pic with all the cards. Quickly looking through;
Time could be great in some cases but since it can only get you back to yesterday and stop time for a limited span, its uses are a bit limited. Could still be used for many fun things
The stuff you make with Create disappears in the morning I think
I'm not sure how Change works, but if it changes something into anything you want, I think I would pick this card. I could fulfill all my materialistic desires just with a couple rocks

Mirror is moé. Fight is cute too. I really liked Dash but now I know it's based on fennec foxes. My favorites were Shadow and Create. Time is the obvious one to want, but I might prefer Create or Dream so I could have lucid imaginative experiences or explore my mind.

Tachikoma is cuter

It is either Wind, Rain, Shadow, Wood, or Sword, Thunder, Power, 眠

So I got around to watch the first episode of Clear Card last night. It was OK, sweet and light hearted as you would expect. The only thing I didn't like is how they moved Takashi and Naoko to a different classroom. I'll spoil that but honestly I don't think it even matters, still. I hope there's a point to that.
It's been years I watched the original series but I don't think this one looks bad in comparison. It's so very bright and colorful. Perhaps the characters are looking stiffer and less expressive but we'll see. Overall I liked it, will watch it.

Just watched the second episode of Clear Card. It's definitely not going for anything different from the original series, not that's a bad thing. She'll pick cards, have premonitory dreams and hang out with her friends all the way to the end of this. Just like before. If you like the original and it's been a long time since you last watched it, this is pretty much perfect.

I think it's as good as the first one but I somehow expected something different. For some weird reason I thought they were not going with the exact formula of the original but when you think about it, there was absolutely no reason to change anything, safe bet I suppose.
It's funny though because I don't watch Sakura for the magical part of it at all. I watch it for scenes like the one they're all gathered under a tree with perfect lighting and perfect green grass having a perfect bento for lunch while talking about which clubs they'll participate this year. That whole aesthetic, sublime and idyllic scene melts my brain. I think those types of scenes is where the real magic is. At least to me. And the reason I mention I find it as good as the original is because they're taking good care to have those soothing inserts in between cards shenanigans.
Now I'm waiting for the inevitable episode where they're all in the theater watching or participating in a play by Naoko and some ghostly type of card appears to animate the costumes or something.
Speaking of which, I remember some silly cards in the original but none that could be defeated by dropping a hairpin on it.

Just watched the third ep. of Clear Card.

She gets two cards for this one and I gotta say so far I don't quite like how they look. They're either nearly abstract or look like legendary Pokemon, I hope that's not how all cards are going to look like. I'm fine with having animal motifs for the cards instead of having them looking like fairies but I don't know, I kind of prefer them looking like fairies to be honest. We'll see.
I also dislike how it's trying to push Sakura and Syaoran's into something closer to a more romantic relationship. I remember there were moments like that on the previous series but this time it seems to be forcing it more. I don't know, maybe it's too long since I saw the old one and I just don't remember correctly.

Ep. 4 gets a plot going. The card Sakura gets in this episode is pretty useful I suppose but it has the problem I mentioned earlier. There was some semblance of a tactic to overcome it, that's a nice change. The new student seems OK and it's was a nice touch that she falls for Yamazaki's fabrications.

>>30645
it continues into spring season so they don't really need to rush to get to the final arc/boss

It's interesting to notice it's the second time we have amazing food related scenes and paradisiacal picnics making up for rather dull card concepts. This time around there's no cute outfit either, it's cool though, the food is really that good looking. That's really not a complaint though, I do watch Sakura specially for the non-magical parts of it.

>>30660
I agree. I didn't mean as "finally a plot" sort of thing, in fact with Sakura it barely matters imo. They all could have lunch and fight random silly cards for a 100 episodes with no real plot going and it wouldn't lose any charm.

Now I'm honestly curious to know what use Sakura is going to make of such a nondescript card.
And what is its connection with dreaming and premonitions? I don't get it.

For ep.7 we get to see Tomoyo's mother again and their enormous idyllic garden at the back of the mansion. Turns out the record card from the last episode might be useful more like a projection device than the recording itself. Yeah and Tomoyo has a drone now, comes with an app and everything. Sakura captures a flight card by been nice and friendly.

Ep.08 brings things even closer to the original plot, placing a mysterious student (in the same house as Eriol, the previous mysterious student) in Sakura's path and relating it to the cards somehow. And now Sakura has an invisibility cloak.

Ep.09 Welp turns out that invisibility cloak card is also a inaudibility cloak card as well because she runs up and down at the Aquarium at night with a dress filled with little bells attached to it and the guard can't hear a thing. Plus she gets another weird card with a lame concept called Spiral. Syoran is back to help Sakura secure the cards btw.

Post edited on 9th Mar 2018, 12:02pm

>>30971
How's Tomoyo in this sequel? Also, I wished the art style looked more like the OP pic than the current standard.

>>30974
She continues to be the ever loyal, graceful and polite friend. I do feel two minor changes in her personality however. First is her interest in technology. This is related with her self-imposed mission of recording Sakura while she bounds cards while wearing cute outfits but now it seems with all the modern possibilities like drones and smartphones, she is talking about the devices she uses more often and makes her mom's company build drone prototypes for her. The second thing is, as Sakura and Syaoran's relationship develops to something more mature, spoilers they go on a actual date on ep.9 Tomoyo feels like she's intruding a little more than usual and decided to give more space to the couple. Maybe that's not a personality change at all, it's just her tactful side showing more because of this new situation.

As for the art style, it certainly feels "cleaner" and more elegant now compared to the previous series. I still like it a lot but maybe, MAYBE, the characters look a little bit stale when you compare both shows. This is me talking from memory alone, I'll try to watch side by side and check it out.

>>30976
Thanks for the reply. I was never much of a Majou Shoujo fan, so I only watched this when much younger because of Tomoyo.

Ep.10 is my favorite so far. People complaining about the art style should give this episode a look, if you care enough about it. There are several scenes that work really well with what computers can do best. However, yes, I've rewatched a few episodes of the original and it's a fact; characters look a bit stale now if you compare it side by side. I do believe this is not the art style's fault alone. Sakura is less goofy now, being older and all. She's less prone to throw tantruns and her relationship with her brother is close to agreeable. "He would never use Sakura as a cup holder nowadays, I don't think."
This episode is a throw back to episode 4 of the old arc (Sakura's Tiring Sunday) with all the action happening in and around her house. She also uses her old roller skates for the first time on this arc, I think.
This episode is a third food porn, a third "Let's watch more of the new kid: Akiho Shinomoto" and capturing sequences. She captures two cards here, Labyrinth and Snooze, which makes people go to sleep.
There's also a scene where Sakura shows pictures from events that happens in The Sealed Card film which many people thought it got retconned. It's been 15 years since I watched that so I'll not comment at this time. I'll rewatch it and comment later on. But yeah from what I remember Eriol's house shouldn't be there and that's just one problem.

>>30981
Yeah, she's as important to the enjoyment of this show as Sakura herself.

I decided to go back and re-watch the original before this new season. Damn good stuff.

Ep.11 Sakura begins to figure it out what most of us already know, that is, most of those new cards are pretty much the old cards but with worse designs to them. A conversation between Syaoran and Eriol also begin to unfold to the characters what we viewers already know; Akiho and her caretaker Yuna are linked with new cards. The surprise at least to me is Yuna having the same type of power as Syaoran, that should go in an interesting direction, let's hope. I was waiting for them to mention how Enriol's house is still there but no luck. We'll see. Sakura goes to Penguin park and captures a card named Reversal.
For the non-magical part of the episode, we get to see the whole group of friends together having lunch on the evergreen school grounds which is nice. Naoko is there too this time. And if you dislike CGI on your Anime, boy you will love this episode as there are scenes in one of the most beloved places of this series and they use really shitty, painful CGI to make the card's magic happen.
All in all a good episode. Last post I mentioned how the relationship between Sakura and her brother got way more civilized and you can see it on this episode. There's also a conversation between them where Sakura says she'll show her dad's library to Akiho which I'm really looking forward to. When was the last time we saw that place? The very first episode in 2001? That's 17 years.

>>30996
That's great, are you watching the whole thing? Are you planning to watch or rewatch the movies as well? Things happens in those movies that get kinda completely forgotten up until now on this new arc. We'll see if they ever try to make sense of it.

>>31016
You bet your ass I am!

Ep.12More talk about showing the library to Akiho, I think there's going to some major plot point going on when they finally go down there. It would make sense. There's more exposition on Akiho and Kaito. Apparently Akiho has weird dreams like Sakura. Other than that, Sakura captures a card named Hail with Syaoran's assistance.

>>31034
How did it go?

>>31053
Slow goings, but it's going. Loving Clamp's costume designs and style.

Ep.13

Meiling Li is back. Half the episode is just Sakura and Meiling hanging out, preparing Gyoza and eating some incredibly colorful cookies. We get that non-magical stuff that's the actual magical part of this show with the whole comforting mood, food porn and demonstrations of pure friendship. I'm almost sure they have a new piece of music in there too, unlike all the other bgm we listened to so far. I quite like Meiling's outfit, both of them. I think the simple designs are really the best ones in the show.
Yukito and Toya have a cryptic conversation about Toya regaining the powers he used to keep Yukito alive back in the original. Then Akiho reads her obviously important-plot-point book and things she reads start to happen to Sakura in real life. Then she drinks some chamomile tea which shouldn't really be called tea as there's no infusion of Camellia in it. They are not even in the same order on the taxonomic hierarchy.
Overall I really liked this one, nice soft cliffhanger there. The first half was really nice to watch, the relationship between Meiling and Kero gave me a couple of good chuckles.

How did you like the new opening and ending songs and animation? I don't quite enjoyed the opening myself, as it felt a little too heavyhearted, both the lyrics and the animation. The ending song is fine.

>>31086
That's nice. Good to know you found something to enjoy in there. It can get repetitive but as long there's something to look for, you eventually get through the whole thing.

Hard to imagine a teacher being able to say this to a kid outside of japan or in real like in general.

>>31128

It varies by culture. In many places in Asia and south america, the teachers visit the children's houses or the students being dropped off at the teacher's house for supplementary tutoring and such isn't entirely uncommon.

The male teacher / female student is the part that made me feel odd about that relationship. generally it is only possible with a female teacher and male student as consent-types of laws generally only apply to women and are very harsh against men regardless of any other aspect of their relationship.

>>31128
Your post just filled me with memories. Back when I was a teenager and into young adulthood I had this fascination for the idea of purity in conduct. A good part of it came from anime and such characters as Fujitaka but also from Buddhism, specially monks. This purity was a lot about having no sexual aggression in my personality whatsoever. Like a completely ascended person, free from all bodily desires. On top of that I was also interested in "minimalism" for a lack of better word. Basically I would try to not make any noise, walk silently or avoid hitting the fork on the plate, eating just once or twice a day, stuff like that.

Anyway, it wasn't hard for me to have no sexual aggression in my personality but I would go that extra mile to never talk about anything sexual or show any desires towards people. In my mind this was an important part of a "perfect friendliness" personality. To this day if I think about it I guess there's some truth to it.

It's funny though, because as you can imagine people didn't saw this behavior as ascended at all. No, they just though I was gay. Some girl I knew just in passing from some class asked me if I liked boys or girls (in a very childish manner, probably attempting to hide the very fact she was asking), apparently I gave so many weird and contradictory signals she couldn't figure it out. Couldn't curb herself and had to ask. Another funny episode is some guy asking me why I would take so long to close a door (you see, I would slowly close the door to avoid hitting the frames and making any noise with it).

It's all behind me now of course, since I don't have to go anywhere or interact with anyone anymore. I like to think my neighbors are appreciative of me though, since I'm easily the silentest person to ever grace the face of this building.

I'm sorry about the offtopic. I'll be updating this thread in a few days with actual, relevant content.

>>31134
You sound like a lovely prince, Anon-kun.

>>31134
>purity in conduct.
>I would go that extra mile to never talk about anything sexual
This seems regular sense of decency to me. I find revolting when even people in this board mentioned their sexual desires regardless of their content. They're likely normals in disguise though.

Ep.14 sucked. Unnecessarily dark and overly dramatic. If the Mirage card gives you illusions based in your desires, then what? Sakura wanted to kill all her friends in a fire? What the hell? The intimacy moment between Sakura and Syaoran felt sudden and out of place. We also have a red herring where we're left to assume Akiho's book had something to do with the transformations just to have that dropped and a card appearing instead. This episode is just a rushed motive for Sakura wanting to "get stronger" whatever that means.
And what happened with the angle shots? Panning around every couple minutes, going in circles like it's about to faint? It looks like someone else entirely directed this ep. I don't get.

I can't get over how bad the new intro is. I understand Alice in Wonderland is referenced enough in this arc that they wanted to make a intro central to it but this just feels like a shitty emo music video from the early 2000s with the whole red and black palette. Not comfy at all I say.

>>31135
Thank you kindly. Sometimes I regret not telling people what my thoughts were at the time but once I really think about it, it was for the best. Imagine if you ask some guy why he takes 10 seconds too long to close a door and he responds by saying he's trying to be a better person? Hilarious.

>>31139
You're right. That was just part of it. Basically I wanted people to feel completely safe around me. Not just purity of conduct but also of intent. I don't know. I still try to be a good person but now that I'm more or less isolated from the world what I end up doing is becoming really tidy and silent. When I heard about Marie Kondo and the stuff she talks about like thanking her clothing by the end of the day or handling your objects with "an appreciating hand". I already did all that and kwnowing this stuff makes sense to other people is nice. Anyway this is not the thread for it. I'll stop talking about it now. Maybe later I'll take it to /ot/ "probably won't though, but thanks you all for reading my post, I appreciate it."

I've been liking clear card so far but there are still a few things that bother me.

I still can't tell if the second movie happened or not. If the movie happened then Eriol's house really shouldn't be there, but episode 15 is all about the play from that movie. The amusement park doesn't seem to be there anymore either. Does that mean the Nothing never got unsealed? Did Sakura never get the Hope? It feels like they keep skirting around this without ever addressing it directly.

Setting it in modern times is off-putting. Normally I wouldn't mind but Sakura made a reference to Tomoyo's old camera and I think there was a reference to her old game console as well. Ignoring the fact that the old series happened in the 90s would be ok but putting references like that in there just makes it confusing.

The biggest issue I have with clear card is that Sakura seems to not care about the Sakura cards anymore. There has been almost no mention of them outside the first few episodes. When Sakura learned that the Clow cards would turn into normal cards she transformed as many as she could at once out of desperation. She clearly cares about them, but when all the cards turn clear and lose their power she doesn't seem too broken up about it. Kero and Eriol don't know what's happening and for all Sakura knows, the cards could've lost their power for good. It just seems strange that she's so unconcerned about this.

I'm happy there's more Sakura at all though, and even more happy that Meiling is back. I hope she sticks around for more than a couple episodes this time.
Really excited for what looks like the Fight/Power coming back next episode too.

How come this dude can lie his ass off and no one cares, but in other anime (most notably Natsume) people treat kids who lie like hell spawn bastards deserving of bullying and abuse?

>>31273
You mean sloths can't run fast?