Just Finished Watching: Card Captor Sakura

So I've been killing my 20-day wait period with anime series and movies. One of the series I went back to was Card Captor Sakura. See, it was aired in local TV for some time. I didn't get to finish it, though, so I took this long vacation as a chance to get re-acquainted with the characters.

Aside from the series, Obi downloaded two Card Captor Sakura movies for me. The first one was a sort of spinoff from the first season, while the second one was after Shaoran left Japan for good.

In this movie, school's out for spring break. Shaoran and Meilin are to go back to Hong Kong to spend their vacation with family. Sakura, on the other hand, wins a trip for four to HK. She brings along Toya, Yukito, and Tomoyo along for the trip. Once they set foot on HK, though, Sakura keeps getting a recurring dream about water and a certain lady.

I hated the first movie. Seriously.

Keroberos sounded like a redneck/surfer dude, Tomoyo (weirdly named Madison Taylor) sounded like a ditz, Toya is now Tori, Yukito became Julian, and they changed Sakura's surname to Avalon. WTF?! All for the sake of Americanizing the series. Oh, did I forget to mention that the way they read their lines was awful? Pintasera?!

The second movie was better. Thank God!

They didn't Americanize the names anymore, they kept the voices closer to the original Japanese dub voices, and the voices had more emotion to them.

Well, the story revolves around a solitary card meant to counterbalance the positive effects of the 52 Clow Cards. Sort of like a yin and yang thing. This one card is the only Clow Card left unturned, it starts to feel abandoned and starts wreaking havoc in the city while it snatches the now Sakura cards one by one. Aside from this dilemma, Sakura also has to find the courage to admit how she feels for Shaoran.

It was fun revisiting an anime series that I liked back in high school. Now I'm off to watch Hunter X Hunter's second and third OVA. It sucks that the local television networks think it's cool to discontinue showing anime series just when the series is about to end. Slam Dunk and Greed Island ring a bell?