All of Cardcaptor Sakura for only $75!

Despite the major anime fan I am, I only buy anime DVDs once in a while. Most of my money goes towards other anime products, such as posters, calendars, keychains, plushies, etc,. I think this is because I only like to buy box sets and they can be pretty expensive. And I’ll usually only buy DVDs of a series if I’m sure I’ll like it(if I’m gonna spend that much of my hard-earned money, I want it to be worth it =P) But every now and then I’ll treat myself to an anime box set, so when I found out about this awesome holiday deal at AnimeNation, I just couldn’t pass it up!

Not only is it a once in a blue moon opportunity to be able to buy official DVDs of an entire 70 episode anime series for only $75(most 26 episode box sets cost more than that!) but it’s a great series as well ^_^ Unfortunately, after I ordered it about a week ago, AN sent me an e-mail saying they were restocking the item, so they might not actually ship it until next week sometime(it’s currently #1 on their best seller list =P) And this being the holiday season, it might take longer than usual to arrive. But I’m more than willing to wait ^^ I have the first 30 episodes or so on old VHS, and then about 3/4 of the rest of the episodes on DVD. So replacing my old VHS with DVDs as well as getting the rest of the episodes I’m missing, is definitely something I have to look forward to this Christmas!

Anyway, as you probably guessed, Cardcaptor Sakura has been a personal favorite of mine for many years now. It’s the first anime I ever watched in Japanese, so that also makes it special to me =) But really, I think it’s just the sweetest and cutest show of them all. And it’s also good because it’s not just sweet and cute either; it has an excellent story and pacing despite having no main villain, great fantasy elements, well developed characters, and very good animation for a late 90s series. I’ve seen/read a few of CLAMP’s other series’, such as Chobits, Magic Knight Rayearth, and Angelic Layer, but I still think that CCS is their best! ^_^

Sadly, despite being such an enjoyable series for kids as well as adults, CCS suffered from one of the worst English dubs of all. I started watching the dub back when anime was still a fairly new genre and I wasn’t aware of how screwed up some dubs could be. Back when CCS first came to America, the only anime I was really into were the so-called “kiddy” ones like Pokemon, Digimon, and Sailor Moon. But how I went from watching the dub, to buying nearly all the subtitled episodes on original VHS, is kind of interesting…

In late 2000, I saw commercials on Kids’WB for a new show called Cardcaptors that was coming soon, so I was very eager to watch it the day it first came on. And I did, and I liked it…but I could tell that something about it was not right. That episode did not seem like the first episode; there was no introduction to the characters or plot, and events took place without any sort of explanation as to “how” or “why.” Back then, I was still somewhat ignorant about just how much some anime can suffer in their American translations. Regardless, I was so desperate for anime back then that I kept watching Cardcaptors, hoping that I’d be able to figure out more of the story. The show steadily began to grow on me, but I could still tell that something was missing.

However one day, while exploring a store called Anime Plus, I noticed a couple of videos that had Cardcaptor Sakura episodes(why they weren’t called Cardcaptors I would soon find out!) I realized that the videos had episodes that I had never seen, episodes 1 through 7(I later found out that Kids’WB had started with episode 8…no wonder I didn’t get it!) Not only that, but the episodes were in their original Japanese dialogue with English subtitles…something that I had never experienced before! So of course I bought the videos, and thus Cardcaptor Sakura became the first anime that I ever watched in its original, uncut, Japanese language version. It took me a while to get used to the Japanese voices, but when I did, I was totally blown away! With me still being a rookie anime fan back then, I had never seen a “cartoon” like this! I then realized just how superior it was to the English version. As I continued to buy the Japanese videos as they were released each month or so, I began watching Cardcaptors less and less. After watching episodes in their Japanese version that I had already seen in the English version, and finding out all the edits and dialogue changes, I really started to get irritated! I just couldn’t understand why they would dumb it down like they did. But after doing a bit of research, especially at the great site CCSvsCC.com(they haven’t updated in a while, but they’re still very informative!), I figured out the reason why some TV anime, especially ones that are aimed for children, are changed so much…

I won’t go into too much detail about how and why Cardcaptor Sakura was defiled so, but to make a long story short, Kids’WB had a plan to change it from a cute, romantic show for girls into a fantasy, action show for boys. Not only did they do the usual edits like changing the characters’ names and Americanizing the dialogue, but the episodes were shown out of order, episodes without enough action were skipped altogether, and almost every scene that focused on relationships between the characters, especially romantic ones, were edited out. The reason I was confused when I first watched the show was because Kids’WB skipped the first seven episodes. They did this because Sakura’s rival, Li, the main boy in the show, wasn’t introduced until episode eight. Sakura is the main character in the original version, but Kids’WB was trying to make it seem like Sakura and Li were equals (hence the name change from Cardcaptor Sakura to Cardcaptors). So yeah, though One Piece comes pretty close, I still think CCS has the worst dub. But luckily, unlike One Piece, the uncut version of CCS is also available. Actually, from what I’ve heard, the uncut VHS and DVDs of CCS proved to be way more popular than the Cardcaptors English dub ones. I don’t even think they released all the dubbed episodes because the Japanese ones were selling so much better. So a proper dub of CCS was never actually made, which doesn’t really matter since the Japanese version is great. The two movie DVDs do include a recast English dub, but I don’t see what the point in watching it is if you’ve already watched the rest of the series in Japanese ~_^

Anyway, I just felt like rambling a bit about my recent anime purchase and the nostalgia that CCS brings me. The series really helped me learn about what anime can truly be and it also started my appreciation for the Japanese language and watching subtitled anime. Cardcaptor Sakura is a definite classic for any fan of cute, romantic, and magical girl anime, or even just a general all-around anime fan ^_^