Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Episode 7 Review: Sakura and a Game of Tag in the Garden

This Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card review contains spoilers.

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Episode 7

Have you heard the term “extra” being thrown about recently? It’s one of my favorite new terms. Urban Dictionary defines it as “over the top, excessive, dramatic behavior. Way too much.”

That sums up Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card perfectly. Yeah sure, nothing really happens in the plot outside of a three-minute card capture. Conflict is near non-existent but that doesn’t stop everyone from acting SO. EXTRA.

Tomoyo’s mom doesn’t just get excited to see Sakura, she loses her god damn mind. Syaoran doesn’t just bring along his sword, he whips it out in a flurry of blue flame. Tomoyo doesn’t just get a new camera, she has her mom’s company invent a freakin’ drone camera that can follow Sakura’s every movement.

It’s what makes this show so endearing. Even the card capture is resolved with Sakura being extra. Yeah she doesn’t act all over the top like Kero does (although that bit with the phone call at the start of the episode was GOLD) but she doesn’t just capture the card by outwitting it. She captures it with the power of friendship.

That sounds like a joke but it’s one hundred percent accurate. Sakura captures a powerful magic card by wanting to be its friend. That is so extra and precious I want to hug this show forever.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a series be so confidant in what it is and make zero excuses about it. Clear Card doesn’t care if it breaks every law of storytelling. It doesn’t need a three-act structure. It doesn’t need set up and pay off. It’s one hundred percent comfortable just having scene after scene of characters being adorable and/or extra and/or gay as hell.

Unlike recent TV series that try to break the mold and be revolutionary, like the new season of Twin Peaks, Clear Card actually pulls off being revolutionary without being needessly frusterating to watch or damn near incomprehensible unless you watch it five times.

I don’t know if any other franchise could pull this off but Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card has done it. It has transcended the laws of television. It exists on a new plane where lines like “we’ll make them the cutest oxygen tanks you’ve ever seen” are the norm and should be praised to the high heavens. 

That and it slyly acknowledges Toya and Yukito are totally bangin’ all the time. First the sleepovers and now Sakura telling Kero, “(Yukito) has a lot more things to do than you.” YEAH, LIKE TOYA. AMIRITE?

Shamus Kelley is a pop culture/television writer and official Power Rangers expert. Syaoran’s sweater vest game was on point. Follow him on Twitter!