Cardcaptor Sakura Movie 1

When I found out about this anime I was really excited about it. When I found out there were movies too, I got even more excited. So I started watching the anime and it did not disappoint me, in fact; it probably is one of my favorite animes.

Yet the movie did disappoint me. A little bit, though, I still thought it was a good movie but it just didn't quite reach the anime-awesomeness.

So you should watch the movie after the first season and before the second season. It follows Sakura on her trip to Hong Kong, where she finds out it wasn't a coincidence that ... she won the tickets.

Sakura is having these weird dreams/nightmares and honestly? They started to annoy me at some point. It constantly showed the same thing, over and over and over again. It was confusing, but I get that. It was supposed to be confusing, since Sakura herself didn't understand what was happening to her.

However, I actually almost fell asleep while watching the movie because of these nightmares. I seriously never fall asleep while watching a movie, and I also don't sleep during the day. The fact that I almost fell asleep shows how boring the movie became at some points.

Besides that, I did like the movie. It was really interesting towards the end.
Overall I would give this movie a 9 out of 10.

It was an okay movie I guess. It was a 5/10 or 6/10 movie, though I'm leaning more towards 5/10. This movie isn't really necessary to watch imo. Though it wasn't bad, so meh. It mentions a few lore specifics, but doesn't really expand it much. I guess to show people who used to date? Though this movie revealing past lovers doesn't really add much to it. It feels more so like a cash grab, than something that expands the world and is necessary. I think I get where it might tie into the next arc with ... Sakura wanting to reveal her feelings to Yukito. Though did they really need this movie for that? Still, even if this movie isn't necessary, it's an okay movie overall I guess.

I recognize that this is basically just an anime-original episode of the show, and if it was literally an anime-original episode, I may not have minded it. There were plenty of individual episodes that were a bit weak compared to the others, but the big difference is that they were only 20 minutes long and usually at least implied some progression. The first Cardcaptor Sakura movie is a waste of time that lasts for a long 90 minutes.

It's about Sakura winning a trip to Hong Kong during the winter break of her first year as a Cardcaptor. This was a horrible idea, possibly the worst ... time period a Cardcaptor Sakura movie could take place, because all the characters are locked into the personalities they had before their character development over the second year. Shaoran and Sakura haven't even begun to realize their feelings for one another; they're still stuck with their crushes on Yukito that must go nowhere. Meilin just sits in Shaoran's shadow because she hasn't either become truly desperate or come to terms with the fact that he's just not into her. Yukito and Toya don't even hint that they're gay. Tomoyo doesn't really do character development because she is perfect, but she just films Sakura as normal here. They don't even have the classmates as comedic foils to bounce anything off of. The result is a story about people who seem trapped in amber.

I mean, the movie-original outfit and even the movie-original Clow Card were half-assed at best! Not even giving Sakura a new power could save this movie from its doldrums because she gets that card in the first few minutes with no background on it and then she uses it only once, with little fanfare. Because it never appears in the show proper, it may as well have never existed.

There are no stakes more complicated than putting Sakura's immediate friends in abstract jeopardy that takes them out of the narrative. The one-off villain's deal doesn't even challenge Sakura's beliefs about anything.

The animation is fine and the villain's main gimmicks are water and ribbons, which presented some opportunities for interesting fluid effects. But that's truly the extent of it. The jazzy soundtrack probably worked as a standalone CD, but it faded into the background of this boring movie.

Why did they decide to dedicate film resources to this story? I will be forever baffled by this.