Cardcaptors premiered on June 17th on the KidsWB. They started with episode 8, the episode where Li arrives, to support the renaming of the show to 'Cardcaptors' and to try and draw in that key 4th grade boy demographic.

Episode 1 -- Sakura's Rival

The episode made it through mostly intact as far as I can tell, although a few scenes were missing and less information was revealed than was actually in the episode. So mainly this review will focus on the general changes that have been made to the show.

The big things:

Mispronounciation by voice actors: The big problems for the voice actors seem to be the words 'clow', 'kero' and 'sakura'. They're pronouncing them like they would be if they were american-english words, but unfortunately, it just grates on the ears. 'Kero' does not rhyme with 'hero', even if it's romanized that way, and 'clow' does not rhyme with 'ow'. I have doubts as to whether or not the people doing the voices actually saw the original show, otherwise they would have gotten these right. Because, really, what would they have harmed by getting these words right? Would it have made it less understandable? No! These aren't american words; they don't mean anything in our language.

Names: Sakura, Li and Kero got to keep their names, but everyone else has been englishified (Americanized? Canadianized?). Touya is now, inexplicably, Tori (yes, they gave him a girls' name, which is even more bizarre than naming Haruka Amara). Fujitaka is Aiden, Tomoyo is Madison, and Yukito is Julian. The only one I really have a gripe about here is Tori. TORI?! What were these people smoking? Even if this had once been a unisex name, recent usage has been female only. My theory: they're building up to have Tori be a girl in disguise, which is how they'll get her and Julian together in the end.

Random changes: For some reason, Madison didn't design the outfit herself today, she found it in a magazine? Why? Probably for the same reason Amara and Michelle of Sailor Moon are 'not good enough' to follow their dreams. Girls just don't have the talent or self-esteem to be creative in their own rights. Instead of Kero-chan check, we now have an introduction of a clow card at the end (oddly, they introduced the Shadow today, instead of the Thunder, which is the card they caught, thus requiring a clip from episode 2 where Sakura caught it.) The classroom scene was badly pixellated, probably because they digitally removed Li's name from the blackboard from when the teacher introduced him (he wrote, and there was nothing there.. he has magic chalk).

Missing Bits: A bit bigger than a random change, these are parts of the plot that were completely left out. Rika/Rita has a crush on her teacher in the original series, and this episode has a brief scene which mentions that, but it was left out. Sakura's crush on Yukito/Julian was also less emphasized. Kero-chan and Sakura have a discussion about Li's possible ancestry which is very much editted; are the origins of Clow Reed going to be altered or completely left out? Apparently having someone who is part English and part Chinese would be controversial.

Overall Rating: 6. It could have been much, much worse. I expect it will be, when we actually get to those cute, suggestive scenes between Yukito/Julian and Touya/Tori. Many of the changes in dialogue could be explained away by remembering that this was written to be the first episode in the US, when it was originally the eighth, and there was much less need for exposition. For now, it's still watchable, if a little painful.


This page copyrighted June 17, 2000 by K. Butler
This site copyright 2000 by J. Andrews, K. Butler,
J. Dunbar, and M. Beddes. Email is flaminggeeks@yahoo.com.