Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Episode 9: It's Like The Same But Different

Review:

We’re back to the aquarium in this episode of Cardcaptor Sakura, and in the nature of modern anime being self-aware, even the characters have noted (first Yue at the beginning of the episode and Sakura and Syaoran while on their date) that the similarities between collecting the clear cards and the original Clow Cards are stacking up. I’d be willing to concede that this point might have been made in the source and may not be a symptom of modern shows but it is definitely fitting right in with the trend.

However, we then get absolute evidence of the similarities between the events when Sakura and Syaoran’s date is interrupted at the aquarium in more or less the exact spot Sakura had previously encountered a card.

Anyway, like last time, Sakura decides to sneak into the aquarium, only she won’t be going alone and we get a real dose of inept security and very lucky kids that apparently won’t get caught even when blatantly trespassing (though it is probably too late to call out Cardcaptor on that front).

While a lot of this episode seems to fixate on recreating the past to forge a link between those events and these ones, they don’t drop the ball for the capture. We get a fairly extraordinary chase sequence using a range of cards and Syaoran actually gets to use his magic for real. It’s a pretty impressive end to a fairly delightful episode, even if I wish they weren’t telegraphing how similar these events are because to be honest, I’d prefer they came up with a few more original ideas for this arc.

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Thanks for reading.

Karandi James

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