Franchise Rant: Possibly the worst MANGA anniversary out there (Yuu☆gi☆ou/”Yu-Gi-Oh!” King film)

Best M&W

Recently, there’s been quite a few revivals of my favorite old school weeb Japanese franchises, mostly connected to special anniversaries. To name a few, Cardcaptor Sakura (North American license rescued, new merchandise and artwork celebrating CLAMP’s 25th anniversary), Digimon Adventure (upcoming Digimon Adventure tri.), Sailor Moon (Sailor Moon Crystal), Dragon Ball (30th anniversary = various goodies), etc.

I’m in a pretty happy place right now – most of the anniversaries are proving to be sweet, but there’s one anniversary that I’m particularly dissatisfied with. A shounen gambling manga series called, 遊☆戯☆王 Yuu☆gi☆ou by Takahashi Kazuki, otherwise probably translated as “The☆Game☆King” or “King☆of☆Games” (but nonsensically rendered as “Yu-Gi-Oh!” in the west, which you’re all familiar with for being popular snark bait) is receiving rather shoddy anniversary treatment, at least for the people who have actually… well, read the original manga (all 36 volumes, not just the first seven).

Cardcaptor Sakura 【HD Rewatch】 THE MOVIE

Sakura goes to Hong Kong!

When we last left off on my rewatch-blog of Cardcaptor Sakura, the first season of the series had concluded with Sakura enjoying her final moments of Christmas day.

In the original television broadcast of Cardcaptor Sakura, the anime was put on-hold until April 6, 1999 for its second season. Gekijouban: Cardcaptor Sakura didn’t premiere in theaters until after the second season had ended and Sakura captured all the Clow Cards (the movie premiered in theaters on August 21, 1999). However, the plot of the film clearly takes place around/between episodes 35 and 36 (it’s winter vacation in Tomoeda and Meiling is still around), so for the purposes of the re-blog, I’m placing it before the second season.

Cardcaptor Sakura: The Movie Blu-ray Review [Discotek Media]

SECOND MOVIE NOW PLEASE, SECOND MOVIE NOW

こにゃにゃちわ! I return from life’s trials and tribulations known as school and work. You know, some college students decide to spend their hard-earned money on textbooks, tuition, and other junk, but I choose to use my money for far more important matters.

Like tossing it at my computer screen and demanding anime companies to bring me more Cardcaptor Sakura.

(I’m only half-kidding.)

After going through some complications with the order, I’ve finally received my Blu-ray copy of Cardcaptor Sakura: The Movie. I’ll do a post about the feature itself later (because it’s next on my rewatch-blogs), but for now, let’s take a look at the quality of the release.

Cardcaptor Sakura 【HD Rewatch】 35

Sakura will take over the world…soon.

We’ve finally arrived! The final episode of the first season. I was hoping to get to this a lot sooner, but lo and behold… college and work.

Aside from the axed Leave it to Kero-chan! segment, as the first season’s last episode, Studio Madhouse decided to end it off with a bang by packaging it with a handful of goodies – making you want to jump into the second season immediately. It all goes up from here.

Cardcaptor Sakura 【HD Rewatch】 34

Riddle Me This

Here we are: it’s the second-to-last episode of the first season until we get to DO-DO-DO-DREAMING (and the movie)!

This is also the first episode where no Clow Cards are captured at all. In fact, the “antagonist” in this episode was… the full moon (no, not that moon). In Cardcaptor Sakura, magic (at least when it comes to Clow Reed’s magic) draws power from the sun and the moon. The full moon clearly has an effect on Sakura, once again triggering precognitive visions of what appears to be the Final Judgment (the viison with the silhouette of a person who is obviously Ms. Mizuki) and also puts her in a daze.

[SPOILER]
While there was a red herring in the previous episode, this episode also gives us a crucial hint of who Yue actually is…

Yukito: “My grandparents love to travel and are hardly ever at home.”

Ms. Mizuki: “I see.”

Ms. Mizuki: “Yukito, you’re…”

Yukito: “Yes?”

[CUE INTERRUPTION][/SPOILER]

Cardcaptor Sakura 【HD Rewatch】 33

CCS Month ended, now I declare it CCS *year*.

UPDATE

Sorry for the brief hiatus. With the remains of summer already coming to a close (I return to college AND work @ college in a week) – I’ve been doing all the leisurely things I can possibly do in this hot weather. I’ve already plowed through entire CCS Blu-ray set a long time ago and with the English release of Tales of Xillia 2, I’ve been doing a Tales marathon as well (it doubles as family time with my little sister, since these JRPGs are multiplayer!) as well as gnawing at my VB backlog.

It’s gonna be weird crawling out of the rock I’ve been under these past several weeks. Returning to civilization, what the hell is that? Mind you, I’m still going to write reviews about the anime I haven’t gotten around to reviewing yet that I promised to review ages ago.

END UPDATE

Without further ado, time to continue this Cardcaptor Sakura project! Snowy weather hits Tomoeda and our beloved heroine + Tomoyo and their token Chinese friends go on a school trip to learn how to ice skate.

Cardcaptor Sakura 【HD Rewatch】 32 – Freaky Friday

The Change card

Oh boy, it’s a body-switch episode; between Syaoran and Kero at that! But that’s not the only reason why this episode is so amusing, half of it is because of Kumai Motoko and Hisakawa Aya, the voice actresses for Syaoran and Kero respectively.

Often when voice actresses are put into the position of voicing a body switch – in which the characters don’t magically switch voices as well – it’s a great way of truly gauging their skills as voice actresses. And I think Kumai-san and Hisakawa-san did a fantastic job on both ends. It was amusing seeing “Syaoran” speak in Kansai-ben and likewise for Kero speaking in such a serious tone. Overall, Cardcaptor Sakura really had such a great voice cast and I’d love for all of them to reprise their roles in a new CCS-related adventure someday…

Cardcaptor Sakura 【HD Rewatch】 31 – ULTRA SAKURA

さくら怪獣じゃないもん!

This was an excellent episode, and definitely one of my top picks from the first season. Mainly because it’s one of the more outlandish CCS episodes out there – and it helps that there are two Clow Cards in this episode as opposed to the previous episodes where there were only one each.

Note: This episode amusingly starts with a repeat of Sakura’s first episode monologue about Touya and how she wished she would grew big and stepped on the big meanie.

Cardcaptor Sakura 【HD Rewatch】 30

Oh my god, it’s the precursor to Eifie.

Here’s an episode from the first season that I really like and find really memorable. A lot of fans born in the west seem to easily recall The Dash episode from the Cardcaptors dub…. and to my shame, so do I. And I sometimes want to kill myself for it. I often forget that, yes, there was once a time where I actually enjoyed that piece of trash dub and this episode was what got me into it (and then dropped it and went onto the Cardcaptor Sakura manga translated by Tokyopop + the subbed anime).

Cardcaptor Sakura 【HD Rewatch】 29

CCS? Praise the sun!

Here’s another fun episode to sit through before we fully enter the second season – “Sakura’s Sweeeeet Cooking“. Our little heroine learns how to bake a delicious cake in home econ class! Naturally, she’s pumped. Of course, since this is Cardcaptor Sakura, magical hindrances are abound.