Card Captor Sakura
First things first. This series is not about a “card game,” like Yu-Gi-Oh!, etc. I am mentioning this because there are those out there that have wrongly been lead to believe that it is.
Sakura is just a normal girl who lives at home with her father and brother, and goes to school, hangs out with her friends, and so on. However, all of this quickly changes when she finds a very old, strange book in her basement filled with even stranger cards. Upon examining one of the cards, the magical powers within it activate, scattering all of the cards! Then, the incredibly cute guardian beast of the cards (Kero), charges Sakura with finding all of the cards. But of course, since a “normal” girl wouldn’t be able to do such a task (especially when the cards activate, releasing the spirit contained within the card, which of course generally preceeds to cause chaos in the surrounding vicinity), so Kero imbues her with magical power!
This show is brought to us by CLAMP (which most of you should be familiar with. They’ve done a ton of stuff, including X), and again, they bring us a wonderful series. All of the designs are top-notch, and some of them are among my personal favorites. The show is just full of bright colors, kickin’ characters, and best of all the card “spirits,” which all look fantastic. Needless to say, this is a very cute show.
Each episode generally starts of normal with Sakura going through her daily life. She gets up to go to school, goes on fieldtrips with her class, etc., but then things generally get hectic as a card begins causing some trouble (one of my favorites is the Power card. She’s so cute, but so destructive . . .), an of course Sakura and her friends have to stop them. And when they defeat them, they are able to use the power of that card for themselves. The cards (and the powers they possess), and the situations that occur around them however, are all unique and different which keeps the episodes from becoming repetitive and therefore boring.
So overall, I definately recommend this wonderful series. However, it is decently long, and most probably won’t want to invest in it. If I remember correctly it’s around 12 volumes (might be 14), along with 2 movies, so it is rather expensive, but I think it’s worth it (although sice I lost my job a few months back, I haven’t been able to buy it all
).Now, one thing I have to warn everyone about: DO NOT BUY THE DUB, which is just entitled “Card Captors.” The dub went beyond butchered, into the realm of being raped. Yes, it is that bad. And it’s not the voice acting. The script has been ruined, along with the opening/ending animations and themesongs (which are wonderful by the way), among a multitude of other reasons (like when they showed in on TV, they cut out the first 7 episodes). So watch out if you decide to buy this series, because the orginal japanese language version and the american dub are sold seperately, so just make sure that you’re buying the correct ones (although I believe that the english dub ones did so poorly that they stopped producing them).
In the end, the show does have a few, very minor faults, but I’m going to give it 4/5 stars, as it’s an excellent show that definately deserves watching.
So anyways, I hoped you all enjoyed the reviews this week as much as I, and as always, I'm willing to take suggestions or requests on what to review (so far, only one person has asked, and I was able to review it). And again, I'm always open to discussing what I review, so post away!
