Card Captor Sakura: Clear Card has started streaming on CrunchyRoll, and it hits all of the nostalgia buttons you could ask for: the show is very pretty, Kero-chan is annoying, Tomoyo-chan is still evil[1], Sakura and Syoaran are still adorable together, etc, etc.
But what it isn’t is a new story.
Once again the cards have been scattered[2] or disabled[3], Sakura’s old wand/incantations won’t work anymore and she has new ones[4] with which to recapture[5]/restore[6] the cards.
BTW The Windy card[7] is now the Gale card. At least the card names are in kanji this time. I suppose that’s new.
The thing is there’s so much more that could have been done with a new season of Card Captor Sakura. If you still want to keep the card theme then run a plot with Sakura growing into her powers enough to create new cards in response to new challenges.
If you want to hammer the friendship theme (and, hey, it’s Card Captor Sakura so why wouldn’t you?), Sakura has always seen the cards as her friends rather than servants. So set up a quest where she can release the cards into incarnate forms and actually have them be her friends. Have the clear cards remain as her mementos or something.
I’m sure that there were other options to do something fresh with Card Captor Sakura.
As it is I’m wondering if the Law of Diminishing Returns will eventually overwhelm the nostalgia that the show was generating in the first episode. And to be clear, Card Captor Sakura: Clear Card is very good at hitting those nostalgia buttons.
So for the most part I’ll probably I’ll enjoy Clear Card on that level. There’s just going to be that lingering sense of disappointment that CLAMP didn’t do something a little more creative with it.
Here’s the OP which, while pretty, just reinforces the nostalgia theme from the initial moments of the animation to having Maaya Sakamoto[8] singing it:
[1] Adorable. But evil.
[2] Season 1
[3] Season 2
[4] Season 2
[5] Season 1
[6] Season 2
[7] The first card in Season 1
[8] She did one of the better Season 2 openings. Platinum IIRC.
Pirates of the Burley Griffin 
One of the problems with changing up the CCS formula is imo it is pretty much the perfect Magical Girl setup. Having the cards as antagonists(originally) creates automatic variation in the problems Sakura faces and the captured cards gives her an expanding set of resources to face those problems.
I completely agree about diminishing returns though, the only problem being changing up the formula either means altering the show’s demographic(adulting it up), or (to my mind) altering the characters until they are no longer the CCS folk we have come to know.
I think you could keep the same basic structure whilst changing the nature of the challenge. The example I gave of reifying the cards with forms that allow them to exist outside of the cards.
That could easily be an episodic structure with varying challenges as before but inverts the purpose of the challenges: to release rather than to capture. Because friendship. And it’s even in keeping with the tone of the show.
That said, I enjoyed the first episode and I’m looking forward to enjoying the rest of the show, I just kinda wish it could have been something more.
That’s my worry about this. As much fun as returning to Cardcaptor was I don’t know that I’ll continue to enjoy if all we’re getting is another catch the card of the week story. I’m kind of hoping they’ll expand a little on that basic idea or at least find ways of making it seem fresh.
I have the same hopes but I’m not overly optimistic to be honest.
From its shiny digital designs (as opposed to the hand-drawn original) to the apparent gutting of the subversiveness that made the original so compelling, this re-boot just seems so…plastic. More like a knockoff or a cash-grab than something that truly needed to be made.
Some truth to that I think. I’m mostly in it for the nostalgia at the moment, and it is doing that well enough.
Actually, the Gale card seems to be a new card entirely, not just Windy renamed. Or at least, that was definitely the impression I got. I haven’t gotten around to watching the second episode yet though so I could be wrong.
I’m going on the basis that the Clear Cards are replacing the disabled Clow Cards, and Gale is a close enough equivalent to Windy to support that I think.
Just watched the second episode, and Gale is explicitly referred to by Sakura as a new card. That said, it could be that the Clear Cards are indeed replacing the Clow (or rather, Sakura) Cards and that she just doesn’t know that yet.
Oh, the law of diminishing returns has already hit me. Here’s hoping the series goes in a more interesting direction, and soon.
Likewise.