CARDCAPTOR SAKURA || Anime Review

Source: My Anime list

Hey guys and happy happy new year! I think one of my resolutions should definitely be returning to blogging. And here I am with another anime review about one of the classics, which is Cardcaptor Sakura. It has returned just recently with another brand new arc, and I intend to commemorate that by going back to the last three seasons it has. It is without a doubt, the best anime I've seen in my entire life. It has a special place in my heart, making it my favorite anime of all time. I've seen this show countless of times, and I've seen it again recently...and it still is the best in my book. So you have no idea, how excited I was when I learned it was getting a sequel...both in manga and in anime.

Cardcaptor Sakura is based on the famous shojou manga of the same name back in 1996 and it is created by one of my favorite illustrators in anime and in manga, CLAMP. They have created other iconic manga turned to anime, like Chobits, X, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles (with the characters of Cardcaptor Sakura as the main characters!) and Clamp Detective School. It was then adapted into anime in 1998 by none other than, Madhouse and as you all know it is a very famous studio in Japan. Now this anime is one of the cornerstones of the Shojou genre. It is an anime that was not only appealing to young girls, but also to older audiences and it is one of the most memorable anime shows. However just because it is memorable and an all-time favorite, does it mean it's ground-breaking or simply good? Let's find out.

This review is spoiler free.

Let's Review! Fate/Stay Night

And we are back with another anime review!

Warning: This post contains spoilers

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Plot

Okay let me break it down for you; Fate/Stay Night is based on the Japanese visual novel of the same title. Originally, it is a video game with three separate story lines, and this anime tells us the first storyline entitled "Fate". This orphan guy named Shiro joins the Holy Grail War, which is a competition for the Holy Grail and this cup has the ability to grant any wish. Why did he join this war? Well, he has no idea, either. In order to participate, you need to summon a servant that are categorized in seven classes: saber, lancer, assassin, caster, rider, berserker, and archer. After summoning them, these servants will not only put their lives on the life to protect their masters, but they have to at least kill each other off like the Hunger Games. Yes, they can kill the masters but if they can't do that, they might as well settle for each other. And the interesting is that these servants are actually notable historical figures. Shiro, for instance, summoned Saber who is actually a female King Arthur. However, in the long run, Shiro decides he does not like violence and aims to destroy the cup himself. And of course, he falls for Saber in the process regretting not being able to see her after she disappears. Because ending the Holy Grail war means your servants will have to leave. 

When I first heard of the plot, wow I said to myself, "I'm all for it. Let's go." It had a really good concept and the action scenes were surprisingly good. Unfortunately, the comedy parts were leaning more to the corny side. The drama was not so sympathetic, either. I didn't have much feels for this anime, and the only time my heart tug was at the end when Saber was slowly dying in peace. I guess the reason why I couldn't appreciate the heartwarming moments too much is because plot twists would just come out of nowhere, completely looking out of place and nonsensical. Like the Sakura arc did not make a lot of sense to me. That moment between Rin and Sakura seemed not only off but it was too sudden and irrelevant to the main story, but then again this was only a filler arc. And as much as I hate to admit it, the romance between Shiro and Saber was so out of the blue. If it wasn't out of the blue, then the development between could use a little more work. Basically the story of Fate/Stay Night is like a game of Uno. You get a consistent round of cards until all of the sudden a wild card suddenly changes everything with no question. It will leave you flabbergasted, you will try to keep up with the current events until bam! Another inconsistency gives you another reason to adjust to the changes.

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Characters

Goodness, where do I even begin with these characters. I can only point out one good thing about these characters and it is their design. I like Shiro's "Trace-on" ability, and Saber's excalibur. I also love Rin's enigmatic aura as well as her knowledge about the Holy Grail War. The servants were pretty cool too. I love the ferocity of Heracles the Berserker and Gilgamesh's villainous cockblocking moments. Caster was deviously interesting too. Unfortunately, the time duration of this anime was not enough for everyone to get a full story on. There were so many characters that didn't get to have their own time to shine or a moment to prove that they do have a meaningful story to tell. And even if they were giving some minor characters a moment in the sun, it didn't work and Sakura's arc is a perfect example. After watching that part, I still couldn't comprehend her character and there was barely any development, assuming that was the goal in the first place. Rider and Lancer, looked so small in this show. They only appear for a short time and I didn't get to see them grow in the story. Same goes for others such as Assassin. Not only that, everyone was so freakin' flat. Especially, the main characters. For me, it felt like this show is avoiding to be complicated by not including much character development. It's like they're saying,

"Here's Shiro. He's naturally selfless and heroic, in spite of the fact that he's been so alone and mundane for such a long time. And he is going to be like this until the very end. And this is Saber, she's just going to be emotionless and headstrong until bam! We reveal that she loves Shiro this whole time." ...are you kidding me?

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Saber, on the other hand, is basically the same. She is almost flat, but she only showed a few wavelengths that displayed acts to prove that she's certainly not just a serious dedicated warrior. She's actually a mixture of sensitive, sweet, seriousness, and toughness. What really annoyed me was that there wasn't much solid interactions between her and Shiro for me to even comprehend whether or not what they had was romantic or not. I get that they got each other's back most of the time in this film, but realistically, they had a "partners-in-crime" kind of chemistry rather than a genuine romantic one.

And the mysterious characters remained way too mysterious. I wish we had a much bigger hint on who Archer really is. Because wow, he is such a good character and he had so much potential. Why do you think there's a movie that focuses on him? I get that mysterious characters are cool. But the main reason why they're so cool is that when they slowly reveal themselves, their secrets will shock us. Their back stories will blow our minds out from our butts! But no, this anime barely didn't do any of that. There were so many strings in this story that were either untied, or tied loosely at the end. There wasn't much conclusions. I get that there are probably multi-time frames and that there is more than just one show for this, but please tie what needs to be tied down.

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Music

Ok. Music is music. This anime had good music from beginning to the end. Enough said.

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Art

And here's the best part. Guilty, I got attracted by this anime because of the art. The characters look so simple but detailed at the same time. And the details from the blood to the trace lines of Shiro's powers are pure genius. The details on Saber's uniform was absolutely gorgeous. Rin looked almost outlandish in her clothes, but her costume is absolutely eye-catching. It didn't have much of the typical anime comical things like the huge sweatdrop and the rage vein on the forehead, which I didn't mind. The anime's art was just really good, okay? I would like to give this anime kudo points on that.

The anime had so much potential but it ended on many loose ends. This was supposed to be a completely independent alternate story line, which differs from the other two in the visual novel. But in my opinion, it didn't live up to that. Don't get me wrong, though. But in spite of the messy gaps of plot confusion, I appreciated many other things in this anime. I consider myself a shipper of Shiro and Saber. The fighting scenes were super epic, and the art is great. I love how it is portrayed as something grave and very serious. I'm going to have to give it a hard-boiled.

Till the next post~

Let's Review! Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle

Anime became a big part in my life. I grew up with Pokemon, Clamp, and other classic Anime shows. Today, I would like to share one of my favorite shows growing up, and it's Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. 

Note: The following review contains spoilers and will be focused on the Anime alone. Discussions on manga or it's anime/manga crossover, XXXholic, will not be included in the post. 

Plot

Syaoran's hand grabbing Sakura's feather

Okay let me break it down for you; Syaoran and Sakura have been best friends ever since they were kids. They were supposed to have a beautiful future together but Sakura got in trouble and it has something to do with her powers (which was not fully explained at all). And her powers could change the world. Because of her complicated magical skills, she was succumbed into a deep sleep and her memories, which are in the form of feathers, were scattered across different dimensions. Not countries. DIMENSIONS. Then Syaoran, being the caring person that he is, goes to the shop of Yuuko Ichihara (the powerful and sexy witch who can grant wishes) and begs her to save Sakura. She grants him the power to cross dimensions so he can grab all the feathers and save her life. And that's what he basically does for two seasons. 

The manga and OVA has already revealed a much more complicated plot than this, but I will just stick to the two seasons this anime already offered before it was canceled. 

Each episode is dedicated to finding the feathers with a little bumps along the way. Some worlds or countries are dedicated to one entire arc, meaning it would take them at least three to five episodes before they could get the feather in that certain world or country. Sometimes they find a feather, sometimes they don't. Even if they don't get a feather, they have to move on to different dimensions and they have no control on which way to go. So basically, their style of traveling is kind of like a game of chance. This world may have one or more feathers, this one may have none. The entire plot itself is pretty interesting but it was never given another season, so I never saw the real end of it. It ended up looking like a plain series with no serious plot whatsoever. Then again, collecting feathers can be really tiring. Since they are traveling across different worlds, it would take them at least a millennium to finish the task.

Characters

From left to right, we have Fai, Sakura, Syaoran, and Kurogane. Mokona is the little white thing jumping from behind with joy.

What makes the entire series ultimately interesting were the characters. Most of the characters found in this series were just recycled. In other words, they all came from different anime shows (i.e. Clamp Detective School, Chobits, X/1999 or X) that Clamp created. Sakura and Syaoran came from Cardcaptor Sakura. Not only that, this anime also has a crossover with another anime called XXXHolic, featuring Yuuko (the same witch Syaoran encounters in the first episode) and Watanuki as the leading characters. So if you read or watch XXXHolic, you will find similar scenes from Tsubasa (i.e. The episode where Syaoran asks Yuuko for help). 

Apparently,  Sakura and Syaoran did not have to go through this challenge alone. They were accompanied by three more memorable figures and two of them are original characters. First is Fai D. Flowright (commonly known as Fai), a happy-go-lucky wizard from the country of Celes. He wanted to travel across dimensions because he wanted to run away from a certain someone. Next is Kurogane , who is a war freak ninja from Nihon and was exiled from his own home by Princess Tomoyo. He wanted to cross dimensions so he can return back to Nihon. Finally, we have Mokona Modoki, the magical mascot of the team and the one who transports them to different dimensions. Mokona is another recycled character, and the little manju bun came from Magic Knight Rayearth. These three companions are at the highest level of their expertise, be it magic or combat skills. So every time they go to different dimensions, people can immediately tell that they are not ordinary travelers. Other than that, they're basically like anime Powerpuff girls, sticking to one color when it comes to clothes. Sakura loves pink, Fai is always seen in anything blue, Kurogane pulls off black and red, and Syaoran wears green clothes (Mokona doesn't really need to wear anything). But they learn to change it up in season 2.

In the first season, they remain consistent with their characters. But you'll only see more development from them in season two, and they were just getting started. Although the story started with Syaoran and Sakura, the one who was more of an open book was Kurogane. In season one, he started to change, and in season two we get a glimpse of his past and we immediately understood why he's...like that. So if you ask me who my favorite character in this anime is, it's Kurogane. He's just awesome. The rest, I'm afraid, are a little too flat (I would love to go through each character in detail, but that would take up too much time...perhaps another time). Again, they weren't given enough time to develop even more. How disappointing.

Music

I think what made me enjoy the anime so much was the music. Let's start with the opening and ending theme; personally, I liked all the songs they showed. It was quite consistent. They will start the anime with an awesome rock number. Then they will end it with a sweet and sentimental song by Maaya Sakamoto. As for the music within the anime itself, I find it impressive that they would use the song, "A Song of Storm and Fire" for one of the characters' intense moments. It definitely heightens up the suspense!!! It's perfect for battle, perfect for highlighting a plot twist, perfect for revealing something, perfect for a "Oh my god!" moment. I also appreciated the fact that they would translate some of their Japanese songs into English, namely "Yume No Tsubasa"  and "You are My Love". I grew up with these songs, and I love how they sound sincere and meaningful. Their songs are great choices if you want to woo a woman, if you ask me. The soundtrack is just amazing. It can calm you, it can make you cry, it can make your heart fly, and it can even make you bang your head. They complement the anime very well. 

Art

Tsubasa Tokyo Rebellion. From left to right are Subaru and Kamui (X), Kurogane, Fai, and Syaoran

Syaoran and Sakura separated.

What is an anime review without mentioning the art style??? Well you can tell very well that the anime is created by Clamp because one of one detail: thinness. Everyone in this anime is really, really thin. I think there was only a small percentage of "plus-sized" people in that show. Apart from that, I give kudos to the design. Everything was absolutely detailed and well-drawn. The way they draw facial features are beautiful, and I love how they draw cute things (i.e. Mokona, Fai's drawings of cats and dogs) with minimal and simple details. Even when they draw different kinds of clothing (be it casual or formal or traditional)... let's say they look great visually but they seem impossible to sew in real life. The details are just that grand. 

Overall

Basically, I had mixed feelings about this anime. I love Clamp for being a creative bunch, but out of all their works this one went a little downhill. I decided to give this anime three eggs, which is Scrambled. Well I guess that's an easier way to describe the entire series... scrambled. 

I am definitely doing this again very soon. It's either I will share my opinions on each character or I will review more of their OVAs or hopefully, their movie. But I will definitely review another anime very soon.