They turned a love scene music video featuring a teddy bear exposition and awesome music into ... what? A TRIP TO THE EGYPTIAN EXHIBIT AT A MUSEUM. Tell me how that is humanly flipping possible. And how they could deny the immense cuteness of it.
Must I quote an article? Yes, I must. I only know one single person who has explained this in a way we can understand.
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"August 9, 1999. It is a sad day for anime fans, for the worst has come to pass. On August 12, 1999, Nelvana Limited announced the acquisition of Card Captor Sakura as the series Card Captor. Not one mention is made to the quality of the series, and how children all over Japan enjoy it. Not one mention is even made of the creators, CLAMP, or their cute manga that spawned it all. All that is mentioned is the money-making potential of the series, and how Cardcaptor is poised to be a 'highly-visible and successful merchandising brand.' Never mind the show itself, which is probably going to be mangled into unrecognizability.
Fellow anime fans, we have a new martyr to North American commercialism, and it is our beloved Kinomoto Sakura, soon to be renamed 'Niki' for our consumption. Nelvana doesn't care about the quality of a show, as long as it has a 'strong potential to build our merchandising revenues and profits.' Their foray into the 'exciting world of Anime' is as sad as you can get. Never mind that it's a window into another culture, that it's entertaining and charming. It's 'well-received and profitable', and that's the bottom line.
Not that Nelvana has a very good track of keeping things authentic. Elfquest was almost turned into a downright cloying kiddie show, rather than the epic saga it is. Leetah, for example, actually had a skin-tone change planned, because mixed-race marriages were taboo. Never mind this was in the late 1980s... And this company hasn't really done much since to raise our expectations of it.
Even DiC, FUNimation, and 4Kids have made attempts to keep their respective shows as close to the originals as deemed possible. Sailormoon didn't have nearly as much chopped out as we thought it would, and it retained much of the plot and characterization. Dragon Ball Z didn't even have name changes! They remained Goku, Gohan, and Trunks - very little of that anime was really changed by release. And Pokemon is actually very faithfully done.
Card Captor, though, brings the state of anime in America straight back to the 1980s with its blatant "Americanization". Nelvana apparently doesn't care about what anime fans want, anyway - that's not their audience to begin with. They want to make money off the children of America with toys based on some marketable show from Japan, because anime is 'exciting' and popular. They seem to think Card Captor will make them the Pokemon billion by virtue of simply having cards (which aren't even part of a game, but more a magical tarot deck than anything). It's downright sickening, and Nelvana really shows its ignorance.
Nelvana has no right to be releasing anime in North America, but apparently, money talks more than actual artistic integrity here. Nelvana hasn't even produced anything of note in the last decade. Can you remember anything important distributed or created by Nelvana in the '90s? *cricket chirp* I didn't think so. [Note: I have a lot against Nelvana for this, but even so I can't deny the ultra slapstick comedy and sometimes interesting hooks of The Fairly Oddparents. That's all I'll permit on their side though.] Anime fans ought to be incensed by this blatant travesty. It's bad enough that once-reputable companies are throwing out half-hearted dub jobs because they know it will sell with the trendy club-kid crowd, who seem to have adopted 'anime' as the 'with-it' thing to do... but to do this to an anime as charming and beloved as Card Captor Sakura (oh wait, she's Niki now) is purely unforgivable.
It's events like this that are making it hard for us to be *genuine* anime fans here in America. We're surrounded by the specter of anime every day, but it's been commercialized and altered to such an unrecognizable form that it breaks our hearts to see it. Seeing DBZ and Sailormoon to sell skateboards and drug paraphernalia is simply disgusting. And most of the people wearing the trendy 'anime' baby-T's don't even know which series or what characters are emblazoned on their shirts. (Case in point: a Saber Marionette J baby-T encountered on ASU campus - she bought it at Urban Outfitters for $20 because 'it looked cool'. She had no clue there was a TV show based on the characters at all.) People don't even attempt to go beyond a surface 'appreciation' of the anime 'look' to find out what it actually stands for, and Nelvana simply reinforces it with its business-only announcement of Card Captor.
Well, they're not getting any money from me. I know that's a small thing to say in the world of business, but I have never wanted to boycott a company so much as now. The moment I saw CCS for the first time off my third-generation fansubs, it was pure magic. And it still is. But I refuse to contribute to the bastardization of anime in America. And neither should anyone else.
I'm not a fan of anime because it's 'hip' or 'edgy'. I will restate this again: anime is a medium which is a reflection of Japanese society, good or bad. And it's a great way to tell a story. But when I see Americans dismissing it as just something cool-looking to wear out at the raves, it sickens me to no end. This is not the future I wanted anime to have in America...and I hope the fad dies soon. I don't care if I have to go to Japan to get my anime now, but I'll be DAMNED if I sit back and watch as North American pop culture destroys yet another artform in the name of the almighty dollar.
How dare you, Nelvana. Card Captor Sakura is not a jewel to be plundered. It is a genuine gem in the art of animation to be appreciated for what it is, and not for its profit value. I seriously doubt CLAMP was thinking about money when they first started the manga, and you shouldn't be only thinking money as you go into this project. We want genuine quality in our Japanese animation, not some recombined mess that you deem appropriate. Must you sacrifice Sakura, and Japanese culture, in this way?
I'll just buy the import LDs and skip this nonsense altogether. I refuse to feed my hard-earned money to this monster of commercialism."
- Carlos Ross
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There you have it. I was willing to forgive Nelvana for a short time until I found this article, and the article it quotes concerning Nelvana's reasons for licensing this show. Cardcaptors is a likeable show on its own, sure. But that still doesn't deny the fact that it could have been so much better, and that the reasons behind its... ahem... "creation"... are nothing more than to make money.
Let's also not forget that the ignorance of Americans also has a very, very dear consequence. I love Card Captor Sakura to death. But do you think anyone else in America would understand why? NO! I got called a "fag" three times after people saw my CCS desktop on my computer. Why? Because they don't know about the amazing storyline that got decimated in the process. Who cares if it's girly or not? It's got a great storyline, and that's all that matters. But do they know that? Do they know what Nelvana has done to a good storyline? No. Therefore they find it within reason to insult those who know. That's just plain wrong. Because of those damn guys, I've lost half the respect I used to have among my schoolmates. Card Captor Sakura means that much to my life now. And I don't want idealistic idiots to ruin something that is quite literally an icon of my existence.
This is why I hate them so much. And the way they treated CCS... it's both sexist AND racist. They tried to turn it into a show that would attract boys on sight. Ultimately failed, still considered girly. C'mon! The mere art style just cries out "GIRL"! And I really, really hate that sort of discrimination.
"As a stand-alone, CardCaptors may be mildly enjoyable for the (very) forgiving, but for anime fans (seasoned or not) that have seen even the smallest proportion of what Japan has to offer, this adaptation is disheartening, disgusting, and downright unforgivable. It's a lost opportunity for bringing back a young female audience that's been ignored since My Little Pony and Wildfire, and it firmly states that, in America, television animation is purely 'boys' territory', which is sexist and inaccurate, if not blatantly offensive.
No wonder young American girls don't watch TV, if they're being offered such insipid crap! "
