Cardcaptor Sakura Movie 1

I enjoy the "Cardcaptor Sakura" anime series and a number of CLAMP's other works. I'm used to filler OVAs, even from mahou shojo films, even from the 90s, so my bar wasn't set that high. That this movie still dropped lower than that is... rather depressing.

In the typical vein of OVAs that are supposed to fill time between manga publication/development of main series plots/keep up hype for the series without directly affecting the main series plot, this film... has little to nothing to do with the plot of the series itself, so the plot doesn't really matter and feels... empty of tension. The end result ... is that the only part I cared about was the beginning card capture. It doesn't help that Sakura doesn't really do anything to solve any of the problems in the film other than that initial capture.

Spoiler warning: some random fortune teller Clow Reed met once in Hong Kong is angry. Does she care about the cards? No. Was she waiting for Sakura? No. Did she SAY she was waiting for Sakura? Yes. Why? Who cares. Why is she attacking people and the city even though she's not exactly ANGRY at Clow Reed or the people or the city? ...Because...?

I like Yelan, Xiaoling's mother, but she doesn't actually do anything useful other than be vaguely foreboding until the climax. It's very sweet how she comforts Tomoyo and interacts with Sakura, and it's again nice that the film focuses on women's relationships and wants and needs, like much of the main series. But I feel like there are better ways to introduce Xiaoling's relatives.

The art, as per the usual in OVAs, is slightly higher quality than the series, at least in regard to background animation in Hong Kong. It's not all that impressive, but it was 1999. Then again, by this point all three of "Sailor Moon" films had been released by the beginning of 1996, and those all look okay for the time, so the relative poor quality of the art style and animation is a bit... eh. They reuse series animation because that's also always going to happen in these cases for money and time reasons, which wasn't an issue. Quality-wise for the animation, overall it's just a long "Cardcaptor Sakura" episode, albeit with darker tones than the series usually goes, with its bright costumes, trees, school buildings, and antagonists. You won't be wowed, but you won't be disappointed, either.

The voice acting was okay, if perhaps slightly higher pitched than usual? It might have just been the sound quality of the film, at least in certain places, because Junko Iwao sounded a bit odd in spots. The soundtrack was unremarkable, with recycled tracks from the series.

If you want to see the main cast wandering around in Hong Kong sightseeing, this is the movie for you. If you want to see more of Tomoyo crushing on Sakura, this is the film for you. Otherwise, besides completeness, you're probably better off skipping this part of the series. Go watch "Sailor Moon R" the film. Way better.

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.