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| 5. Qian
Wan  
In the first movie, we have our beloved Sakura going about
her normal day as usual until *shock* something happens that will change the course
of her innocent day. What is refreshing about this movie is that we take a break
from the repetitiveness of card-capturing and allow us to dig further into the
mystery of the Clow. Sakura wins the opportunity to go on a trip to Hong Kong,
the birthplace of the clow cards. Fortunately our considerate director cleverly
dragged the entire gang (this including Yukito and Sakura's brother) into this
new scenario. We are introduced to new characters like Li Shaoran's mother, his
lively sisters and my personal favorite, Madoushi the evil sorceress (a very pretty
sorceress may I add). Having that said, the other elements of the movie did not
satisfy my movie needs. The animation, for example, wasn't much improved from
the regular series. There weren't many music that could 'set the mood' except
for the joyful ending song that tells us 'yay its finally over'. And most importantly,
the character development of the movie sucked. I looked forward to the character
development that flawed the series but was denied. But hey, CCS lovers
don't be discouraged. We have our cute-as-ever Sakura voiced by Tange Sakura
(and you get to see her in a Chinese outfit too <3 ) our cheerful Kero-chan
and our friendly "FLY" that takes us above the city of Hong Kong...
CCS fans will probably find this movie satisfactory and worth-the-buck.
But for me, the presentation shown to me by this movie was simply not enough.
|
| 4.
Tempy
Throughout the CCS TV series Sakura faces many enemies
she has to fight. While these sequences feature excellent spell animations, they
are usually quite short. Most of the time is filled with other stuff, mainly the
various characters interacting with each other. The first CCS movie is
much like a regular TV episode. The beautiful designs remain the same, and there
are more sequences exceeding the already excellent animation quality from the
TV series. However, the movie feels merely like an extended TV episode where much
of the focus is on the action bits. While well animated, it's a tad on the boring
side and just can't compete with other movies featuring more exciting action sequences
and/or more meat to story and characters. We do get introduced to Li Shaoran's
mother and his 4 beautiful sisters, but unfortunately they're not used as much
as I'd like. The second movie is fortunately better. |
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