Cardcaptor Sakura The Movie

This is an OK movie, but strangely focuses more on the action than the characters. There is SOME character development, but it's saved for the end. The majority of this movie is spent either running away from, or fighting, the antagonist. The art, as usual for a CLAMP adaption, is gorgeous. But the dub is AWFUL, and changes the dialogue around completely. Avoid it at all costs.

Could not tell you why some people are disappointed in this movie. It's just like any of the better episodes of the series, but longer and with superior animation. You get to see Sakura being cute in a variety of costumes, as well as her early-series blushing over Yukito all the time and getting bullied by her onii-chan. To top it off, it has that sweet Cardcaptor Sakura flavor where even the antagonist's motives aren't necessarily as evil as they may seem at first, and leaves you feeling warm. I wouldn't ask for anything more. One of my favorite things about this movie was story expansioninto Clow's life. He's a very interesting character, and the story from his past in this movie I think would make a great anime series on it's own. I wish I had known to watch this chronologically! I watched it after I had watched the entire series. It seems like it's supposed to take place between season one and season two, even though it came out right after season two had finished airing, based off of her wand as well as a couple of other things I wouldn't want to risk spoiling about the main series. So if you're reading this review and haven't watched CCS yet for some reason, I recommend watching this at the end of season one. Don't skip this just because some people didn't like it as much! It's eighty minutes of top quality Cardcaptor Sakura!

Quite a while ago I reviewed Cardcaptor Sakura, a magical girl series from Clamp and Madhouse. It was a good anime, albeit not one of the best magical girl series I've looked at. The series has gotten two films. Let's look at the first, made in 1999 and written by Clamp's Ohkawa Nanase. Story: Our tale opens with Sakura capturing the Arrow card with Syaoran's help, some sidelines commentary from Meiling and Tomoyo filming her the whole time. She and Tomoyo stop by a store to buy school supplies and Sakura wins tickets to Hong Kong through the shopping district's lottery. Kero questions this because she's “weakat lotteries” whatever the flying Dutchman that means. She decides to take Tomoyo, her brother and Yukito. I should mention that this takes place roughly halfway through the series before she finds out the truth about Yukito. Sakura starts having ominous dreams about being surrounded by water and a mysterious floating figure. On the downside, the ending of this film is pretty weak. It has some good ideas, in concept, behind it but the execution doesn't work well. There's also Sakura's role in the whole thing. She barely does anything beyond running away and talking. Because that's what everyone wants to see the main hero do. We don't want to see them being competent and showing their strength, that would just be far too obvious. Which is the same reason that Sakura rarely uses a lot of her stronger cards, because it would just be too obvious. Surely, she is a tactical genius. There are quite a few good aspects to the film. The build up is really well done. The gradual escalation is very effective at creating stakes and tension for the scenario. If it hadn't led to a letdown then these could have been components of an excellent movie. Characters: I will give the film some credit on this aspect, it does give you a strong sense of the character's personalities and the sibling dynamic between Sakura and Touya is really strong. What doesn't work so well are the original characters. You meet Syaoran's four sisters and all they do is fawn over Sakura and Tomoyo before throwing themselves all over Touya and Yukito. Boy are they barking up the wrong tree. They might as well go to Bell Liberty Academy to try to find boyfriends. Either way, they're non-characters who don't serve any real purpose. I'm not even sure why they're here at all, their presence does nothing for the narrative. Then we have our villain who could have been interesting but is just kind of cliché in execution. The same is true for Syaoran's mother. She's a strict parent and mystic master. She just comes across as kind of bland and typical. Art: The art is pretty similar to the art in the main series. It's decent enough with character designs and backgrounds that work fine. I will say that the action sequences in the film are kind of weak especially since our heroine decides to spend most of them running away from things. Sound: The voice work is done with the same cast as the series proper and they all do well, as they did in the series proper. For the new characters, our main antagonist is voiced by Hayashibara Megumi and she does a superb job. Syaoran's mum is voiced by Inoue Kikuko and she does do a decent job, albeit a bit emotionless of one. The music is well done. Ho-yay: This series certainly doesn't have as much as the series proper. The homo-eroticism between Yukito and Touya is barely present and Tomoyo's creepy cousin crush on Sakura is downplayed as well although it's still pretty obvious. Final Thoughts: For all its flaws, this is a good movie. The ending is disappointing and it suffers from some of the same issues as the series proper, but there's a lot of well done stuff leading up to the ending and it is a fun film to watch overall. If you enjoyed Cardcaptor Sakura, you'll probably like the movie too. My final rating is going to be a 7/10. Next week it's finally time for the Gintama review so we'll see how that goes.

I recognize that this is basically just an anime-original episode of the show, and if it was literally an anime-original episode, I may not have minded it. There were plenty of individual episodes that were a bit weak compared to the others, but the big difference is that they were only 20 minutes long and usually at least implied some progression. The first Cardcaptor Sakura movie is a waste of time that lasts for a long 90 minutes. It's about Sakura winning a trip to Hong Kong during the winter break of her first year as a Cardcaptor. This was a horrible idea, possibly the worsttime period a Cardcaptor Sakura movie could take place, because all the characters are locked into the personalities they had before their character development over the second year. Shaoran and Sakura haven't even begun to realize their feelings for one another; they're still stuck with their crushes on Yukito that must go nowhere. Meilin just sits in Shaoran's shadow because she hasn't either become truly desperate or come to terms with the fact that he's just not into her. Yukito and Toya don't even hint that they're gay. Tomoyo doesn't really do character development because she is perfect, but she just films Sakura as normal here. They don't even have the classmates as comedic foils to bounce anything off of. The result is a story about people who seem trapped in amber. I mean, the movie-original outfit and even the movie-original Clow Card were half-assed at best! Not even giving Sakura a new power could save this movie from its doldrums because she gets that card in the first few minutes with no background on it and then she uses it only once, with little fanfare. Because it never appears in the show proper, it may as well have never existed. There are no stakes more complicated than putting Sakura's immediate friends in abstract jeopardy that takes them out of the narrative. The one-off villain's deal doesn't even challenge Sakura's beliefs about anything. The animation is fine and the villain's main gimmicks are water and ribbons, which presented some opportunities for interesting fluid effects. But that's truly the extent of it. The jazzy soundtrack probably worked as a standalone CD, but it faded into the background of this boring movie. Why did they decide to dedicate film resources to this story? I will be forever baffled by this.