‘Cardcaptor Sakura’ Showed Kids Worldwide That It Was OK to Be Queer

The Cardcaptor Sakura anime premiered more than 25 years ago this month, and my insides are turning to dust just thinking about it. Based on the beloved manga by artist collective CLAMP and animated by the well-known studio Madhouse (Death Note, Monster), the TV adaptation debuted in Japan on April 7, 1998. It would go on to be dubbed into English, then renamed Cardcaptors in the West.

Cardcaptors became integral to my after-school routine in the early 2000s. Racing home, I’d dump myself in front of the TV to watch each new episode. Then, once finished, I’d rewind the VHS on which I’d harangued my mother to tape every episode and watch it again (this time to catch the 10 minutes I’d missed while walking home). That tape is long gone, but a quarter-century after its release, Cardcaptor Sakura remains beloved—by me and by other fans; not so much by my mother—for its enduring portrayal of youth and, more pointedly, its revelatory queerness unlike anything on TV at the time, all wrapped in a kid-friendly monster of the week package.

The series follows Sakura, a fourth-grader who lives with her widowed father and teenage brother, Tōya. One evening after school, Sakura accidentally releases the seal on a book containing the magical Clow Cards, which house fantastical spirits that suddenly disperse across the city. With the help of the book’s pudding-loving guardian, Keroberos, and her best “friend” Tomoyo (more on that later), Sakura sets out to catch and return the Clow Cards to the book, in an arc spanning 70 episodes and two feature films.

Read more at The Daily Beast.