2020 has not been a great year.
And for that reason, many people have found refuge in positive media that has a feeling
of unrealistic hope and a farfetched amount of optimism.
Cardcaptor Sakura is just one of these series, which returned a couple of years ago in the
form of Clear Card, delivering its sense of creativity and mystery onto a new generation.
Here’s 5 things you need to know about Cardcaptor Sakura.
CLAMP is an all-female group of high school buddies who joined forces to become one of
shoujo manga’s most prolific creators, having recently signed a deal with Netflix and worked
on some of the biggest franchises of the mid 2000s.
But when CLAMP first set out to make Cardcaptor Sakura, it was shaped more by the magazine
than themselves.
See, the magazine Nakayoshi has a much younger demographic and is the place that Sailor Moon
was first published.
So CLAMP set out to make a magical girl series themselves, although the group’s leader
admittedly didn’t know much about the genre.
She went about adding magical girl staples like an animal mascot and a power system,
but she didn’t really like the idea of Sakura having just one outfit.
Therefore, she decided that instead of having Sakura transform into an outfit, there would
instead be multiple that her friend Tomoyo would make for her.
This would end up making extra work for both CLAMP’s artists and the eventual anime team,
but it became a key part of Sakura’s appeal.
All of CLAMP’s stories are written by the group leader Nanase Ohkawa.
But when she said that she was going to make a happy magical girl series for kids, the
rest of the team were somewhat cynical.
See, she kind of has a reputation for having cute stories turn tragic by the end.
One forum user lamented online saying, “Is anyone else annoyed/depressed at the fact
that (CLAMP’s stories) generally end in TRAGEDY?
Would it kill them to give us a happy ending!?”
So Cardcaptor Sakura did have a happy ending after all.
But that said, when writing Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, a fantasy series with parallel
versions of the cast, they made Syaoran the protagonist.
Their reasoning?
He got a happy ending in Cardcaptor Sakura, so he should have to get one in Tsubasa.
Nothing comes easy in the CLAMP universe.
Cardcaptor Sakura eventually went on to get an anime produced at Studio Madhouse, while
the team was in its prime.
This was the series directorial debut of Morio Asaka, who later found critical success with
Chiyafuru before returning to the Cardcaptor Sakura with the Clear Card series in 2018.
The Card Captor anime won multiple awards, with Sakura herself also winning a Japanese
competition called Anime SaiMoe in 2002, where 2chan (nichannel) users decide on the most
moe character of the year.
But when approached with this news, Morio Asaka revealed, that he actually didn’t
understand moe at all.
After all, Sakura was created for younger girls, the older fans who relished moe culture
were purely incidental.
When creating Clear Card 16 years later, there was some real considerations both the manga
and anime teams needed to make.
Luckily, the anime had managed to bring back the entire team, which is especially surprising
when you consider most Madhouse directors had left along with its founder in the early
2010s.
But they still needed to consider who this show was for.
They decided that it should be possible for new fans to jump in with this new series,
which meant that they needed to update the technology, despite hardly any time having
passed in-universe.
So suddenly everyone has smartphones and Tomoyo’s equipment gets an upgrade.
For anime creators, this is a big deal, because it’s how they place fictional stories in
the real world.
Likewise, The World Ends With You’s new anime will see Shibuya entirely updated to
fit reality.
Back in 2002, when Card Captor Sakura was hitting American shores, the show found itself
the target of conservative family groups.
And remember, this was the censored version of the show that attempted to remove any hints
of same-sex attraction.
One incident occurred when Taco Bell introduced a line of Cardcaptors toys, one of which being
a set of Clow Cards.
The American Family Association railed against Taco Bell for the toys, claiming them to be
tarot cards and promoting Eastern mysticism.
In the end, the collaboration ended as scheduled, but it’s an interesting reminder of the
anti-Japanese media controversies of the early noughties.
I can’t help but wonder how many people who claimed Pikachu was the devil went on
to play Pokemon Go...