Japanese animation (anime) - カードキャプターさくら

Name: Card Captor Sakura
Episodes: 71 eps
Vintage: 1998-2000
Style: MFG Kawai

カードキャプターさくら - Preview

Setting

One day, Sakura, 12 years old, finds at the basement of her house a magic book. As she opens it, several cards fly thru the walls and ceiling from the book, and then a little creature, which self-proclaims himself as Kerberos, also emerges from the book. Kerberos (or Kero for short) reports Sakura that as she released the 'cards', she will have to take responsibility and capture them back. Now, Sakura and Kero must search and capture all the magic clow cards, which might cause problems to the world if not taken back.

Pacing

Based on a manga with the same name, the Anime version is actually bigger and more detailed than the manga (something rare in manga to anime conversion), except some small details about Sakura and Clow past, which are best developed in the manga.

For being an actual simple and cute anime, Card Captor Sakura might now attract everyone to it, but is a sure call for those who like mahou shoujo and Make-you-feel-good (MFG) titles. The anime focuses mostly in Sakura and Kero searching for the cards, and eventually on Sakura little 'romance' life with a new character introduced latter.

As much as the title is actually big (70 episodes) and somewhat slow paced, there is more to it for the viewers who pay attention, and a underlying plot with twists and interesting details will present itself along the way, specially near the end.

Anyway, CCS is probably one of the best titles for it's genre. It's one of those titles which make you actually feel good.

Conclusion

CCS shows us a nice plot underneath the silly front. For those who give this title a chance to develop (which might take some dozens of episodes), you will notice there is 'something more' to this title. As some titles will present us with a sensual ecchi front to attract viewers and only then show us it's real plot, CCS does it the other way, it attracts with a cute light front to then show us a nice plot. As the 'monster of the day' episodic half passes, things change, and the title receives a lot more of continuity and character development.

The most impressive aspect of CCS is the character development, which is 'insanely' realistic on it's pacing. People take time to change and to adapt, and CCS surely show us this, but with subtleness and grace. Some characters, in the end, are really different from how they were at the start of the series, and if you try to trace back when they changed, you will realize the change was so homogeneous and subtle that you can't! They changed naturally, slowly, and thus, with a lot of realism.

The title is quite episodic at the start, but at the last third is more plot/character driven and gets interesting.

The proposed order to watch the series is: Episodes 1-35, movie 1, Episodes 36-70, Movie 2, Episode 71 (Kero's omake). The little extra episodes (5 min episodes) can be watched anywhere after around episode 50

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