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Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Card Captor Sakura

Fair 'nuff, the line is simply a value judgment. When I'm reading manga of a genre I don't like very much (like magical girls), I often have to ask myself "Is this manga ACTUALLY good, or is it just good compared to the other (magical girl) genre manga I'm used to reading?" (Not naming any names...) Am I just giving Cardcaptor Sakura a pass because it's not as bad as Manga X? (I mean a generic manga, not X/1999)

I don't think so. I don't think Cardcaptor Sakura is perfect, the second half is a little bit weaker than the first IMHO

(1) The art. It's so crisp and clear, the lines and forms are distinct, the tone levels are very controlled (i.e. no overly dark, muddy, ugly tones.... although you have to see it in a good printed edition, not some crummy scan, to appreciate this).

(2) The little ways it plays around with the cliches of the magical-girl genre and builds a more detailed world upon it. The origin of Sakura's wand, Sakura's costumes, the magic system, etc.

(3) The way it tells (for the first half) a series of episodic chapter-by-chapter stories without, at least for me, making it seem like it's just spinning its wheels. It keeps retelling Sakura's origin, and you *know* in every episode Sakura is going to run into a Clow Card, but it manages to keep a feeling of a certain forward motion from story to episodic story. And although you know no one is really going to get hurt (because it's a magical girl manga), it manages to build some tension in some episodes, like The Maze, The Mirror etc.

And the resolutions are generally clever and don't always just involve Sakura willpowering her way out of things in typical manga fashion.

(4) The love theme is well handled. All of the relationships are different and have a different feel, from the funny crushes to the sad 'lost loves' (like Sakura's parents) to the silly day-by-day relationship between Yamazaki and what's-her-face. The scene when Sakura confesses to Yukito plays out in an unexpected and believable way. The developing love between Syaoran and Sakura also feels realistic to me, and defies convention because spoiler[ Sakura spends most of the manga in love with someone else, in a 'fake love' for Yukito, and then only gradually falls in 'real love' with Syaoran at the end of the series. The moral of CCS is that love between a 10-year-old and a 17-year-old is fake love! So it can't be moe!.... Well, except for the matter of the student-teacher relationship which has an even bigger age gap and is presented as being awesomesauce, but I'm just going to give that one a pass as fan service. -_- ]

"I want...I want to dance with him too. With the prince. But I'm a duck. In voice and looks, just a duck. I can't dance with him, I can't even hold his hand. And the prince's eyes always look so lonely. Won't you laugh? Please show me your smile, my prince."

"According to legend, wherever the Pandorica was taken, throughout its long history, the Centurion would be there, guarding it. He appears as an iconic image in the artwork of many cultures, and there are several documented accounts of his appearances and his warnings to the many who attempted to open the box before its time. His last recorded appearance was during the London Blitz in 1941. The warehouse where the Pandorica was stored was destroyed by incendiary bombs, but the box itself was found the next morning, a safe distance from the blaze. There are eyewitness accounts from the night of the fire of a figure in Roman dress, carrying the box from the flames. Since then, there have been no sightings of the Lone Centurion, and many have speculated that if he ever existed, he perished in the fires of that night, performing one last act of devotion to the box he had pledged to protect for nearly 2,000 years."

Of course, it's your right not to like CCS

*A lot of stuff about CCS, mostly Princess Tutu comparisions

It's not just that CCS isn't my thing, which would make me an outlier in itself. When I look at it, I don't see a good manga that doesn't suit me. I see a mediocre manga. And that doesn't make sense to me.

ptolemy18 wrote:

Of course, it's your right not to like CCS

Certainly, but it's more complicated than that. We wouldn't have phrases like "good taste" or "bad taste" if it weren't.

Been reading the printed editions (thank you, ILL), and I'm not liking the art either. Part of this is almost certainly that I don't like most shojo manga linework in general (so it's much harder to judge its objective qualities -- it's probably telling that I like even CLAMP's non-shojo art in Tsubasa and xxxHolic better than CCS and Rayearth), but CCS also has blobby character designs, a ridiculous amount of flowers that do nothing for me but clutter the page, and enough fake lens flare to impress J.J. Abrams. Again, I look at other manga art I do like -- Urasawa, Tezuka, Azuma, Otomo, and Kaoru Mori, plus Toriyama, Oda, and even Akamatsu for all the flak his CG backgrounds get -- and I can't see how it measures up. (Listing Urasawa, Azuma, and Mori probably goes a long way to showing what styles I do like.)

Question: You mentioned you were interested in creating a magical character. Were you influenced by anything in particular?

Ohkawa: Not really. None of us ever really paid attention to the series where a character was a magical girl. We've seen maybe one or two episodes on tv. As a kid, I was into detective stories (laughs). I think that's why I wanted to do it, because it was more of a challenge. We wanted to see how it would turn out. We included all of the basics, like a cute sidekick, a wand, etc. However fans of that genre tell me stands out in that genre because it's somewhat atypical.

Question: What were the influences behind Cardcaptor Sakura?

Ohkawa: I can't think of anything specific. I know we were doing harder stories at the time. We wanted to create something really cute. I think we were all a bit tired of doing so much of serious stuff. With our other projects we, we often had meetings with editors where we had to explain everything. I think we wanted to do something where explanations wouldn't be so necessary. We wanted to do something where the focus was on the "cute" factor.

Question: Cardcaptor Sakura is separated into two parts. How long did it take to compose the story?

Ohkawa: It was really quick. (Laughs) I ad been thinking about it for a while, so once the basic direction was in place, the basic story came almost immediately, like the introduction of Eriol, the "disaster", etc. In the beginning, I didn't plan on separating the series into two parts- The Clow Card Arc and the Sakura Card Arc (aka Master of the Clow.) This was an editorial decision, but both parts are still equally connected. We think of everything as just Cardcaptor Sakura. The most time-consuming element was making decisions on the little details on a daily basis. We wanted the story to remain cute; we didn't want any characters to die. As you might imagine judging by our other series, it was pretty difficult to stay within those parameters.

Question: Did you have any other guidelines?
Ohkawa: We didn't want Sakura to be a perfect student. math is her worst subject, but she's pretty athletic. Sakura's favorite dishes to cook are very simple, such as okonomiyaki and pancakes. For a fourth grader, I think this is probably the extent of their abilities at that age.

Question: Did you put a lot of thought into the profiles for each character?

Ohkawa: I tried to make each character distinctive so that the readers could always tell the characters apart, even during night scenes. Sakura's hari is shorter and lighter, so we gave Tomoyo long, black hair. I wanted to create a supportive, female friend for Sakura, who was aware of her situation.

Question: Were there any planned episodes that didn't appear, or any unplanned episodes that ended up getting published?

Ohkawa: Yes, Naoko's long distance relationship. When Sakura's getting advice from various people in the end, Naoko was supposed to tell her that a long-distance relationship isn't such a bad thing. However, we weren't able to insert a story about Naoko and her boyfriend in the previous episodes, so that idea was dropped. There aren't any episodes that we didn't plan for. It was hard enough finishing the episodes that were planned.

Nekoi: Sakura was created for a grade-school audience, so we reduced the number of panels per page. We had a hard time fitting the story into the allotted pages. The first episode ended up turning into two episodes as a result.

Question: There are many romantic pairings in this story. Why is that?

Ohkawa: I wanted to present Sakura as a girl who treated everyone as human beings, regardless of their differences. Syaoran and Eriol are foreign exchange students. For Sakura, they're just kids her own age. Similarly, we wanted Sakura to be accepting of love in all different forms. I wanted Sakura to get advice from a lot of people, so we needed to have as many different types of relationships as possible. I wasn't sure if it was appropriate for Nakayoshi, but they accepted it pretty easily.

Shay Guy wrote:

*A lot of stuff about CCS, mostly Princess Tutu comparisions

I've never seen the anime version of CCS or read the manga. But I have seen Princess Tutu, and it is currently my favorite anime series. And one of my favorite works of fiction in any medium, period.

So to me at least, your post comes off as perhaps a bit unfair, as there's no way CCS can hold up to what I for one consider to be the greatest magical girl series of all time. I know you had some other issues with it (such as your dislike for the artwork) that weren't direct comparisions to Tutu, but I'd be interested to know what, if any, magical girl anime/manga you like aside from Tutu.

Also, gotta ask, am I the only one around her with that book of the Clow Cards? :D

I had the original Mixx versions, but gave those to my friend when the TP reissue came out with a better translation, unflipped art, and better binding.

Saturn wrote:

I keep reading that Dark Horse canceled their plans for the future omnibuses of CCS-- can anyone confirm or deny that?

Yeah I got the first CCS omnibus and volume two is still listed on Barnes and Noble dot com but after that nothing else is listed.

And I can't even find either of the Magic Knight Rayearth omnibus even though I pre orderd volume one six months in advance[...].

same story with the Chobits volume two omnibus [...].

I don't know if Dark Horse has problems with distrubution or it's a problem on B&N's part but it's just annoying when this type of thing happans