This is probably one the hardest reviews I’ll ever have to write for an anime series. First off Cardcaptor Sakura, CCS, is one of my favorite series of all time and definitely within my top 10 percent. The series is about a young girl, Sakura, who finds herself mixed up in having to collect Clow Cards, a set of magical enchanted cards. The cards were created by a powerful magician named Clow Reed who Sakura knows very little about, but she is aided by one of his creations named Cerberus, or more widely known as Kero, who is able to assist her in tracking down the cards.
Now as much as I loved this series it pains me to have to pretty much bash the English version to no ends. Before I get into stressing how important it is to view the Japanese version and not the Americanized version I want to go ahead and explore what drew me into the Japanese version. First off CCS manages to encompass a lot of commonly used anime clichés in a rich mixture. Sakura’s personality is the perfect display of classical Japanese beliefs of caring about your fellow man over yourself. Sakura displays countless acts of selflessness and shows great care for her family and friends, as well as the Clow Cards. Her friend Tomoyo, Madison in the Americanized version, shares many of Sakura’s traits as well as having what seems to be an endless well of love towards Sakura.
Now comes the hard part, the Americanized version is how do I put it… disappointing. It’s truly disappointing when an American company goes ahead and “modifies” a series to “fit” a US audience. In the process the series lost most of its charm and the characters become far more in your face. They also changed a few of the character’s names and completely redid Tomoyo’s personality. The sad part was there were several suggestive themes in the Japanese storyline that were removed. The first being Tomoyo’s suggestive love towards Sakura which in the Japanese version tends to imply a bit more than just a plutonic relationship. Another suggestive theme that was taken out was the relationship between Yukito, Julian in the English version, and Touyo, which also implied a homosexual relationship. If you ask me, every character which had a suggestive storyline was renamed! I’m not sure if this was out of respect of the original characters, or if it was just an attempt to Americanize the story. I’m hoping it’s not the latter. Either way as a result you lose two of the storylines right off the bat! Not to mention when you bring in Li who is portrayed as having a crush on Yukito. This storyline is also completely revamped! While I haven’t watched the entire English version, I wouldn’t be surprised if they completely removed all instances of the storyline of Touyo’s sister complex with Sakura.
As you can tell you should definitely watch the subbed and not the dubbed version of the series! I cannot stress this enough! It’s not uncommon for English versions to mess up on the character’s personas, but in CCS they took it way overboard. The only legitimate reason I’ll give them is the fact the English version was designed for Saturday morning cartoons. In which it would make sense with all of the censoring issues going on at the same with parents wanting to force television stations to sensor their content and make it suitable for all audiences with disregard of the creator’s thoughts. If you ask me though, this is not excuse for what they did to this series. I can understand the concept of not wanting to put homosexual references in an American TV show, but to redo the personalities of the characters does far worse in my opinion. You’re going to throw in “In Your Face” personalities, yet you’re going to go ahead and cut out the best storylines in the series. I’m sorry but if I was a parent I’d much rather my child watch the Japanese version with some suggestive storylines than the Americanized version with characters with a somewhat rude personality. Since I’d rather my children learn how to respect others and grow a caring and heartwarming personality instead of the cliché American teenager personality. It sort of made me feel like I was watching Clueless or some Japanese Bratz Doll’s anime.
So to the American companies, mainly KID’s WB, I can’t help by sigh at how much you ruined a wonder piece of art. I’m not a huge KLAMP fan, but god, CCS was such an awesome story yet you completely destroyed it in the process of trying to make it parental friendly. Please don’t alter Japanese series. Sakura is such a heartwarming character and CCS has such a well rounded storyline, that I can’t help but fall in love with the series. Yet when American companies try to reach a broader audience they only end up hurting themselves in the long term. Since they could of easily of left the storyline the same and simply muted out the relationships between Sakura and Tomoyo and Lie and Yuki, and everything would have been fine. Kid’s would of learned a much richer moral and they would of learned a lot more about Japanese culture. It’s not like the older series where American companies had to basically go by nothing but a rough sketch of the Japanese dialog and the creators’ animation, they knew what the Japanese dialog was. They could have made this series far greater in the English version if they put their heart into it. Sadly they dropped the ball. As for CSS I give it an A+ in the Japanese version! For the English version I give it a B- (I’m being generous!). If you end up loving this series as much as I did, you should definitely take the time to watch Full Moon O Sagashite! On a final note I’m sorry for the length of this review and not getting into the Japanese version as much as I would have hoped, but nothing upsets me more than when American companies try to Americanize anime!