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I've been watching the original anime and am more than halfway through. Review time! It's generally enjoyable despite being more of a kids' show than most anime I watch. I've heard people say that it takes place in a world where everyone is impossibly nice, but that isn't really true; Xiaolang, Meiling, and Sonomi can all be jerks sometimes, and Kero is a jerk more often than not. It's true that no one is an outright villain...except a couple of the cards. I think this works for the kind of show it is; it keeps the stakes from becoming excessively high. The show can still be quite tense when it wants to be, though. Little, Mirror, and the Hong Kong movie come to mind. At other times, catching the card of the week is incidental to some other aspect of that characters' lives and presents little challenge, and that's OK too. My main previous exposure to shoujo magical girls shows was Sailor Moon Crystal, and it's amazing how much better a protagonist Sakura is than Usagi. Sakura is allowed to actually be not-terrible at things other than magic (she's improbably athletic, she seems to do OK in most of her classes, she's motivated to catch the Clow Cards even though she's initially afraid, and she even makes friends who seem to like her as a person and not for magical destiny reasons). She has flaws as well, but they're flaws that make sense for a 10-year-old: she's naive, prone to spacing out on occasion, and takes a while to figure out the right course of action when she's under attack. Tomoyo is maybe more of a wish-fulfillment character than Sakura in some ways: she's brilliant, rich, an excellent singer, an excellent costume designer, and of course an excellent documentary filmmaker. Of course, due to her lack of magical or athletic abilities, she doesn't have quite as large a role in getting the Clow Cards as Sakura and Xiaolong in the later episodes. Plus she's madly in love with someone who doesn't feel the same way. Xiaolang (the fanbase seems to consistently call him Syaoran, but the Crunchyroll subs use Xiaolang (except, oddly enough, for the movie, where they use Shaolan), plus the Y in Syaoran looks a bit silly) is also a good character. I like how he tries so hard to be serious but can't quite pull it off. Meiling is the character that grew on me the most, I think. It's hard not to feel sorry for her; she must have tried really hard to get martial arts skills like that, to learn Japanese, etc., but she's still doomed to be overshadowed by Sakura at everything. A lot of the way she acts toward Sakura at first is obviously due to jealousy (both romantic and otherwise), but the scene where she thinks Sakura is going to kidnap her to get Xiaolang to hand over his cards, while played for laughs, reveals that there's some fear in there too. And while what we the audience know about Sakura's personality makes that absurd, it's an understandable reaction to someone with Sakura's power. Despite this, she does gradually warm to Sakura (and Tomoyo, though not Kero). My least favorite character is Mizuki. She serves as a blatant deus ex machina in the Maze episode, the creepiness of her past relationship with Touya is never really called out (though I'll charitably assume it never went beyond the face-touching and talking about feelings shown onscreen), and her mysteriousness gets tedious (especially since it wouldn't be particularly out-of-character for Kero or Xiaolang to bluntly ask her what her deal is, but they never do). Speaking of which, my biggest complaint about the show in general is probably the repetitive dragging out of certain plot points (Sakura dreams about Tokyo Tower, Kero looks at the moon and says "Yue"). I'm not sure how much of this is the result of it being adapted from a shorter manga and how much of it is a misguided attempt to built tension.
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Jan 20, 2018 05:58
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 23:26 |
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Nondevor posted::as well as the first(?) introduction to the lesson of “magic/Clow Cards can’t solve everything.” Which falls apart when you realize she could have asked Xiaolang to rewind the day for her at midnight. Unless that would have taken too much magical power?
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Jan 20, 2018 17:37
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I've gotten to around episode 50 of the original series. I like Mizuki even less now that it's clear she existed mainly to be a red herring for Yue's identity. The idea some people have that everyone in CCS is unrealistically nice makes even less sense now; Eriol is such an rear end in a top hat!
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Jan 23, 2018 14:54
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I'm on episode 55 of the original series. Is it just me, or did they rehash ideas from past episodes a little starting around the time Eriol showed up? Sakura fights a giant stuffed animal, Sakura gives her great-grandfather flowers after several characters talk about how great her mother was, Sakura gets trapped in an Alice in Wonderland pastiche...
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Jan 27, 2018 05:50
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For all my whining about recycling ideas, though, I did like the second Alice episode. It's good to see that there's a part of Sakura's subconscious that realizes what Eriol is up to.
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Jan 27, 2018 06:17
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On episode 64 now. I stopped watching for a while because the Eriol arc was dragging a bit, but this episode has an interesting atmosphere. Rant time: Eriol really is the worst. It's clear from the scenes where he leverages his charisma that he has Clow's adult mind at least to some extent, which makes his messing with the lives of Sakura and her friends extra gross. I'm sure it will turn out that he's working towards some kind of plan that may be for the greater good, but it's obvious that a lot of what he does is at least partially for his own amusement. If he just wants Sakura to transform the cards, he could just be honest about his identity and give her a schedule for transforming them. Not saying this is bad writing so far, since I don't get the impression we're supposed to like him, but the mention of him in this thread's OP gives me the impression that Sakura and Xiaolang will forgive him at some point. I guess you could compare it to Touta forgiving Mirror, but Eriol comes across as someone who ought to know better. (As an aside, it's interesting that there seems to be so much more emphasis on forgiveness in Japanese than in American fiction, despite the influence of Christianity in America. Has anything interesting been written somewhere about why this is the case?)
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Feb 28, 2018 00:54
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The end of episode 64 surprised me a little, with Eriol saying to himself that he felt bad about what he was doing to Sakura. I could imagine scenarios (albeit far-fetched ones; my point about just asking Sakura to transform the cards still stands) where this is consistent with his actions, but it certainly isn't consistent with the way his facial expressions have been depicted or how he's been voice acted up to this point, or even with some of the things he says to Spinner and Ruby. Episode 65 finally resolved two plot threads: Yukito disappearing, and Sakura figuring out that Toya knows about her various supernatural secrets. It was a good scene, but somewhat marred by how much the Yukito plot point was dragged out beforehand. Given how often Yukito seems to stay over, it was rather absurd that Toya never had an opportunity to discuss it without Ruby interrupting. Looks like Episode 66 will be about Sakura realizing that Xiaolang is the one she really loves, leaving four episodes for Sakura to realize Eriol is her enemy and defeat him.
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Mar 3, 2018 12:03
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I finished the original series. I was pumped up for Eriol's final test while I was watching it, but now that I think about it, it basically just consisted of everyone lending Sakura their energy so she could transform Light and Dark, while Eriol just stands around after the initial sleep spell. I was expecting Eriol to actually fight her like Yue did, although I realize now that he had no reason to do so. We finally get an explanation for Eriol's actions. If I understand correctly, it's that he wasn't sure if Sakura could have transformed the cards if she didn't actually believe it was urgent. Magic being strengthened by emotion and willpower has come up a couple times before in the series and is a common trope in general, so I guess that makes sense. Eriol is still an rear end in a top hat, though. We also finally get an explanation of how the reincarnation thing works; he's a separate person, just with Clow's memories and magic. I've heard that in the manga he's somehow only half a reincarnation, and Professor Kinomoto is the other half. Why did the anime change that? Now all that's left before the new series is The Sealed Card.
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Mar 9, 2018 01:50
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 23:26 |
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By the way, the last third or so of the Sealed Card movie was really good. It was very intense and well-animated. The post-credits short was good too; very funny. The stuff at beginning was dragged out too long, though.
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Jun 1, 2018 05:42
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