweet characters (aside from the scene I already mentioned), and I was frequently reminded of Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You, although Sawako struggled to gain the acceptance of her peers while Takeo was at least loved and accepted by the guys in his class. Most of the minor characters were also a lot of fun. Like I said, I grew to like Suna (not sure if he counts as “minor,” though). I also adored his older sister and really liked the girl who developed a crush on Takeo. I looked forward to seeing how the guy at the end of the series was going to get shot down - he was fun to dislike.

Additional Comments:

I watched the entire series in Japanese with English subtitles. I decided to give the English dub a shot and, to my surprise, I actually like it. Takeo’s voice in the English dub was gentler than his voice in the original Japanese, but I felt like the casting decisions were pretty good. The spirit of each character’s voice was still there. That said, I should note that I didn’t watch the entire series with the English dub - I didn’t get to hear what any of the characters after episode 8 or so sounded like.

Extras:

My biggest complaint about Sentai Filmworks releases, aside from the price, is their often skimpy selection of extras. In this case, all you get are clean opening and closing animations and a few Sentai Filmworks trailers. I suppose I should be happy they included a dub - I own a few similarly priced Sentai Filmworks releases that didn’t have a dub when I bought them and then got one later. Re-buying a title so I can hear the English dub is tempting, but generally my dollars are better spent elsewhere.

Rating Note:

I debated between 3.5 and 4 stars. I settled on 3.5 stars because this series had enough elements that made me uncomfortable for me to hesitate to give it a higher rating. It wasn't just the "practice kiss" scene, but also the way Takeo was sometimes presented. While Rinko clearly loved everything about him, there were several times in the series where he was likened to a gorilla for laughs. I wish the series had taken him a little more seriously as a character - there would still have been plenty of comedic value in the assumptions that people made about him.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (més)