AnimeVision

The Sealed Card
Back to normal life for Sakura, now that all the cards have been converted to Sakura cards & Eriol has returned to England, his testing of her complete. It's the summer holidays & the annual Nadeshiko Festival approaches - Sakura's class is putting on a play, with Sakura as the Princess (natch). It's also an opportunity for Meilin and Shaoran to come visit, and it seems Meilin has some matchmaking on her mind.

Meanwhile, Eriol's old house (and Clow's house before that) has been demolished to make way for an amusement part - but beneath the house a Clow card, sealed away for reasons unknown, has been released. Now free again, it begins gathering the other Cards to itself, robbing Sakura of her powers and endangering her friends in the process...

The usual CCS formula in big-screen format, here, as we're handed the usual half-ep of everyday school life, followed by a half-ep of Sakura -vs- the Card of the week. It's just on a grander scale - instead of a 25-minute episode this is a 90-minute movie, and the risks & rewards have scaled accordingly. Possibly events move a bit slowly - less time could have been spent on school life & more on building up the threat posed by the Sealed Card, but such is life. What could have been a climactic final showdown between Sakura and the Card also turns into something of a damp squib - but then the Sealed Card is really just a plot device to bring about what we all really wanted to see - Sakura & Shaoran getting it together

Yup, it's a mushy movie at heart, with the liberal sprinkling of emotional sugar that is an integral part of the Cardcaptor Sakura experience. There's finally some closure to the Sakura / Shaoran relationship, and there really are no more cards - all that's left is for those involved to live happily ever after.

If you've been a fan of CCS and don't have a warm & fuzzy feeling about you after watching this, go see a doctor - I suspect you may be clinically dead. For those who didn't like the TV series, this really isn't going to have much to offer you - it's a treat for the fans & not much else. Me, I thoroughly enjoyed it - although the series may have been stretched out to bit too much, this was a fitting end. Well worth it.

Leave it to Kero-chan - Theatrical Edition
A 15-minute (ish) short film featuring everyone's favourite Card guardian & his rival, Spinel (Suppie to his friends). Having been given a bowl of Takoyaki to share by Sakura, it's come down to the final piece. Let battle commence - a battle that rages across town & has no winners, only losers...

Pure comic relief, this, and it's quite welcome given that the movie was quite serious in tone. Kero and Spinel play well against each other in their city-spanning race for the last piece of Takoyaki - not that similar things haven't been done before, for they certainly have, it's just great fun to watch. And great also to see the return of Leave it to Kero-chan after it's untimely cancellation at the end of the first season :)

Wouldn't buy the disc just for it, but great to watch nonetheless.