Sakura Kinomoto’s life changed when she discovered and accidentally released the magical clow cards, and while she was expected to recapture all of them, this heavy responsibility didn’t mean she’d get any sort of reprieve from the rest of her life. She still had to go to school, do her chores, and navigate her awkward first crush, all while facing constant magical threats. You would think that things would get easier for her when she finally gets to begin Spring Break, and at first glance, this appears to be the case, as she immediately wins a free vacation to Hong Kong! Unfortunately, as fate once again rears its ugly head, it begins to look like her grand prize was anything but a stroke of luck, and a brand new force of magic has conspired to pull her away from her home, for potentially nefarious purposes. This is not a card. This isn’t even Clow Reed, although a connection may exist. This is young Sakura’s first brush with genuine evil, bent on revenge over an ancient grudge, and if she can’t find a way to resolve it, it won’t matter because movies like this one are never, ever, referenced again in their parent series.

As the first theatrical outing of a popular and successful children’s anime, it goes without saying that the Cardcaptor Sakura movie would have a higher budget than the television series it broke off from. This is true, but not to the same degree as a lot of similar material. As I mentioned in my review of the TV series earlier this year, Cardcaptor Sakura has always been a generally well animated and produced series. Sure, it had a few cheap or even flat out bad looking episodes, but they were in the extreme minority. Morio Aisaka has always been a brilliant director, and considering the fact that this series has almost always looked really good, there wasn’t a lot that a lavish budget could do... I mean, I guess you could use that extra money to bring some CGI effects into the story, but personally, I didn’t notice any. That’s not to say there absolutely wasn’t any, but if there were, then they were blended into the background well enough that I certainly didn’t notice them.

If I had to guess, the extra money had to have gone into the designing, drawing and rendering of a ton of new backgrounds, since this show that usually never leaves its one usual setting is suddenly transitioning to Hong Kong, a real life location that they presumably couldn’t take too many liberties with. To that end, the backgrounds in this movie are beautiful. I don’t have any personal experience with Hong Kong as a setting, but everything they show during Sakura’s trip looks distinct from anything else the series has shown, and intricately detailed enough to be perfectly believable. The new characters are given equally distinct and beautiful designs, at least in accordance with how much they’re used in the story. Li’s mother and the villain are highly memorable in their appearance, even though his four older sisters look kinda generic and forgettable... Which is excusable for characters who only show up in a scene and a half.

Aside from all that, the usual standard of quality for the series is upheld in this movie. The animation is smooth and articulate when it needs to be, with shortcuts only taken where they won’t be noticed, and nothing ever feels cheap or stilted. Character movement is always just as graceful as it needs to be, and there’s no shortage of cool new outfits for the characters to wear. I did notice there are certain scenes that have a more cinematic quality to them than what you could have generally expected out of the series, not only with the way the director is able to use light and framing, but in a way that really makes a handful of emotional scenes play out far more effectively... From the whimsical way you’re able to feel Sakura’s excitement at seeing Hong Kong for the first time, to the overwhelmingly creepy vibe that the villain and her underwater domain are able to instill in you. Again, this movie may not have scored that high over the bar the series set, but it was able to just barely surpass it.

As for the English dub, I don’t think there was ever a Netflix dub for this movie, but it did receive a Cardcaptors dub from Nelvana, and I know this might be hard to believe, but it’s really good. It’s probably the best possible showcase of the Nelvana dub, because not only had the entire cast long since hit their strides prior to its production, and they all definitely felt comfortable with their characters by this point, but unlike the series, almost nothing was changed. I’m not kidding. Granted, most of the stuff that was omitted from the series only play minor roles here, but even the little we got went strangely untouched. Syaoran and Sakura each get a couple of blushy interactions with Yukito, and Syaoran even gets jealous at one point. Much like the series, Tomoyo’s obsession with filming Sakura has been transformed from creepy to just quirky, but you know, good. I like the dub version of Tomoyo a lot better, personally. But yeah most of the movie is represented exactly the same as it was intended. Mostly.

There are a couple of changes that might ruin things for you, which feels kind of inevitable at this point. There are changes to Tomoyo, of course. Sakura’s brother Touya had one bit of dialogue changed because it referenced the chore schedule(Nelvana kinda backed themselves into a corner on that one) which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense... The villain’s backstory and motivation were changed, I’ll get into more detail on that later... And in my opinion, the worst change of all is that a lot of the very pretty-sounding chinese background music is replaced by extended versions of the original soundtrack songs that they produced for the dub. You know, the songs that were one of the worst things about the dub. The really, really cringey songs that sound like they were written by someone who was just watching the clock and waiting for their paycheck. For the music changes alone, I do strongly recommend the sub, but as far as acting and writing is concerned, this is the English dub at its finest.

When an anime reaches a certain level of success, it’s sort of inevitable that it’s going to spawn a few movies. If the anime was actually allowed to end, it may have a finale movie to wrap up whatever the series didn’t have the time and resources for. If the producers are feeling greedy, it might have had a few recap movies, which crammed several episodes of content into an 80 minute time slot, resulting in movies that are almost universally terrible. What we’ll be discussing today, however, are the movies that are released alongside a current series, presenting an original story that allegedly happens at some point off camera during the season. Movies like these are especially common in the shonen genre... If you haven’t noticed the absurd amount of movies that Pokemon, One Piece, Naruto and Bleach have had over the years, then you have probably been living under a rock, and I would like to know what the rent and wifi are like down there.

It’s not impossible for shoujo series to also receive movies like this, but they usually don’t get as many, which might be why Cardcaptor Sakura only received one. Released in 1999 and then rereleased to theaters a second time in the middle of the 2010s, the Cardcaptor Sakura movie was a huge success, and since the dubbed version was proving to be a sleeper hit in America, the movie was also released in our neck of the woods in 2002, where it became an instant childhood classic for any young viewer at the time who preferred KidsWB over Fox Kids. I don’t remember if it was THE first DVD I ever bought, but it was definitely one of the earliest. I didn’t have the highest standards back then, in fact a lot of the most nostalgic media for me has proven to be fairly cringe upon rewatch, and all I really wanted from the Cardcaptors movie was to see the Cardcaptors content I loved in movie form, but for some reason, it didn’t click with me like I thought it would.

It feels like this movie should have been right up my alley, but the more I watched it, the more I started to drift away from it, and I could never figure out why. It was the same way I felt about Space Jam and The Nightmare Before Christmas... I can see why this movie is supposed to be great, and I see a lot of stuff here that I should be enjoying, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something wrong with what I was watching. It was one of those things I would eventually just give up on and file under “Maybe it’s me.” Anyway, as an adult, I’ve been able to revisit films like these and figure out what it was about them that turned me off... More importantly, I’ve become much more eloquent and verbose in explaining WHY I couldn’t get into these treasured classics, so I think it’s finally time to offer the same treatment to the Cardcaptor Sakura movie.

To start, these kinds of movies are always a double-edged sword. On the one hand, because they’re based on a popular IP, you already have a built-in fanbase that’s just waiting to throw you their money. This is why Hollywood is obsessed with sequels and remakes. You’d be surprised how often an original screenplay will never have a chance of seeing the light of day until somebody rebrands it into a franchise film with a few quick rewrites. On the other hand, that guaranteed audience is relatively small, and the movie isn’t going to have a lot of mainstream appeal or interest from casual movie-goers. On the one hand, you don’t really have to do a lot of plot set-up or world-building, as the series proper already took care of all that for you, but on the other hand, these franchise movies are never going to achieve any kind of critical recognition, no matter how much effort or resources you put into them.

If you’ve never heard the phrase ‘plot cul-de-sac,’ it’s when a side story branches out from a much longer main story, only to ultimately circle back around and reenter the original story at the same point it left from. It’s a story arc where nothing special or game-changing happens, and it just merges back into the canon like it never happened. This is what most of these movies wind up being, because it would be detrimental to both the series and its movie if the audience were in any way required to watch both. Let’s say you were bingeing the Pokemon series, and Ash used a pokemon you didn’t know he had, and when you expressed confusion at this, one of your friends said he caught it in one of the movies. Doesn’t feel great, does it? All of a sudden, you have homework to do. You need to find out not only which movie it happened in, but at what point in the timeline, and just like that, you’ve turned off all of your casual viewers.

Having said all of that, this isn’t really that much of a problem for the Cardcaptor Sakura movie. The majority of the plot is self-contained, as Sakura’s dealing with a spiritual threat that has nothing to do with the Clow Cards, and I legitimately can’t think of any point during the series where a reference to this movie would have made any sort of difference, let alone not feel forced and awkward. Not to mention, there are already several cards in her deck that we never really got to see in the series due to time constraints, and we’re just expected to assume these cards were caught off screen. Well, being caught in the movie, Arrow was technically offstream. And unless I’m remembering wrong, it was never used in the show, either. So, this movie had a very low bar to clear. It wasn’t expected to be a masterpiece, and in fact, it never actually needed to be all that good. All it needed to do was present a fun ride full of fanservice(not that kind) for pre-existing fans, and it does this really well.

The story is competently executed. It has a very clear three act structure, and it follows The Hero’s Journey about as well as one of these films ever could. Yes, the Hero’s Journey is overdone, but it’s overdone because it fucking works. Everybody is in character... Sakura is still a bright and proactive hero, Kero is still her quirky spiritual guide, dub Tomoyo is still making up for sub Tomoyo, Syaoran is still a supportive rival/friend, and while Meilin is still kind of annoying, she gets some decently funny moments. While the entire central cast is present, it doesn’t feel like anybody was forced to be there, or has nothing to do. Everybody’s presence in the story feels natural and organic, and while I guess Yukito doesn’t contribute much, he’s an unobtrusive enough presence, and he’s a pleasant enough character that I doubt anybody’s really complaining. Sakura is taken out of her usual routine to deal with a new problem, so the movie doesn’t just feel like one extra-long TV episode. We see more of a popular supporting character’s life, thanks to our visit to Syaoran’s home. The villain is a legitimate threat, the stakes are serviceable enough to drive the story, so really, this movie gives you everything you could want out of it... So what’s my problem?

Like I said earlier, movies like these rarely ever have any depth to them, but despite the fact that I was even aware of this back then, I expected more out of this one, and I can tell you exactly why. Early in the film, Sakura receives a warning from Clow Reed during one of her many dream-visions, but it’s not a straight-forward one, in fact, it sounds really eloquent; “Water is ever flowing.” Yes, I know it’s worded slightly differently in the sub, but it means the same thing. This phrase sounds so fucking profound. It’s a simple fact, but it also implies so much on a metaphorical level, like you could apply it to a number of situations and in doing so you would create a number of brilliant solutions. For a four word sentence, it’s fucking poetic, is what I’m saying. You could build themes off of this, and motifs that will last the length of the story. So you could imagine how disappointed I feel when the entire meaning of that phrase is “You can use your newest card to escape from a trap later.”

If I had to pull some kind of explanation out of my ass, just to try and salvage my respect for this movie, I would say that this phrase is also a reference to how the villain is trapped in time, bound by her refusal to let go of her desire for revenge and accept the fact that she’s passed on. Water, in this regard, would work not only literally, but as a metaphor for time. She traps people in suspended animation underwater because she herself is literally frozen in time. I could say this, but for whatever reason, I just can’t bring myself to believe that was what the writer intended. For decades after my first viewing of this movie, this was the best excuse I could come up with for this issue that I had... But then, a few days ago, I watched the sub for the first time, and I came up with something new that I like a little better. To explain it, though, the next paragraph is going to be spoiler territory, so take heed, that was your only warning.

I mentioned earlier that there was a change in the dub that I’d get to later, and here it is. In the Nelvana Cardcaptors dub, Clow Reed and the villain were lovers, but as she grew in power and became evil, Clow had to stop her to save the world. That is not their original backstory. What actually happened is, she was a fortune teller, and Clow Reed was destroying her business because, as a legitimate sorcerer, his predictions were more accurate than hers. She became jealous, they fought, and she was killed. Now she’s a powerful curse-ghost who’s out for revenge. So, when Clow gives his warning to Sakura, the significance of this is actually that once more, one of his accurate predictions will be her undoing. Even through a proxy... No, even through a ten year old girl... His superiority to her is something she can never overcome, because it’s just as inevitable as the flow of water, the flow of time, and her mortality. I’m probably also pulling this interpretation directly out of my ass, but at least it helps me to appreciate a movie that does basically everything else right.

The Cardcaptor.Sakura movie, and the series it's based on, are currently available from Eastern Star entertainment.
The original series is available on Netflix and Crunchyroll, and the manga is available from Kodansha comics.

It’s a tricky thing to decide whether or not to recommend one of these movies... For most people, you’ll only be interested if you’ve already seen the TV series, and that’s kind of a good thing, because jumping into this movie blind would leave you with way too many questions that the movie only kind of answers. On the other hand, if you already HAVE gotten into the series, then you’ve more than likely already seen this movie. What I will say is that while I personally had an issue with it that keeps me from really getting into it, it is a fun movie, with all of the action, humor, and magic that you’ve come to expect from this franchise. It’s wholesome, it’s respectful to the source material, there are plenty of memorable moments and beautiful scenery, but like most movies that exist as side-content to popular TV anime, it also feels really unnecessary and skippable. It’s a good Cardcaptor Sakura movie, even if it’s not quite a great one.

I give The Cardcaptor Sakura movie a 7/10.