‘Cardcaptors’ – The Good and The Bad

Cardcaptor Sakura is now a 20-year-old franchise and what an awesome way to celebrate its greatness but to bring back the hype of the well-loved show: more merchandise, a continuation of the manga series (Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card Arc), an announcement of a new anime adaptation in 2018, and so on.

The series’ unique storyline as well as unforgettable characters makes this series one of the most memorable anime shows to date and even one of those shows that you would like to watch all over again if you have the time. Anime shows nowadays may have bigger guns, sexy clothes, and an offer of fan service— there is just something in Cardcaptor Sakura that would really tug the heart of the inner anime fan in you.

Now we are not going to be talking about the well-loved original Japanese production, oh no. In this article, we are going to talking more about its short-lived English dub titled Cardcaptors.

About the Show

Just to refresh your memory, Cardcaptors was first aired in the United States in the year 2000. This English adaptation of the series was produced by Nelvana, a company quite known for their animation productions as well as distributions of foreign shows for viewers in the United States and Canada.

The anime’s story is centered on an ordinary girl named Sakura who one day finds a mysterious book at her basement called the Clow Book which contains magical cards in them. When she called one of the card’s names, (Windy to be specific) all of the “Clow cards” flew away and scattered all around town. It is up to Sakura to seal all of the cards before they wreak havoc into the world. Aside from her new role as the Cardcaptor, she has to deal with other things like school, homework, family, and later on her rivalry with Li.

The Characters

While Cardcaptor Sakura is mostly-remembered for its cute and bubbly characters, the English adaptation Cardcaptors removed these very important essences of the anime. If you were lucky enough to watch the original series first than in the English dub, you would probably notice these numbers of changes in the characters.

First off, we’ll focus on the main protagonist of the series, Sakura Kinomoto. In the English dub, her name is changed to Sakura Avalon and the sweetness of her character is mostly been removed in this adaptation. They made Sakura even more serious and it seems that they had to cut off her moments when she would giggle and squeal over her older brother’s best friend Yukito (he is named Julian in the English dub). Also, instead of saying her name Sah-ku-ra, it is pronounced as Sa-KUR-rah for some reason.

In the “first season” of Cardcaptors, she is treated as the main protagonist. When Li was finally introduced, it seemed that her role as the center of the series was shifted immediately to him.

For those who watched Cardcaptor Sakura, Tomoyo Daidouji is described as “the perfect best friend a girl could ever have”. Well, we have to break it to you that the kind and soft-spoken rich kid of Tomoeda Elementary cannot be found in the English adaptation. She is renamed as Madison Taylor and her voice never seemed to fit for some reason since the show is like making her sound so outspoken opposite to her original Japanese dub. Due to this shift of voice and some cuts made to her scenes, you may not be able to see the very close friendship with Sakura unlike the original. It’s a disappointment since being so devoted to Sakura is what Tomoyo is quite known for.

Next up, we have Li Shaoran or Li Showron in the English dub. They seemed to have made him a little jerk especially to Sakura and they seem to have made him more intelligent and mature than the series’ main protagonist. I’m not sure if they did this because they want Cardcaptors to not only be a girl-centered audience, I guess they also wanted to reach into the male demographics. For them to do that, they decided to use Li and place in more limelight on him.
As much as we would like to go through on the other characters and some of their changes, let’s move forward now to find out what was good in this English dub and what was bad about it.
The Good

We have to admit that we should really give the producer and distributor some credits because if it weren’t for their efforts in getting the rights to Cardcaptor Sakura, fans in the West wouldn’t really know about the series at all. Regardless of the many changes they did, it was quite impressing to see how they formed this sweet and cute mahou shoujo anime into a show perfect to be watched for both boys and girls.

Another good thing about Cardcaptors is their choice of background music and insert songs in each episode. You might say this is one of the primary factors in which transformed this series into something serious and in a hyped mood like you’re watching Power Rangers or Dragon Ball. Although some of the insert songs may sound a bit awkward in a particular situation, the show’s soundtrack CD is a must-have (you might want to check out online stores because the album is a rare gem now).

The promotions for this anime were just something to be respected. Although they almost changed everything in Cardcaptor Sakura to meet their target demographics, their promotions deserve a two thumbs up. The early 2000s were the time when distributors were still testing out the waters of anime dubbing and the related so this seems to be a good start and one example that it works as long as you put everything right.

The Bad

The number one disappointment with Cardcaptors is that they really changed everything and only one-fourth of the original content remained. The English adaptation was known for a lot of skips, episode order changes, and so on. They had a powerhouse English dub cast but sadly most of them don’t really fit the characters. The biggest disappointment would be Tomoyo/Madison for her character aesthetics in the original Japanese version don’t really need changing at all and forcing someone to do a very outspoken and lively voice for her character doesn’t cut it.

Just in case people are not aware, Cardcaptor Sakura had a total of 70 episodes and two full-length movies. Nelvana was able to release them in home video uncut in English dub which is a first since they did so much cuts and changes in the anime. For those who are curious on how many episodes that were aired in the Cardcaptors version, it was only 39 episodes— nearly half of the entire series.

It is pretty obvious that Nelvana really was serious in removing the mushy stuff like falling in love, having a crush on someone who’s older than you, and so on. During the time Cardcaptors was aired was also the time Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh were popular on national television. So aside from making the characters and the anime series on a serious note, they also did what they can to make sure that “capturing cards” is the main plot of the anime (and not finding a way for your sempai to notice you).

One big slap to this show is that they completely removed the Sakura and Syaoran romantic relationship off its version. For the record, the reason why the franchise is still going strong until this day is due to this canon ship between these two. Seems the production was too focused on “card collecting” to even care about innocent romance—we can’t do anything about it. Aside from that, Sakura’s very close friendship with Tomoyo is also removed too. If they just removed these close relationships because they think people will get the wrong idea, that’s just way overboard.

Should You Watch This?

With all these things laid down on the table for you, it comes down to the question if this version of Cardcaptor Sakura is okay to be watched or not. The answer? It would really depend on you.

If you can survive the many scene cuts, randomized episode orders, as well as character voice and personality changes, then it doesn’t hurt to give the English dubbed version a try. For starting fans of Cardcaptor Sakura however, we recommend that you start off with the original series rather than the US version. At least in the original version, you would really know how the anime progresses unlike its English adaptation that would only leave you scratching your head a bit.

Final Words

Cardcaptors is a good show at the same time it’s not really much of a good version to watch if you are looking for an English adaptation. This has opened our eyes to the fact that English dub or adaptation of an anime can work as long as they do what they can to keep it to the original. Sadly, this version never had all that. You might just remember the original version more than this one. This version maybe short lived, but the efforts of bringing the anime to US audiences was one huge step.

With the hype of the franchise’s 20th year, I think it wouldn’t hurt getting another English dubbed version of this series a try—only this time it would be the entire 70 episodes and not another English adaptation that wouldn’t really satisfy the true Cardcaptor Sakura fan in you.