|
  Card Captor Sakura is a magical girl story created by the anime mistresses, Clamp. More about Clamp can be found here. This is the first traditional Magical Girl story that Clamp has ever done, and appears to be quite a change from the well-known blood guts and voluptuous females story lines that Clamp is infamous for. However the element of fantasy and whimsical characters still remains as well as some other elements which are notably Clamp. A few of those are *broad age differences *forbidden or taboo relationships *the power within sort of magic.
The storyline is thus: A little girl, Sakura, searches through her father's basement library one day and finds a magical book, from which she accidentally loses all cards. Along with the inevitable cute animal it is her job to find all the cards and put them back in the book. Of course the storyline gets more complex than that, with other characters, development, and the intricate character relationships.
Card Captor Sakura made its debut in 1996 through the famous Kodansha shojo magazine 'Nayakoshi', the very same that brought us 'Sailormoon' and 'Joker'. So far there are 12 graphic novel collections of the Nakayoshi story, which might continue to more. Like most of Clamp's work, CCS grew quickly in popularity and was animated with an addition of two movies. In 1998, the animated series began on NHK2 on April 7. and ran for three seasons, with a total of 70 episodes. The first movie was released on August 21 in 1999. There is a second movie which was released last summer. There's also a rumor around that CCS may be animated for an other season due to its popularity, but Clamp didn't really leave any loose ends open.
Card Captor Sakura was brought to America on June 29 of 2000 to Fox Kids network by the translators Nelvana. Not too many people are happy about that, however, since Nelvana did a terrible job of translating the animation. The comic books, however, are being released by Mixxzine, and as a change of pace from their usual shredded work, CCS seems to be translated rather accurately.
Why do we like Card Captor Sakura? Well, most good television programs need to be crass and suggestive in order to be interesting, and cartoons tend to be shallow and pointless. CCS, however, is appropriate for children as well as being mentally stimulating and a good influence. Like most of Clamp's work, CCS also gives a relatively accurate portrayal of life as it really is and not a jaded ideal. Sakura grows and matures in a world she doesn't truly understand with the same warm and generous heart we'd all like our children to have. A role model like her is really what people need these confusing days, and that's why we'd like Sakura to be sent international in the pure way it was meant to be viewed.
 The creators: Clamp
The Card Captor Sakura Characters
Series information and summaries |
Clamp
'Eriol Ennui' was posted by