About the Show

Created by CLAMP shortly after the success of Rayearth, CardCaptors combines the long tradition of magical-girl shows like Little Witch Sally with the collection-oriented computer games such as Pokemon. In her father's basement study, ten-year-old Sakura Kinomoto discovers the Clow, which looks like a book but is really a prison for sorcerous cards. She accidentally allows all the cards to escape, and Cerberus, the Guardian of the Cards, persuades her to hunt them all down. Each card represents a particular kind of spirit (e.g., elemental or seasonal) that Sakura can use once she acquires it, so her progress through the story amounts to a series of game-style-power-ups -- a point often made by Cerberus himself, who spends most of his time in his "cute" Kero-chan form. Other problems besieging Sakura include her nest friend, Tomoyo, a rich girl who insists on designing new costumes for her and taping her missions. She must also compete against her Chinese rivals Li Meiling and Li Xiaolang (who also becomes Sakura's would-be boyfriend, though at first she much prefers her brother's indifferent best friend).

The 1999 Card Captor Sakura: The Movie sees Sakura win a trip to Hong Kong, where she competes with the Li siblings on their home turf. In a plot suspiciously similar to that of the final Tenchi Muyo! movie, Sakura is haunted by dreams of a strange woman, an old flame of the original Card Captor, Clow Reed. She must convince the phantom that Clow Reed is dead without angering her and causing her to destroy the parallel world in which they have become trapped. A second movie, CCS: The Sealed Card, followed in 2000, in which someone begins to steal Sakura's cards as she prepares to celebrate the Nadeshiko festival -- an occasion doubly dear to her since Nadeshiko is also the name of her late mother.

The series came to the U.S. in late 2000 dubbed by the Nelvana Studios, though, as with many other ill-fated anime, the inertia of network "demands" ruined much of what made the series initially so interesting. As if the name change were not already a hint, the translation of the series attempted to move the focus to a more acceptable protagonist, beginning with episode eight ("Sakura's Rival") and implying that she and Li Xiaolang are equals, in a futile attempt to gain more male viewers.

FROM: The Anime Encyclopedia, 2001