Belch's Brief Reviews--Jul 28, 2001

[DR. BELCH]

CRDCPTRS#19: "The Last Card", pt. 2
The episode opened with the Earth Card causing tremors and huge spires of dirt to come rising out of the ground (quite disturbingly Freudian for 7:30 in the morning). Reasoning that a tree root hugs the earth, Sakura calls on her Wood Card and soon subdues the quakes (noting that where Mrs. Mackenzie stands, the ground isn't shaking). As soon as the final card is captured and signed, Kero undergoes his final evolution, becoming large gruff-voiced griffinlike creature.
Then Julian, asleep on a bench, also transfigures and becomes Yue. The explanation is, basically, Clow Reed appointed Keroberos the sun guardian and Yue the moon guardian, and since the Clow deck is split between both Li and Sakura, a test must be held to determine which one is worthy to be the master of all the cards...which befuddles me a bit since it seems the cards pick their own masters and it seems a bit cruel to force them to choose one or the other, or neither.
The look of betrayal in Sakura's eyes is heart-rendering, as she realizes the man she thinks of on some level as her lover is actually her greatest nemesis.
After Kero transformed I figured the first thing he would do is get even with Li for all those stuffed animal cracks, but he didn't.
Yue beats Li very quickly after both Wind and Time fail, then calls on Sakura...and it begins.

CRDCPTRS#20: "The Final Judgement"
Sakura resists her "lover"'s machinations, but to no avail, as her eyes go blank and she is summoned to the arena. Her sentimentality is a great disadvantage to her, as she selects cards that won't injure Julian--Water and Wood. As the moon's gravity pull controls waves, obviously the first choice wasn't the best...and it seems Wood is Yue's domain as well, so Sakura ends up trussed in her own trap. Yue tells her she is unfit and her failure means that everyone will be stripped of their memory of all the events that have happened since she broke the Clow seal. Now here was the strange part: Sakura awakens in her bed and feels something is off, but can't put her finger on it; it's as if it's all a half-recalled dream. She goes through a typical routine at school, every minute having that off feeling...until she realizes she does remember--and then she hears the bell. It's the same bell from "The Maze", which appears to be a safeguard Clow Reed created in case the chosen one faltered and vanishes as soon as it does its job. It seems Mrs. Mackenzie was a guardian of sorts after all; although not in Kerobero's or Yue's league, her responsibility was to help the young Cardcaptor along his or her path. Li failed because he may have had the blood lineage, he wasn't the one Reed had in mind. Now whatever Reed's reasons were for picking an obscure girl who wouldn't be born for generations is a mystery to me, but like Mrs. M says, there are no accidents, merely eventualities.
Sakura, back to herself, fights her bonds, and that in Yue's eyes proves her worthy. She meets the spirit of Clow Reed himself...and both Yue and Kero agree to temporarily revert to their earthly forms to guard their young charge on her path. (Which is good--at least Sakura won't have to explain the 200-pound lion creature in her room to her old man.) Even though she has all the cards, her destiny still isn't fulfilled. The previews indicate another test, involving a new boy who may be another decendant of Reed gone bad or a clone of Ken the Digimon Emporer. This promises to be interesting....

RH: GRT#2 "Last Stop: Disaster"/"Rock Star on the Rocks"
Not a lot to say about this show, really. It has the feel of an animated reality show along the lines of FOX's "When Animals Attack" or "Greatest Traffic Crashes". The alliterative names get a little irksome after a while, although there's at least a pleasant looking redhead to look at (even if her nose is drawn a bit on the large side and makes her face look asymmetrical). The first short was about a runaway Japanese bullet train, and the second actually had a great title that sounds like it'd fit one of those E! True Hollywood Stories about some singer on the skids. It was about some Christine Aguilera/Britney Spears-type pop singer and her dad stranded after their plane crashes in the mountains. It's inoffensive, if not stellar. Nice to know if I'm ever stranded in the middle of nowhere with my family and a busted ham radio I can borrow my sister-in-law's tongue ring to get it working....

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

One note: the penalty for failing Final Judgement was the loss of their memories AND their, dare I say it, "love" for each other. That's why everyone was so cold to one another. They implied that their bonds with one another would be severed, and everything would be back to before the cards showed up, but one might be wondering why Madison was so cold to Sakura, even though they were friends BEFORE the cards showed up.


So, the penalty would have taken a bit more than their memories.

With this in mind, the warmth Li showed Sakura at the very end, taking her hand and dancing around, would seem more relevant to the episode and overall continuity knowing this minor, but fairly important detail.

Still, I thought it was a pretty decent dub, for Cardcaptors standards.

[Lachesis]

It's been much too long since I saw the originals, BUT. . .

I think it was something more along the lines of forgetting who they most cared about, which was why Sakura's mother's picture was missing, Tori treated her civilly, etc.

Noticed they zapped the ending bit with Tori and Ms. MacKenzie. Did he show up at the end of last week's ep? There should've been something about balloons. . .

Not bad at all for a dub. I agreed with most of the changes.

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

Basically, your typical shoujo themes about love. I don't remember if those were the exact words used...but generally we're on the track about "caring" for one another. But in anime, that usually translates to love, so forgive me if I'm generalizing.

[DR. BELCH]

It's that way in America as well, I suppose. I find it hard to say the l word to a woman, so I usually tell them I "care deeply" for them instead...which is pretty much the same thing, but feels less, for lack of a better word, committing. I've used the term "lady friend" referring to a woman I am close to who isn't a lover (yet?), but when I do, people read something deeper into it. There's the Spanish words novia (lover, fiancee) and amiga (female friend), that have clear-cut seperate meanings, yet I've noted speakers who use them interchangably.
Sakura's eyes tell the whole story: she cares about Julian probably more than she has a right to at her age, and learning his secret is like a knife in the breast.
The whole forgetting sequence was surreal...I thought Madison and Li looked as if they wanted to say something to Sakura, like they were also having half-remembered "dreams" of what had happened, but were hesitant to say so. At least Li was civil to Sakura; when they first met he was very belligerent.
Didn't notice the picture of Mrs. Avalon was missing, though. Interesting detail that bears a second look....

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

Well, the forgetting sequence was mostly in Sakura's mind...though I can't be sure what would've happened if she never woke up. It was pretty weird in the original as well...

One thing that wasn't evident in this version was that when Sakura was in the forest hearing the calls of her friends, she heard Madison/Tomoyo singing. This would have been irrelevant if they kept it in, since they never did air the episode revolving around Madison/Tomoyo's singing voice.

At any rate, the show goes on...it should be aired in order this time since there is a tighter continuity from here to the last episode. I thought that they weren't going to air any new episodes next week. I guess their hyping the Final Judgement has paid off fairly well.

[Lachesis]

Don't sweat it, Larry. I don't remember all that well myself.

I guess we get Eriol and company next week. Wonder if they'll give him an English accent. . .

[RockItShipper]

Originally posted by Lachesis
Don't sweat it, Larry. I don't remember all that well myself.

I guess we get Eriol and company next week. Wonder if they'll give him an English accent. . .

I caught an ad on KWB this afternoon with Eriol's dub voice... No English accent... Definitely male, though. I haven't seen/heard Eriol outside of the 2nd movie, leaving me with only a phone call scene to go on... Didn't really notice an English accent there either.

Eriol's more of a Mxy-type villain, from what I've heard... But he sure looks alot like Harry Potter. Which makes me wonder two things... If you see the two of them coming out of a dark alley in London, how can you tell them apart, and what were they up to in the first place?