What They Say:
Sakura, lead with your heart! The Sword card takes control of Sakura’s friend and attacks! Still, Sakura is able to use her head and her heart to save everyone. Next, Sakura discovers her mother was best friends with Tomoyo’s mom, and learns important lessons about friendship. However, none of these lessons prepares Sakura or Li for the challenge of the Time card. How can you battle something that can turn back time? Cardcaptor Sakura Vol. 4 – Sakura, Fight! (Episodes 13, 14, 15 & 16). Collectable postcard inside! (While supplies last).
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release is straightforward as we get the original Japanese language in stereo but nicely encoded at 384kbps. The series isn’t one with a huge or dynamic range to it considering its origins but it handles the forward soundstage well here with dialogue placed appropriately where needed while the action scenes have a good full flow to them with some minor directionality in a few places. The swirling of music tends to be one of the stronger points for it and that’s something that gives the show a little extra push, especially with the opening and closing sequences. While not a standout mix, it does the job well and we didn’t detect any distortion or dropouts throughout the episodes and overall had no issues with this track. Solid stuff all the way around.
Video:
Originally airing from 1998 to 2000, the transfer for this TV series is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. The series has a strong look to it in general with Madhouse animating it and using the appealing CLAMP character designs along with some very good colors. Traditionally animated for the most part, it has bright colors, smooth animation during the busy scenes and a good sense of detail about it. The release isn’t problem free though, owing to the time of its original release, and we have some cross coloration showing up throughout in small ways here and there and some line noise that creeps in as well. Some of the backgrounds aren’t as solid as they should be either, but the show generally does hold up pretty well considering when it was released and the difference in encoding now and source materials.
Packaging:
The packaging for this release continues to be a highlight after all these years as we get a single sized white keepcase to hold the disc. The front cover is bright piece but with some good soft blues and purples for the background. Sakura dominates in a witch-like outfit here with a cute little smile to her face that’s not what you think it is at first. The costume is elaborate like the others, but because of the hat it feels like it’s bigger and more complex than it is. The logo along the top is straightforward and easy to read and we get a volume name along the bottom where it also breaks down the format of the release. The back cover has some good soft background images of various scenes from the volume, a few shots from the show and a decent if brief premise to the series. The episodes are brown down by name and number and the production credits dominate. The technical side is mild and simple but it brings out the basics needed for this DVD release. The package also comes with an insert where on one side it provides a shot of Sakura with Kero along with a breakdown of the episodes by name, number and the chapters within each one. This volume, because of the delay, also includes a great pencilboard that was released in the original run.
Menu:
Much like the show and the packaging, it’s cute, colorful and bright as we get a still image from the episode related to this volume without any music or sound effects. The menus are pretty simple, with only a few options on the main menu and most of the others in the extras menu, which is where they curiously placed the “Subtitles Off” selection. Access times are very fast and things look pretty good all around here.
Extras:
The only extra this time around is the non-credit ending sequence.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As Cardcaptor Sakura progresses, the challenges do get to be a bit more complicated, at least in context for the series, than what we had before. Most of the initial Cards that Sakura gets to go after are the types that are admittedly a bit easier to find and deal with, the kinds of cards that you can imagine are often the first ones to get captured. With this set, it doesn’t get too awful complicated, but they start showing a bit more of what’s going on and the variety of it all. Which helps, though a lot of them are starting to get a bit more public in what they’re doing. This release also provides an episode that certainly seems creepy on the surface, but a proper reading of events as it progresses is anything but.
The big card that Sakura has to deal with in this set is the Power card, one that has quite the personality to it as it likes to challenge others in order to show off how powerful it is. The cards certainly have egos as we’ve seen and this one is certainly no exception. For Sakura and Shaoran, it shows up while they’re on a school field trip to the zoo (where Shaoran shows just how gullible he really is with Yamazaki) and things go crazy when the Power card starts setting the animals free. And it ends up challenging the elephants, which is almost comical with some of the expressions they have. For Sakura, she has to confront Power with her own abilities and that’s definitely something difficult to work through, especially in such a public area. But gaining this card over Shaoran helps to cement her position a bit more and it shows him that she is growing and getting better at it.
The series works only one other Card in this set of episodes and it’s one that, while it works dramatically, felt a bit forced. The high school culture festival gets Sakura and Tomoyo to visit since Sakura wants to see Yukito and there’s a lot of sweetness and cuteness there. But Shaoran had the same idea and there’s a certain level of jealousy that flairs. The fun is in seeing how Yukito handles both of them, favoring Sakura to be sure, and showing them the grounds as well as the big class play that he’s participating in. Which is quite amusing since it is a gender bent Cinderella performance where he plays the fairy godmother and Toya plays Cinderella, much to the shock of Sakura. The performances are simple and with a kind of high school sense of humor to it that works nicely. And it’s the kind of episode that would have worked well even if they didn’t shoehorn in the Mist Card, which provides an element of danger for Sakura to deal with.
With the show hitting fifteen episodes at this point, we do get to see some new struggles as exist between Sakura and Kero. As they spend so much time together, it’s not a surprise that there are tensions, especially since he’s living in her room and without his own space. That turns into a flashpoint between the two and it doesn’t take long for him to go on an adventure of his own with another littler girl before coming home. What makes it work, since that part of it was pretty weak for me, was that we get to see Really Mad Sakura as she stomps around the house but also the admittance to Tomoyo that she knows she’s in the wrong, as is he, and she wants to fix it. She’s a pretty aware young, young woman and I liked how they played that part of it.
Where things in this set get a little weird is in the final episode, though it has a really tender side to it overall. The family, plus Yukito, end up going on a small weekend trip to the countryside to a place where her father was able to rent a really nice house. While the men are off doing their thing, Sakura is encouraged to check out the mansion down the road a touch where a much older man lives. She’s friendly with him and spends a good bit of time there talking to him, particularly about his granddaughter that died and went to heaven. There are lots of establishing shots of Sakura’s mother back at the place her father rented, since he brought pictures of her there, and you know exactly what it is that he’s doing when it comes to his daughter. He’s making amends in the way that he can with his wife’s grandfather, since he never really accepted her marriage to Sakura’s father. Sakura is unaware of who the old man is and is just free and happy as she always is. From an outside point of view, the episode makes plenty of sense, but there’s also that touch of a cautionary tale from my cultural perspective where you can see just how easily things could have gone bad. Sakura’s just too trusting here, but this is a safe world for the most part where certain bad things just don’t happen. That’s not the point of the story though so it’s glossed over in favor of what Sakura’s father is trying to accomplish.
In Summary:
Cardcaptor Sakura continues to charm in many ways, but the one that gets me a little bit more here is that it doesn’t want to be a Card of the week show. This is a big plus for the series since it wants to spend time just doing character material as well as the action side of it. And it continues to not overplay its hand when it comes to Shaoran, who will figure into things more as it goes on. The Clow stuff here is good overall, but the episodes are winners more in seeing how the characters interact and the way they go through their lives ,with tensions such as between Sakura and Kero or Sakura and Shaoran over things. The last episode was problematic for me the first time I saw it a decade ago as well so I’m not surprised that I still feel that way now, especially with kids of my own in Sakura’s age range, but that’s just a cultural thing and something that you have to overlook because of what the series nature and intent is. There’s a lot to like once more in this volume and plenty for people to enjoy with the variety to what it does.
Features:
Japanese 2.0 Language, English Subtitles, Non-Credit Opening
Content Grade: B+
Audio Grade: B
Video Grade: B-
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: B-
Released By: Pioneer
Release Date: January 15th, 2002
MSRP: $29.99
Running Time: 100 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
