Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Episode 16: Farewell Meilin

We knew we’d be saying goodbye to her given she isn’t in the source material for this anime but I’m going to miss Meilin? How about you?

The cliffhanger from last week ended up being resolved pretty quickly and mostly unspectacularly (though I have to wonder how that card represents ‘swing’) and then the girls all go home. This leads to two interesting developments. The first I’ll get back to, but the second, and what we spend the bulk of the rest of the episode on, is Meilin nostalgia. Of course she doesn’t leave without getting a moment to shine and so Cardcaptor rolls out the nostalgia with an enemy that looks very familiar and just in case we missed the reference be prepared for a classic Sakura flashback mid-episode. The upshot is that Meilin and Sakura officially cross the line and Meilin leaves for the airport after asking if she can refer to Sakura by her first name. She also takes some time out to call Syaoran and issue a warning about upsetting her friend by doing something stupid like getting hurt.

However, the other part of the story that seems somewhat more important going forward is the interaction between Akiho and Kaito. Now we knew Kaito was up to something, but I didn’t expect him to reverse time whenever he said something that made Akiho suspicious. This sequence was pretty impressively done and gets me excited for what is coming in a way this anime hasn’t much managed. While the show is always pleasant and the nostalgia is great, this is an actual plot development that makes me want to see what is coming next.

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