2020 Reflection: Cardcaptor Sakura

 

Cardcaptor Sakura was written in May 1996 by Mangaka group CLAMP. The series premise is young Sakura Kinomoto accidentally unleashing the many "Clow Cards", a large number of spirits themed around elements or basic concepts and daily slice of life adventures where she endevors either to capture a clow card back into it's card after they've caused a disruption to her daily life, or use their abilities to help someone with their powers. Cardcaptor Sakura is by far one of the most well known and popular magical girl series globally with only Sailor Moon and Puella Magi Madoka Magicka able to equal it's global success. The series is among the lightest and most light-hearted of my favorite series; while the premise could in a different type of story easily serve as the premise for an actionary and quite serious story about stopping the chaos of the clow cards, the series is much more slice of life and childish whimsy that ocassionally veers into being suspenseful. I state this not as a positive or negative point, merely as a neutral point to express what this series is like. As one of my the most famous magical girl series however, it is probably expected that this neutral point is executed very well here.

3 Reasons I love it:

Cardcaptor Sakura is a series that is amazing in ways a lot of magical girl series aren't or doesn't even try to be and I would go so far as to say most children's series aren't. 

1: CCS is a series that has a joyful high spirit to it that is incredibly infectious. Much like it's primary character Sakura who is characterized by her optimism and sense of hopefulness, the series takes place in a somewhat idealized world, a world that best exemplifies the natural high spirits of children and their belief in a world of possibilities. CLAMP as a studio has an amazing ability to make the mundane seem just as magical and full of potential and wonder as the actually supernatural elements of the series. For instance, When Eriol is speaking about Tomoyo, Sakura's friend who has no magical abilities, he says that her great power is her intuition, her understanding of the feelings of others. In a less well constructed series this would seem a shallow attempt to make a civilian character seem relevant compared to her more excited main character friend who has the powers. However Eriol's statement which comes quite far into the manga rings so true because Tomoyo's intuition and her ability to understand others has been important at many points of the series. Sakura very often defeats the most mischevious cards not even via magic or strictly via magic but through observation of the thing's properties such as luring Watery into a freezer so it will freeze into ice, supercharing lanterns to create excess light so shadowy will be condensed into one place, or Sakura realizing the Illusion (which had been taking the form of her deceased mother and resided in a lake) was not her mother because her mother wouldn't endanger Sakura's life, even if it means being seperated. Unlike most Magical Girl series where the supernatural is kepy very seperate from the mundane, only mixing for purposes of drama, in CCS the two feed into each other, where magical elements seem normal and mundane things wonderous. 

2: Despite it's childish spirit, CCS has a grace and elegance to it. Sakura at the start of the series is 10 and there are many matter she simply doesn't understand. The series takes time to show little actions of more adult characters or more rarely scenes without Sakura where the character speak with more maturity and on more complex matters. This is partially why it's a series that a child can understand but that one understands on a deeper level as one ages, because it's a series that captures different levels of sophistication as one's comprehension grows. It's an idealistic series but not a purely escapist series meant to bring you to some alternate universe of wholesomeness. Instead it's a series that captures the complexity of life but highlights the most wholesome parts in the foreground and lets the details in the background get filled in by the viewer over time so that the parts in the foreground become more pronounced as they see the bigger picture. The world is filled with details of things of a complex nature like the fact that Sakura's mother passed away and several people close to her blame Sakura's father for it, though they understand that's not really fair. When you get to the age you can understand their emotions better, then it makes it all the more meaningful that Sakura helps to heal their divide. It's also what makes Sakura's development in the series, especially if you grew up with her, feel all the more powerful and downright world-defining. 

3: Also building on the first point, Cardcaptor Sakura has one of, if not the best extended cast of any magical girl series I've ever seen. Very often in magical girl series the civilian characters are there to be used as minor drama pieces or a few quick laughs and then gotten out of the way so the real important part of the series, the magic, can commence. Cardcaptor Sakura's cast, both magical and nonmagical is the point of the series and feel to my surprise every bit as engaging. CLAMP series tend to be on a spectrum of archetypaly potent but simiple characters to fleshed out deep real-feeling but somewhat humdrum. CCS hits the perfect balance as the characters feel both real enough to really exist but potent enough that they can take advantage of being fictional characters. Each character doesn't just have an interesting relationship to Sakura, but usually an interesting relation to most of the other characters. This is actually a major oddity to me. If you know my tastes well you know I usually vastly dislike when a series focuses on civilian drama over the main plot, especially if the plot involves the supernatural. I often ask "If I wanted to watch a soap opera or a slice of life, I would just watch that". Cardcaptor Sakura however shows it doesn't need to be a binary and moreover doesn't even need to feel like segmented parts within the same chapter/episode. It's so good at blending it's parts and so well-integrated that I never feel the desire to skip past the "boring civilian stuff".

3 Flaws:

This is true of almost any series here, but especially here most of the points I am about to give are moreso subjective things that are not my taste, rather then statements of what the writers tried to do and failed.

1: Cardcaptor Sakura lacks a villain within the main series. It goes further then that however; the series's focus is on creating a very light joyful experience and as such many chapters or episodes lack signifigant obstacles or menances. The series will sometimes have a dangerous card, but the series' idealism means there are very few signifigant negative repercussions. Again, this isn't the writers failing to do something and if you want a series like it then it does that in spades. However it can leave the series feeling to me a bit floaty and the lack of tension or massive stakes is not really to my taste. The series does have times when really bad things are threatened to happen; Erase erases most of Sakura's class for instance. However they rarely have a negative impact for very long. Because I love seeing characters I love tested so they can be drawn into their fullest from obstacles, this is not really what I would like. This is why my favorite thing within CCS is the second movie as it is essentially about bringing Sakura to her fullest both as a magician and emotionally

2: The series' focus on an innocent light atmosphere can cause somethings that really should have weight and are real life issues to be treated very lightly. In particular several of the relationship dynamics are of the type that would be a serious issue in real life such as teacher-student relationships or things like the grade-schooler Chiharu's consistent mild physical abuse of her crush Yamazaki played for comedy. The series doesn't treat these things with the seriousness they deserve because that would create a massive tonal problem however they didn't need to put these dynamics in. 

3: The characters in CCS are imo a bit too idealized. Very often they feel rather perfect. That's not to say they don't have character flaws, they very clearly do. However their character flaws are of the type that can be played as comedic and not ones that would cause the characters any serious drama or difficulty. Very often a character will display what is expected to be an important character flaw only for it to be resolved via maybe a small amount of talking and a small act of kindness. Wholesome yes, but at some point it feels a touch artifical. Same with how the child characters in the series sometimes speak or act like adults with more maturity then children their age would ever realistically have. Tomoyo never shows jealousy that her crush Sakura loves first one boy then another and isn't paying her attention, she is happy that Sakura has found someone that made her happy. The girls go to a toy shop and politely make chit-chat with the person running it instead of being all excited to get a stuffed animal. One of the most engaging parts of the series to me is the ending when Sakura thinks she might lost the chance to confess her feelings to Syaoran and is struggling to say them because it's romantic love and she doesn't know what this feeling is or how to express it. It's the time when she most acts her age. 

Favorite Part:

My favorite part is the climax of the second movie, the Sealed Card. Sakura all arc has been struggling to confess her feelings to Syaoran, and has been attempting to stop the Nothing, an actual antagonist force that turns all things it comes to contact with into nothing. The Nothing erases everyone but Sakura recognizes that the Nothing is lonely as it can never have contact with anything else. Sakura reconciles with the Nothing fusing it with the nameless card representing her love for Syaoran and it becomes the Hope, a force strong enough to exist even in Nothingness representing the best of Sakura, her endless optimism and hope and it ties in so wonderfully with her finally being able to confess her feelings to Syaoran. The Nothing had earlier taken his memories and when she thought she had completely lost him she finally tearfully confesses and he responses in kind, the fusing of the Nothing with Sakura's love, literally the blank emptiness that was her feelings of emptiness thinking her loved ones were gone with her love for them restored them all, the hope for a new beginning remaking everything even from nothing. It's such a perfectly classically beautiful moment.