Cardcaptors 1 - One Fateful Day

Whilst browsing through her father's library one fateful day, Sakura stumbles upon the mysterious Clow Book. Word has it that the book contains immense power, yet no one can figure out how to open the damn thing. Purely by accident, Sakura manages to open the Clow Book and unknowingly releases all of the Clow Cards into the world. Each card is extremely powerful in it's own way and must be recaptured before it's too late. After awakening to find all of his cards have been unleashed, Keroberos, guardian of the Clow Cards, gives Sakura the Key of Clow and enlists her help as Cardcaptor.

There's cute, and then there's cute, however no one does cute like the Japanese. Just take one look at any of the most infamous Anime or Manga characters (yes there is a difference, one is animated, the other is print) to come out of Japan over the last thirty years, and you will notice distinctive features between all of them. Wether it's the big shiny eyes, the small, cheerful mouths or the traditionally bizarre and wonderful array of creatures that appear in almost any of these mediums, they all share very typical, yet wildly imaginative traits.

Whilst all of the previously mentioned anime bedfellows are ultimately positive, many of these particular programs also share something that could be considered to be a negative. That is the phenomenon of American Commercial Success. Whilst this isn't really an issue for the casual viewer, let alone child viewer, it is nonetheless an ongoing issue with Japanese animation in America.

In it's pure, Japanese form (known as Carcaptor Sakura), the series is quite different indeed. It is far more complicated in terms of the emotion and themes contained in any given episode. It's true, many of these themes don't translate very well to the average American viewer, but one is left wondering if a little bit of independent thought isn't something these kids could ultimately benefit from. In the end, Cardcaptors is watered-down, something of a diet-anime whose missing benefits will most likely only be seen by those willing to pay a substantial import fee.

So does Cardcaptors still have something to offer? Absolutely! It's got far more substance than the merchandising vehicles such as Pokemon and the extremely overrated Dragonball Z. First of all, Sakura is a stand out character, she has a lot of style and appeal, yet remains a down to earth character that is easy to relate to. Sure, pretty much the same thing happens in every episode (find a card, card endangers everybody's lives, card is defeated and captured by Sakura), but the characters have a lot of room to develop around this simple premise, and soon enough you may find Cardcaptors to be far more addictive than it first seemed

Generally, like all other Madman releases, there is nothing to really complain about here. The program is generally bright and colourful throughout (as per all recent anime releases), to which the format of DVD is always quite complimentary. Of course, we're not talking about state of the art CG or anything like that. Rather, Cardcaptors relies on a much more simple and traditional form of animation that is quite faithful to the Manga.

Cardcaptors is a full-frame presentation but that is hardly surprising, the series was made for television. Besides, as it is, Cardcaptors being the butchered American version, were there a widescreen version available, you can bet they would probably have altered that as well.

There were no notable compression problems throughout the program, yet the image wasn't as clean as I have come to expect from most anime releases. Grain was evident throughout along with a few scratches here and there. Nothing too drastic, but evident nonetheless.

Nothing too stunning here, simply an adequate Dolby Digital Stereo track that does pretend to be anything else, unfortunately. Again, due to its television origins, nothing else would have been available.

Dialogue is clear and free from distortion, however many of the American voice actors involved have about as much personality as, well, someone with very little personality *ahem*. But it's a dubbed anime, so no surprises there then.

Disappointing considering some of the magnificent authoring Madman have done with other children's releases such as Li'l Horrors. All that's on offer here is some text on character profiles, clow card profiles and the story of the clow book. All of which add up to about 6 pages.

It all depends on your stance towards a program such as this. Those who are anime fanatics will most likely baulk at this Americanised version of one of their most treasured Japanese icons. And in some ways they are correct, as the possibilities of what this show would have been like had it reached us intact leads me to believe that everybody would have been in for a real treat.

As it is, Cardcaptors is still a worthy investment of viewing time. It has a great story that can be universally understood without laying everything out in layman's terms. One might even consider it to be a tale not too dissimilar (and told years before) to that of Mr. Potter. At any rate, the show is very well animated throughout and delivers some great action along with the story.

If you are at all curious about the changes that were made to this program before its Western release, then by all means do some investigating, I think you will be very surprised at how different this version is. In the meantime though, Cardcaptors is the only version that is available to us, and it really ain't so bad, just different.