Card Captor Sakura sites!

This held true for Card Captor Sakura. I decided to cover this topic now, as the new American version has just hit the airwaves. The first episode caused quite a stir among the fans. In case you've been living in a cave, I'll sum it up for you. Nelvana or Kid's WB, whoever made the decision, has decided to alter the very nature of this anime. The name has been changed to Card Captors, the plural title justified by elevating Li Shaolan, Sakura's foil and romantic interest, to co-star status. This was accomplished by skipping the first six episodes. The program is also being edited to play down the more shojo elements of the anime, in an attempt to increase its appeal to boys. This is, in my opinion, moronic. Why would you pay good money to bring an anime series to the US, then hack it up in order to sell it to an audience it wasn't aimed at in the first place? I really hope this show flops. I want anime all over TV, but not like this.

But enough editorializing. You're probably wondering why this page is pink. Well, so many of the pages I visited were pink, I was beginning to think it was some unwritten law that Card Captor Sakura pages had to be that color. Most of the pages I chose to highlight aren't pink, but by making this page pink, I've recreated my experience during research. As you browse, you'll see pink over and over. What fun!

Let's start with , definitely the best site I found during my browsing. It's a pretty, nicely-designed site, with great information. Take the character page for example. This is what I like to see, a brief essay describing the character fully, her role in the series, her personality, her relationships with other characters. I only wish more characters were covered. If you're a cosplayer, you really need to check out the page of "Sakura's Battle Costumes" off the "Kero-chan's corner" page. Fifteen of Sakura's costumes are described and critiqued in detail. A companion page critiques the costumes worn by Kero-chan (the little winged teddy bear who is Sakura's mentor). The section on the Clow Cards, the magical cards Sakura must defeat and capture, has pictures for the first 34 cards, and detailed descriptions for the first 30. The card descriptions are a synopsis of the card's appearance in the series, complete with screen captures. A great site.

Coming in at a close second is , another attractive site with a nice-looking homepage. I love the color scheme. Go to the "Story Information" page to get to the character page. The descriptions here are much more brief than on the previous page, but there are almost three times as many of them. The "Translations" page translates much of the original manga. Check out the "Clever" section for the fun content, ICQ and Winamp skins, wallpaper, fan art and doujinshi, and odd sections like "What If the Card Captor Characters were Candy?". The section "Pink" is something I've never seen before. It's a music video of sorts, images set to the lyrics of "Pink" by Aerosmith.

Remember how I said I like detailed character pages? Well, the pages don't get more detailed than on . The character pages on this site are pretty amazing, with descriptions broken down into multiple pages dealing with "Personality", "Looks", "Speech", "Friends" and more. Just one thing is missing. Pictures!. There's also a "Dictionary" page, defining terms from the show and from anime in general.

With a name like The *Cutie Cutie* Card Captor Sakura Page, I had a hunch this site would be worth visiting. It has a cute design, as would be expected. The character page has brief descriptions of 24 characters, and the descriptions are cross-linked according to relationships. The characters are illustrated with fanart, as the site author is following CLAMP's amazingly short-sighted request that no site contain any of their artwork. We wouldn't want that, would we? We wouldn't want free advertising. God forbid anyone should see their artwork and like it. Why, they might want to buy CLAMP's manga, and we couldn't have that, could we? Please, somebody talk some sense into those women... Oh, well. At least it's really nice-looking fan art.

My biggest complaint about is that you have to go through two screens to get to the content. If you're going to make us choose between frames and no frames, don't make us go through another enter screen. But once there, there's enough stuff to make it worth the trip. Character sketches are written for seven of the most major characters, in a hyperactive cutie shojo fan style. Plot synopses are available for 18 of the Clow Cards. Check out the "Omake" section for "Funny Pictures of CCS", a collection of silly screen shots from the show.

As I've said, I'm no big fan of JavaScript. But when the home page for Clow Card Quest said the page was originally designed for a pop-up window, I turned JavaScript on and took a look. Very cute, much like reading a pocket guide. Like a pocket guide, it gives you good quick information on the series plot and characters, including a section on "relationships". The "Card Captor Encyclopedia" describes some of the magical items that appear in the show (only nine of them, not very encyclopedic). There's a section on merchandise, including pictures and where to buy, and rants on the dub and CLAMP's no-art policy (he agrees with me in both cases). All in all, quite a lot of content squeezed into a cute little pop-up window.

While browsing sites for this column, one of the things that surprised me was that almost no site contained pictures for all of the Clow Cards. Finally I found one that did. The aptly-named site contains full-sized images for each of the Clow Cards, scanned from a special set of the cards available in Japan. Combined with the image of the back of the cards, anyone with access to a good color laser printer and a lot of time on their hands can create his or her own set of Clow Cards! (Reproduced cards will have no magical properties.)

Be warned: is a horribly slow-loading page at modem speeds. If you can stand the wait, the page is worth a look. The site is designed using fan art and designed very well; it's worth clicking on the link just to look at the home page. The icons that site author "Piggy Ho Ho" created for the site options are hilariously cute, and the page appears to be shaded with watercolors. If you have a high-speed connection, or a lot of time, the "Fun Printouts" section contains downloadable images suitable for creating Card Captor Sakura stationery.

And of course, there's always . Good ol' reliable Hitoshi. Even he doesn't have pictures of all the Clow Cards, though. What he does have is a section on toys and goods, with pictures. How about a talking Kero-chan doll?

Finally, a few quickies:

• Card Captor Web 1.1 - Listed on the Turnpike as "Tomoyo Daidouji", this site features a "coloring book" with images you can cut out and apply crayons. Wallpaper is offered in three different screen sizes, and you can download a selection of Card Captor Sakura Windows icons. "Tomoyo's Camera" offers cosplay images.

And that'll do it for Card Captor Sakura. I think I've written the word "cute" more times in this column than I did in the entire previous year.

Mail call!