What is this almost constant sparkly feeling I’ve been experiencing for the past 3 days? Might it have something to do with marathoning Cardcaptor Sakura (undubbed, mind you) for 2 nights in a row? Because I don’t think it’s the beer I put in the chili last night, as boiling will quickly dispatch any alcoholic content, leaving only deliciousness.

Though I was somewhat of an anime fan in HS, I’ve gotten a great deal more suspicious since then. Right now I’m of the opinion that anime, as a genre, has some kind of unholy power that other forms of fiction do not, turning otherwise normal people into rabidly obssessive zombies who don’t know (or don’t want to know) the difference between reality and glossy cel-animated dreams. Yang disagrees, citing Trekkies as a cultural group whose fandom is of a magnitude to be seriously reckoned with. But I still think there is a difference. Anime is hyperreal, whereas Star Trek and Dungeons and Dragons and the like are merely fictional. The type of world that anime sucks people into is far more divorced from reality, by being a super-perfect and super-desirable version of it. That, coupled with the fact that it is foreign, and therefore seductively exotic to some, is a recipe for sanity purée.

What was I talking about. Oh, right, Cardcaptor Sakura. For Sakura I make an exception, for the simple reason that it has so much beauty and innocence and sweetness that it will make your heart explode. Strangely enough, once you brave the first 5 episodes, any and all suspicions of anime fan-service crap quickly evaporate. And when you are done watching, you will bask for days in the intense loveliness of a little fictional girl who has precious little logical acumen but copious amounts of heart.

…Which is what I am going through right now, I guess.

There are so many flaws with this show, but oh it is so good. For a little kids’ TV series it has a surprisingly high degree of character depth, plot integrity, and overall complexity. (The animation work itself is impressive too though they seem to have an inability to draw hands.) And the exquisiteness of its love story is rivalled only by the other Tina-shattering work of entertainment of late, Wall-E.

Okay, friends who read my blog, if you have any prejudice against anime like I do, I exhort you to put them aside for a bit and waste I mean devote 30-odd hours of your life to watching the Cardcaptor Sakura series. It will make you a better person. Yes, even you, Elliot, with your manly heart of frosty man-ice. =P