English Dub Review: Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card “Sakura and the Lovely Transfer Student”

If you were a tree, watching all the stuff that goes on at a middle school courtyard, you’d pick up and leave, too.

Overview (Spoilers)

It’s breakfast time the day after Sakura captured the Reflect card, and Toya brings his best. He puts a fried egg on his pancakes instead of syrup? This. Man. Is. Genius. However, worried she may not be taking good care of herself, he starts teasingly piling broccoli on the side. He definitely sees that something is wrong, and she is involved in something, but won’t talk about it. At school, they have a special surprise: a new exchange student! Akiho Shinomoto has been all over the world, just like all of the magical transfer students around here. She’s super-sweet, and everyone thinks she’s pretty. I instantly distrust her. Sakura invites her to join the gang at lunch, and she proves to be just as naive as Sakura and Syaoran. On their way back to class, The two girls become fast friends, especially since their names are so similar.

After they make their blood oaths of friendship before the altar of pagan gods (slight exaggeration), Sakura notices that the trees in the courtyard have uprooted themselves, and are all trying to escape the school. Sakura fakes illness to run out with Tomoyo and fight them. Initially, she uses Siege to hold them all. They seem like they are strong enough to break through, so she alters the characteristics of Siege’s barrier to be more flexible. Then, to help slow their motion, she floods the insides of the barrier using Aqua. This gives her enough time to find the core of whatever power is animating the trees, and she makes a path through the water to capture it: the new Clear Card, Action. She immediately takes it to Yue to look at. Here, we learn a vital fact. The powers of the Clear Cards do not exist within the cards themselves but within the Clear Key. This may also be related to the visions she had of the mysterious figure trying to take the Key from her. Once her meeting is over, she calls up Syaoran. Not just to give him an update, but to ask the all-important question: can she cook lunch for him sometime? Elated, he accepts. After the conversation is over, he immediately calls Eriol with all this new information, and Eriol makes some ominous prophecies about this new girl, and how she and Sakura were always destined to become friends.

Our Take

A quick note on the names of the two girls: Both of them have last names ending in 本, or moto. This means “the source”. While Sakura’s Kinomoto refers to the source of the tree or the root, Akiho’s Shinomoto refers to a poem or verse. Thus, Shinomoto might be related to being a muse. Both girls have first names related to flowers, but it’s the secondary meanings that are interesting. While Akiho’s name translates as “Autumn Bud”, 詩 can also be taken to mean “Scion”, or the part of the tree you prune off to graft onto another tree or to plant a new one entirely. On the other hand, Sakura’s name means “Cherry Blossom” (I mean if you didn’t know that…) but it has a few other meanings that are rather interesting. It can also mean “Hired Applauder”, which we can see in her proficiency as a cheerleader. Lastly, it can refer to a decoy, a shill, or a false buyer. Is it possible that hidden in her very name, the writers hinted that she may not be the only possible master of the power of the cards? Akiho may be the last remnant of some other power that Clow worked with to create the Clow Cards, and she has come to take that power back. The fact that this girl shows up shortly after the Clear Cards appear is no coincidence. Akiho is shady to me. However, the show has done a great job of making her a character that you don’t want to suspect. I want her to be a good guy, and a true friend of the heroes, but my plot-point sense is tingling whenever she and Sakura are alone.

Either that or this is the same feeling I got when Liones was alone with Nina in Hina Logic. Can’t tell, honestly. Syaoran, you better work to keep your Sakura happy!

This episode’s writing is pretty well balanced, with action in the middle breaking up the myriad of mysteries into two sections. The first part is the “Who is Akiho?” section, while the second is “What is going on with the cards?”. It works well, and shifts gears smoothly. We have a good amount of intrigue here, especially because of Syaoran’s conversation with Eriol. If you don’t remember, these two hated each other for the longest time. For them to be in secret cahoots here is interesting to me.

As far as the animation goes, this is the first time I’ve realized that this show does not use stock footage of her using her magic. It would be so easy to do so, but they have instead created an exacting sequence that has to be recreated for every outfit so they can reuse the magical effects. In a spot where they could have taken an easy out, they put more effort in. I love it. They gave Akiho a great soft look at how she moves, and it goes well with the voicing done by Amanda Lee. She is using a similar technique to Natalie Hoover’s Tomoyo, where she talks just above a whisper at a high register to make her sound young and demure. It, too, is dangerously close to that tone that hurts my ears. Good on you ladies for dodging it.