Okay, let’s get this out of the way first of all: Cardcaptor Sakura has been a seminal success partially because even though Sakura is not only a ten-year-old girl but also about half the size of an average adult, she’s one of the most desired girls in anime fandom. But considering she could have been drawn exactly the same way and been labelled 18 (see the cast of Lucky Star), and considering that most of the time there’s no frame of reference to an adult, I can’t say I find it particularly disturbing – Sakura is adorable. Personally, I can imagine few things less appealing than Cardcaptor Sakura porn, but it’s all over the internet. This is just the way of the world, for better or for worse, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think the little loli was a cutey.
That, I think, needs to be said, not only as a reflection of the show’s success but because a large part of the series requires the audience to not only believe it’s appropriate for Sakura to be old enough to have crushes and fall in love, but to find that cute.
Because Cardcaptor Sakura is nothing if not cute. Written by all-female mangaka team CLAMP, CCS is less obviously aimed at pervy males than Chobits, and in fact draws much of its appeal from its girliness. Every single one of the main kids (except Eriol, who in the manga isn’t actually a child anyway) has a crush on someone else, half of them being overt about it, the other half blushing and acting tacit, but nevertheless making their feelings very obvious. If the idea of puppy love and little girls struggling with their feelings doesn’t appeal, then CCS is likely not the show for you. But since I can think of few things to make me grin more than my moé-meter maxing out, it certainly doesn’t put me off.
The basis of this long series (70 episodes, two movies and a comic relief mini-episode) is simple, the clichéd stuff of episodic anime and video games: Kinomoto Sakura stumbles across a book full of magical ‘Clow cards’ (rhyming with ‘cow’ rather than ‘crow’), which scatter. A cute little sidekick creature appears to grant her magical powers and help her gather them again. These sidekicks are often incredibly annoying (the main reason I can’t bear to watch much Pretty Cure), but Kero-chan (short for Keroberosu, a Japanese rendering of ‘Cerberus’) actually didn’t annoy me at all. His obsession with sweets and video games was endearing, his Osaka-ben accent and exaggerated enthusiasm actually were funny, and it was a nice (if hardly original) idea to have a cute sidekick who transforms into something much cooler.
In mostly interchangeable episodes, Sakura goes around collecting each of the cards, which typically of magical items in anime come along one at a time and confine their appearances to Sakura’s immediate surroundings and personal acquaintances. Once all the cards are collected, she then has to transform them into ‘Sakura Cards’, allowing another season’s worth of adventures.
There’s little that’s clever about CCS in writing terms. Most of the twists are signposted from miles away, despite some red herrings. There’s foreshadowing, but really, prophetic dreams are not nearly as clever a concept as they sometimes seem. The real strengths of the writing are the situations each card creates, usually affecting a relevant area of Sakura’s daily life, and in the developing relationships between the leading characters. It may lack subtlety, having characters suddenly become crazy about one another and blush during every conversation, but it allows for some cute situations.
CCS is a simple pleasure, writing decisions tending to err on the side of simplicity. Li Syaoran is very obviously named after Bruce Lee (Lee Shao-Long), and calling a character from England Eriol Hiiragizawa is just a little strange. No danger ever really seems real – characters can fall from great heights unharmed, and magical cards always seem to know just the right thing to do at the right times. But CCS exists as escapism; it’s supposed to be about a cute little girl who’s just about perfect (though the way she squabbles with her big brother shows another side to her that makes her more believable) and her relationship with the other adorable people around her. It’s simple, elegant and for what it is, extremely well-executed. Very much a show for a specific audience, but the fanboys should count themselves lucky, because there are few ways this show could be more satisfying. A show every anime fan should at least be familiar with.
(originally written 23.6.07)
No comments:
Post a Comment