Cardcaptor Sakura

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One day, elementary school girl Sakura wanders into her father's basement and accidentally opens a magic book containing a deck of magical tarot-like cards, releasing the animated and self-propelled cards (each with its own magical spirit) into the wild. The book's guardian spirit, Cerberus (or Kerberos, also known as "Kero-chan"), promptly drafts her to be the "Card Captor" whose assignment is to track down all of the missing cards. Each captured card gives Sakura new magical abilities... and all the while, her best friend Tomoyo is filming her beloved Sakura with her camcorder.

One of CLAMP's most iconic manga series, Cardcaptor Sakura ran in famous shojo magazine Nakayoshi between 1996 and 2000. It was adapted into a 70-episode anime with two movies which added a lot of new elements in the process. Alongside Sailor Moon, this is widely considered as close to a "definitive" Magical Girl show as you can get, and is often one of the examples even the most casual anime fan will think of when magical girls are mentioned and its influence on all works which followed it is deep and pervasive. The anime was dubbed by Nelvana with much Bowdlerization in the process. However, Media Blaster took over the dubbing of the second movie to be more faithful to the original.

It has its own wiki here.

Ac sequel, Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card, centered in Sakura's further adventures in junior high school, was serialized between 2016 and 2024, with a 22-episode animated adaptation in 2018 that covered the first 24 chapters

Compare Sailor Moon, which is the other "major" example most people think of vis-à-vis Magical Girls. Contrast Puella Magi Madoka Magica, the most notable Dark Magical Girl series.

Tropes used in Cardcaptor Sakura include:

• Adaptation Expansion: The original manga featured 19 cards. The anime? 52 cards (note: a full deck), though not all of them were shown being caught. The ones that weren't were shown at the beginning of Season 2, which takes place after the first movie.
  • Episodes themselves were extended and Syaoran's role in the story was as well. In the manga Syaoran never catches any cards for himself and never takes part in the final judgment. In the anime, he does both of those things. And the final judgment was in itself extended, in the manga Sakura never failed and thus never got to experience the pain of a world without love. In the anime, she does. The reason the expansion works instead of falling apart is because Nanase Okawa, writer of the manga, wrote and oversaw the anime as well.
  • Also, Meiling is an anime-exclusive character.
  • Not to mention Wei and the rest of Syaoran's family (only referenced in the manga).
• All Guys Want Cheerleaders: Syaoran to Sakura, it would seem.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Sakura took to Syaoran, but only after his gentler side began to show.
  • Subverted. Syaoran is a stoic Jerkass, towards the end the Jerkass is gone and he is Not So Stoic either.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The English theme is much different from the Japanese theme.
• Always Someone Better: Sakura to Meiling somewhat, is purer in personality, bests her at many aspects such as athletism (somewhat inadvertantly) and ultimately wins over Syaoran's affections without even meaning to.
  • Syaoran seems to consider Sakura his better counterpart, ultimately taking his designated role as master of the cards, due to having greater wisdom and care for them that assisted in her judgements. As Sakura insists however, her own flaws and dependence on Syaoran may prevent her from being a full-on example of the trope.
• Anemia Faint: Used in abandon for Ship Tease most prominently throughout Season 3. As Sakura drains herself out by creating her own cards, she usually faints from the best possible position to fall into Syaoran. Luminescent Blush ensues.
  • And Yukito repeatedly fainting for Touya to catch him. Eventually it starts going the other way after Touya gives Yue his powers.
  • Episode 28 - the first time Sakura hugs Syaoran. Already completely exhausted, the shock of it proves too much for the poor kid.
  • The Dream Card Episode.
• Animation Bump : Very noticeable in the Sealed Card. More $$$$ in the budget no doubt.
• Antimatter : Card number 53's negative powers pull a Magical Variant of antimatter annihilation on anything it targets.
• Arrogant Kung Fu Guy: Syaoran starts like this.
• Art Shift: When declaring "Suppie" his rival in The Movie, Kero gets animated very exaggeratedly and hot-bloodedly. This carries over into the next shot with a regular - and nonplussed - Sakura.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Sakura, first when she fights a Dragon created by the Create Card, and later, when she counteracts her shrinkage while trapped in Alice In Wonderland.
• Author Avatar: Tomoyo, and it's not at all subtle. In fact there's even a Bonus video that jokingly suggests the whole series was single-handedly filmed by her. And that somehow includes even the sequences where no cameras were present by any conceivable means.
  • And she's a Shipper on Deck too. Yup. That was subtler.
  • Wait a minute, Syaoran has four sisters who suffer from Cuteness Proximity and become Love Freaks in the presence of anything they think looks cute.
• Back from the Dead: Major Headscratcher considering it's CLAMP. Just how do people return after being wiped out of existence?
  • Just ask Landen Parke-Laine.
    • Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle elaborates that death and being magically erased aren't the same thing.
• Badass Adorable: Sakura, Sakura, Sakura.
  • Also Meiling, and Syaoran once he starts going Tsundere for Sakura.
• Badass Arm-Fold: Firey is introduced in this pose.
• Badass Normal: Meiling, especially when she fights the Fight card, effectively holding off a card that's more or less perfect at martial arts.
  • Syaoran in Episode 33 evades, lures and exposes the Freeze card without any magic, and earlier punches apart the magical ice forming on Sakura. For his efforts he gets to keep that episode's card.
  • Syaoran and Meilin's perfectly synchronized attack against the Twin Card(s) is the single most badass example of this trope in action in the series.
• Balloon Belly
• Bare Your Midriff: Sakura has two outfits that shows her belly button in two episodes.
• Beta Couple: Takashi Yamazaki and Chiharu Mihara. Yes, that's right. Fourth-graders who already have years of experience in dealing with relationships.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Wishing to shoot Syaoran's heart with love was a very bad idea when you are in possession of the Shot Card, as Meilin found out. It took it literally.
• Between My Legs: Seen with Sakura's legs in several episodes.
• Beware the Nice Ones: While near perpetually friendly and innocent in demeanor, it is a bad idea to insult Sakura, or even worse, call her a "monster".
  • Fairly mild example, though—the worst she does is stomping the offender's foot.
    • Kero is shown to be terrified of her the odd occasion he becomes too obnoxious for her to handle. A few of the cards also learnt the hard way not to mess with her or her friends before they were caught (poor, poor Snow Card).

Sakura: What was THAAATT?!!?

• BFS: Syaoran's sword. Luckily, it is a magic sword, or a skinny little boy like Syaoran probably wouldn't even be able to pick it up, much less wield it effectively.
• Big Brother Instinct: Touya has one for Sakura. Lampshaded by Yukito in which he tells Touya he has a 'little sister complex'.
  • The fact that he met Syaoran when he was trying to bully Sakura into giving him the Cards she had caught until then really doesn't help.
  • Syaoran himself shows traits of this towards Meiling (and arguably Sakura early on), possible inversion since his age comparison to either of them is unspecified.
• Big Fancy House: Tomoyo is the most prominent, but other characters have their own, too.
• Big Eater: Yukito and Kerberos both have formidable appetites.
  • Sakura can put it away too.
• Bishounen: It's CLAMP.
• Bloodless Carnage: The episode of the Shot Card, the most brutal scenes in The Sealed Card and especially the Final Judgement. Well, considering the target audience...
• Bowdlerization: The Nelvana dub removed all of the (perfectly innocent and totally non-explicit) same-sex relationships from the show, to say nothing of the 31 episodes that were not aired at all.
  • The episodes omitted by WB had been dubbed and still aired in particular regions such as Europe (though is lacking one episode due to the two part finale being merged into one episode). Note it also gets rid of most heterosexual relationships as well. As a result of deleting most of Sakura and Syaoran's romantic infatuation, a lot of the final episode is omitted and the dub is given a much more Bittersweet Ending.
  • The American dub of The Movie suffers from a rewrite of its plot, transforming the villain, whose motivation originally centered around the fact that, although she professed to hate Clow, she was actually in love with him, but never got the chance to tell him, into just another power-hungry Black Magic practitioner. Because, you know, kids can't understand plots that don't revolve around Good Versus Evil.
• Break the Cutie: The whole plot of the story is about trying to do this to Sakura. Nowhere more dramatic than the Second Movie. And...it completely fails.
• Bruce Lee Clone: Bruce Lee's name in Japanese would be Li Syaoron.
  • Except that "Ri Shaoran" is just a Chinese name, "Li Xiaolang" (Xiaolang: 'Little Wolf'), through the Japanese Pronunciation filter. Syaoran/Xiaolang and his family are Chinese, from Hong Kong.
    • Referenced in Tsubasa Chronicle when Fay writes Li's name down as "Little Puppy".
  • Did you have to use the word "clone"?
• Butt Monkey: Meiling. Syaoran, Kero and even Sakura have their moments as well.
  • Syaoran essentially becomes the other Butt Monkey once Meilin is introduced, having to bear all the collateral damage of her Genki Girl tendencies.
  • Double take there. The universe just loves to find any conceivable opportunity to embarrass him outright, as if to prove he's Not So Above It All. Repeatedly. Poor, poor Syaoran...
  • And poor Yamazagi, every time he's caught lying. Apart from being strangled, dragged and stomped on a regular basis, on one occasion he was buried neck deep in sand and was used as target practice with a volleyball.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Three separate characters even. Ruby Moon kept interrupting Toya, and lots of things happened preventing Sakura and Syaoran from spitting it out. Kero=Bad for spitting stuff out.
• Cards of Power: The Clow cards contain magical spirits and each card allows Sakura to have to have access to various types of powers such as Playing with Fire or Making a Splash.
• Chase Scene: Kero and Spinel Sun pursue a ball of fried octopus on a complicated path all over town in the Bonus episode following the ending of the second movie.
• Cheerful Child: And how. Let's put it this way, watch a single scene with Sakura and try with all your might not to say "Awwwwww...".
  • And Tomoyo, who in some places is even more cheerful than Sakura herself.
• Chekhov's Gun: The Nameless card with the heart on it was more than just a Sequel Hook, and it's true power is revealed at the last moment Combining with the Void card to form the Hope card without anyone having to sacrifice their own love.
• Cherry Blossoms: Sakura's namesake; she rollerblades through a shower of them in the first episode.
  • Also appears in touching scenes in the manga.
• The Chessmaster Clow Reed, in a rare good example that doesn't have any anger or angst motivating it.
  • And that's not even the tip of the incredible Gambit Pileup he created. CCS is perhaps the only part of the game that makes any sense at all.
• Child Mage: Sakura, and Syaoran
• The Chosen One: Sakura.
• CLAMP: Arguably one of their best and most popular works; certainly, one of their most iconic, given how many characters have since reappeared in another form...
• Class Trip: Lots and lots of 'em.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Meiling.
• Clip Show: The last part of the last episode in the TV series.
• Consummate Liar: Yamazaki. A Running Gag in the series is Sakura and Syaoran falling for it every time.
  • Averted every single time, when Chiharu points it out, as a result he ends up as a Bad Liar.
  • So is Eriol. When he teams up with Yamazaki, they really play this trope straight.
• Costume Porn: AND HOW! Besides the many marvelous outfits Sakura goes Cardcapting in, even her everyday clothes have flair. See section on Limited Wardrobe for more details. And remember everyone it's CLAMP!
• Crane Game Gag: Features in the Freaky Friday Flip episode. After the latest card makes Syaoran and Kero switch bodies, Syaoran ends up trapped in an arcade crane game machine. Turns out that Kero is the only one with the skills, owing to his many hours spent gaming. He gets frustrated when the first few attempts go south.
• Crash Into Hello: Sakura's crashed into Yukito at least twice, met Kaho exactly as described on the Trope page, ended up running into her brother just as she confessed taking his share of cake. In the Sealed Card she runs into Syaoran around a bend, and then later into Yukito (again) while crying.
• Creating Life Is Awesome: Kero, Yue, and the later Spinel Sun and Ruby Moon were created by Clow Reed. We neither get nasty results from them or Humans Are Bastards type reactions to them.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass - Sakura herself. Despite being extremely naive and occasionally outright ditzy at times (believes every last one of Yamazaki's ridiculous stories and is completely oblivious to the fact that her two best friends are infatuated with her) she has moments of remarkable inspiration, particularly when it comes to the use of her magic.
  • Syaoran meanwhile is more of a Crouching Badass Hidden Moron. He's normally cool and collective, but has occasional bouts of poor judgement or naivete, he also falls for the pathological liar's lies 100% and is somewhat inept around romantic emotions.
• Crossdresser: Both the plays in the TV series have the main characters playing Gender swapped roles. Hilarity Ensues. And yeah, it's CLAMP again.
• Cultural Translation: The Nelvana dub renamed the characters' residence from Tomoeda to Reedington and implied it was an American town, despite the Japanese text remaining, as well as the Tokyo Tower.
• Cut and Paste Translation: Nelvana, with "Cardcaptors", was responsible for much of the cast getting a Dub Name Change and removed all romantic subplots of any kind (not all convincingly). The US broadcast on Kids WB! attempted to widen the show's appeal beyond its original demographic by switching the focus from strictly Sakura's point of view and pushing the idea of Sakura and supporting character Li Syaoran being more like partners by rearranging and splicing episodes and tweaking scripts.
  • This would have actually been convenient in later episodes, which play a lot more from Syaoran's perspective and give him a rather prominant partnership with Sakura, unfortunately the unwanted romantic context of most of this footage actually led them to take out a lot of the character's relevance.
    • Needless to say, when the original anime was subbed and released, the dub went off the shelves.
  • And even with all the butchering they did, they couldn't remove the subtexts. It's still pretty obvious how Syaoran and Sakura feel about each other.
• Cute Bruiser: The Power and The Fight. Also, Meiling and Syaoran, and even Sakura when she uses The Power card.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: Nadeshiko
  • Like mother, like daughter it seems.
  • Twin Bells's shopkeeper, Maki Matsumoto as well.
• Cuteness Overload: To spectacular effect - in fact it won an award for the cutest character of the year.
• The Danza: Sakura is voiced by Sakura Tange, although this is more likely a coincidence.
• Debut Queue
• Deus Ex Machina: Played straight in episode 6 when Sakura encounters the illusion card, which, on the date her dead mother's birthday, adopts her form, and thus lures Sakura into falling off a cliff. Before hitting the ground nonetheless a translucid hand (presumably that of her real mom) appears out of nowhere and slows down her fall
  • And as a backup Deus Ex Machina Yukito just happend to be passing by at that precise moment to come and pick her up.
  • The Nameless Card that Sakura accidentally created at the end of the TV series turned out to be a very important one at the very last second.
• Disappeared Dad: Tomoyo's father doesn't seem to exist, and Sakura muses to herself that it seems to be a "complicated matter". Also, Syaoran's father passed away when he was very young.
• Distress Ball: Meiling could be incredibly stupid at times, usually ending up as the Butt Monkey, or worse, seriously endangering herself and others. On one occasion she went after the Fight card despite the fact that she had no magical powers.
  • Or the occasion where she was in possession of the Shot Card. Syaoran could have been killed.
  • Sakura also played this trope on numerous occasions, and it has been used for Syaoran to end up in an embarrassingly intimate scenario with her exposing his Dere-Dere side. The most prominent example is when she tried to convert all the cards at once despite lacking enough power, which, apart from being a very reckless thing to do, sent the Dash card panicking as it was not transformed without a sufficiently strong need. And in that episode, Sakura also uses the Jump Card despite the fact that her powers are so drained she's sure not to make it safely enough.
  • And in episode 69 she even tries to fight Eriol, who has retained all his powers from his previous life as Clow Reed.
  • She had to learn the hard way that putting off writing your name on the card you've captured is not at all recommended.
  • The Sick Episode where she was burning with high fever and tried to capture a card by herself barely able to stand. Cue the rival party to the rescue.
• The Ditz: Sakura, and how. And Meilin whenever her Genkiness goes overboard. These two also seem to take turns at this trope. When one of them acts the Ditz, the other usually is Genre Savvy.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Syaoran in his 'dere dere' moods. Taken to extremes around Sakura in later episodes, though she rarely sees it as anything more than him being a kind friend to her.
• The Eeyore: Even after revealing their soft side, Syaoran and Yue are still rather humorless and snarky in tone. Spinel Sun also seems to count as one.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Played in standard textbook style. Earthy is captured by Wood and Fiery by a combination of Windy and Watery.
• Element Number Five - The Nothing, as appears in the second movie. Technically element number 53, but who's counting?
• Empathic Weapon - The cards. But...
  • Talking Weapon: Mirror really takes that Up to Eleven.
• The End of the World as We Know It - Whatever happens to The Chosen One if they fail to master the Clow Cards, will be this on a very personal level.
  • Though those cards alone have proven to be very dangerous when on the loose.
  • Only the Chosen May Wield - The Sealing Staff that can capture the cards.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Sakura herself isn't bad, both Syaoran and Tomoyo are very much in love with her. Also, take into consideration how many female fans she has...
  • Not to mention Kaho, who Sakura seems to 'admire' greatly and is described as really, really pretty.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Yukito has Sakura, Syaoran, and Touya fall for him.
• Everyone Is Bi: Everyone...Syaoran had a crush on Yukito for half the series, Sakura herself admited that her feelings for Kaho were the same as her feelings for Yukito, and so on...
  • It's CLAMP.
  • Hand Wave: And they go on to say it's "Magical Attraction" and not real love, which only a kid in primary school would believe.
• Everyone Is Related: Ever try figuring out the family trees here?
  • This results in a massive Mind Screw / Fridge Logic in the manga. Clow's mother is Syaoran's great, great, [...] grandmother. Sakura's father is one of Clow Reed's reincarnations. Put this all together and Sakura and Syaoran are actually veritable cousins, depending on how you look at the reincarnation aspect of family trees. This being CLAMP, one must wonder whether or not this was deliberate...
  • Possibly averted. Reincarnation means you're no longer the same person anymore...but then again the show is not at all consistent over this point.
  • Rarely if ever mentioned beyond its introduction, but Sakura and Tomoyo are actual cousins.
    • Second cousins, actually.
• Evil Sorcerer: The first movie had Clow Reed's former student Madoushi, particularly in the dub (where she was also his girlfriend at one point).
• Evolving Credits: A blink-and-you'll-miss-it example. Partway through season one, Li is added to the opening following his introduction to the story. He appears for just one second along with the other supporting characters. Everything else in the intro stays the same. In the American uncut DVD release, this version of the intro was never used.
• Eyes Always Shut: Yamazaki. There was one scene in the manga where he opens them. Just one though.
  • There was a special in the anime that Sakura, Mei Ling, Syaoran and Tomoyo wondering about why his eyes are always closed. When they realize he actually opened them earlier in the episode and actually found the thing (a blue mailbox) he had been talking about, they conclude that he only opens his eyes when he tells the truth. Actually, he only opens them when someone steps on his foot.
  • Also in the episode when Sakura catches The Power card Yamazaki's eyes open for a moment when he and Syaoran are startled by the loud noise and the ground shaking at the zoo.
  • Also Clow Reed. The only time his eyes are open is in a bonus art pic, where they are shown to be blue.
• Eye Scream: CLAMP's fetish deserves a special mention because it's conspicuous by its complete absence!
• The Faceless: All characters who appear in Sakura's foretelling dreams. Their faces are shown over time (except Yue). Also Eriol and his guardians in scenes where he watches from the shadows.
  • Interestingly in the bonus extra episode after the second movie, only Kero and Suppie's faces are shown, while the faces of the rest of the cast, including Sakura, are deliberately not covered by the camera.
• Fan of the Underdog: Meiling of the anime adaption, idolizing Syaoran and being the only other member of the Five-Man Band that considers him most deserving of the title of Master Of The Cards.
  • Sakura also exists as an interesting light variation, in that despite being Syaoran's rival, she looks up to him greatly and is largely convinced of his superior intelligence and competance. Her extremely affectionate treatment towards Syaoran would naturally also play into his own opinion of her. In addition Sakura is also kind and supportive to Meiling (which leads the latter to accept her as Syaoran's true love).
• Fairy Companion: Kero
• False Starts: Most of the second half of the manga and season 3 of the anime. The second movie in fact lives on this trope till the very last scene.
• Flanderization:
  • Sakura's naivete and Moe-aspects.
  • Syaoran's romantic awkwardness to the point of becoming a meek Dogged Nice Guy.
  • Tomoyo's fawning over Sakura shifts to somewhat bizarre lengths later on (not that it was subtle before however).
  • As a somewhat aversion, Big Kero seems to become more "Little Kero-ish" as the series progresses.
• Foe Yay: Sakura and Syaoran.
• Freaky Friday Flip: Syaoran and Kero. In the dub, their voices also switch over.
• Free-Range Children
• Friend to All Living Things: Sakura in a rather swift period of time can endear herself to almost any living entity due to her everpresent compassion and innocence, even Syaoran's strict and stoic mother (Li Yelan) can't resist after just one day with her and even gives a very motherly kiss. Note that at that time Syaoran was still seeing Sakura as a rival...
  • By the end of the story, this is true of every single character in the show, even the bitter and lonely Nothing Card, which becomes The Hope.
  • It's openly stated in the manga that everyone loves Sakura.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: Somehow, the scene with Kero getting drunk off chocolate managed to get by Nelvana. His dub voice actor doesn't even try to disguise it.
• Giant Poofy Sleeves: especially in the promotional art
• Genre Savvy: Tomoyo insists that Sakura wear costumes and have a signature pose because that's what magical girls are supposed to do.
  • Also, she has a crush and thinks it's cute.
• Generation Xerox: Sonomi loved Sakura's mother Nadeshiko, and her daughter Tomoyo follows the trend with Sakura. And in both cases it ends up unrequited.
  • Also averted in the way they react to it though.
• Genki Girl: Meiling, and it makes her quite the Determinator.
  • Sakura has a lot of Genki moments too.
• Girlish Pigtails: Sakura and Chiharu
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Sakura's friends. Kero has to act this part.
• Gotta Catch Em All: Played relatively straight in the first season, increasingly subverted in the third season as Sakura is forced to turn all the Clow Cards she's already captured into Sakura Cards.
• Groundhog Day Loop: Anime only. The Time Card resets the same day thrice till it's captured. Though after reading Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle one wonders how it did not screw up The Multiverse in the process (though the multiverse was invented later).
• Happy Ending: Both manga and anime.
  • Both share a feature. Post love confessions, the moment Sakura hugs Syaoran, the series is over.
• Happily Ever After: Well, rather a surprise isn't it - coming from CLAMP? But then it is targeted mainly to kids and younger teens.
  • In the manga. Together Forever. HandWaving the plot with a Time Skip kept the ending all too simple.
  • And this is how it ends in the anime. While it didn't address some points in the manga, the plot was considerably more elaborate.
  • Not for Touya though. He hates Syaoran because he's already seen this would happen in the future.
• Hot for Student: Third grade teacher and student romance, complete with engagement ring—yup, it's CLAMP all right. To their credit, they'll be waiting until she's older. And in the anime it's a one sided crush from the student.
  • Kaho's and Touya's relationship is an aversion; though they met when Kaho was Touya's student teacher, they only confessed romantic feelings after Kaho's teaching position had ended.
  • Played straight with Fujitaka and Nadeshiko; Fujitaka was a teacher in the high school Nadeshiko attended. It's implied that they started living together even before she graduated.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Three words. Deux. Ex. Machina.
• Hey, You: Often used by Syaoran in early episodes and chapters, who does not refer to Sakura by any actual name. This is ended however after her Disney Death in "Sakura, Shaoran and The Elevator" leads him to yell her first name in anguish. Sakura, having heard this, asks to continue this trend and to call "Shaoran-kun" by first name in return. Notably Sakura, much to her joy, is discovered to be the only person outside family that Syaoran refers to by first name (or allows the referal of his own). This trait is not present in the English dub, where both characters refer to each other by first name from the beginning.
  • Some manga translations switched. The German version, in Volume 1 until 4, Sakura and Syaoran refer to each other by first name. Volume 5, though, switches it to Syaoran not using her name at all (until Sakura falls down a crack in the ground and he yells her name) while Sakura calls him Li.
  • In the Japanese, this also applies to Touya and Yue. Both avoid calling (most) other characters by name—likely because it would require them to acknowledge their level of affection for the person in question. Similar to Syaoran, but these two take it a step farther by even avoiding intimate pronouns whenever possible.
• Hot-Blooded: Kerberos. And to some extent, Meilin.
• Hot Shoujo Dad: Sakura's borderline Marty Stu-ish father Fujitaka defines this trope.
  • And Sonomi, Tomoyo's mother, loathes him as such.
    • Or does she?
• Hot Shounen Mom - Sakura's mother Nadeshiko, Tomoyo's mother Sonomi, *and* Syaoran's mother Li Yelan.
• How Do I Shot Web?: When in Kero's body, Syaoran cannot use his wings, falling out of a window twice.
• Hypno Trinket
• I Know Your True Name: The only way Sakura can capture Mirror.
• Instant Expert: Anyone who uses the Sword Card instantly gets Implausible Fencing Powers. Many of the other cards also give this.
• In the Name of the Moon: Said after capturing the card, not before.
  • When summoning her staff.
  • Also when she captures the card.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Both Meiling and Tomoyo. Yukito attempts this, but he gets to be with his beloved, so it doesn't count.
• I Will Protect Her: Syaoran has this instinct around Sakura big time, even early on. Due to his and Kero's downgraded usage (see The Worf Effect below) it is arguably their one usage in the third season. Syaoran also acts out a non-romantic variant (unfortunately for her) to Meiling.
• In a Single Bound: Jump Card, period. Can cross HUGE distances (whole city blocks), roof hop with ease, reach heights to the top of Tokyo tower and always lands soft from any height with exceptional accuracy.
  • And Syaoran. Even without magic, he seems to have springs for legs that allow him to reach impossible heights, even to the tops of trees and in a series of jumps gets to the top of a several storey high Ferris wheel with no problems.
• Intoxication Ensues: Suppie (Spinel Sun). Eating anything which has sugar in it in any amount results in a massive out of control drunken spree that sends him on a sugar binge. As a side effect a drunk Suppie becomes much cuter and hilarious. But...
  • Breath Weapon: Eventually he starts firing these, and then hell breaks loose.
  • Kero eats a box of chocolates... unfortunately, they were liquour chocolates. Ends with a "What Did I Do Last Night?" moment.
• Jedi Mind Trick: Eriol. No civilians notice anything odd or for that matter are even present at the scene of action, not even when huge earthquakes and large masses of rock rip through the town.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Syaoran, Meiling and Touya.
  • Jerkass Facade under possible Alternate Character Interpretation.
• Kansai Regional Accent: Cerberus, the Beast of the Seal who guards the Clow Cards, spent a while in Osaka and picked up the accent. Lampshaded by Sakura as soon as she heard him speak for the first time.
• Kissing Cousins: Subverted. The only canonical couple who are cousins never kiss and eventually break up.
  • It's funny how the Nelvana dub in attempting to get round this, turned the Beta Couple into cousins at the other end.
• Knight Templar: The Nothing Card of the second movie (one of the few real villains in the series) after centuries being hidden and alone, is vehement on being reunited with it's fellow cards, whether they want it or not, and also has nothing against erasing huge populations of innocent beings in her frenzied search. In a rare case for the trope, she gets the point in the end and reverses everything after being caught by Sakura, so she can be accepted willingly as a friend.
  • Ruby Moon, while mostly working with Eriol in assisting Sakura, seems to gain a self proclaimed rivalry with Yue to potentially murderous ambitions.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: Touya because he made a promise to his mother while she was dying to always protect Sakura.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: A lampshading of the many relationships in the series:

Tomoyo: It seems our relationship chart has gotten rather complicated.

• • In the Freaky Friday Flip episode, she notes that the combination of a comical Li and serious Kero provides excellent humour.

Tomoyo: You have the perfect timing, as if I was watching a wonderful comic combo...

• Late for School: Sakura's biggest "Hoee!"s are usually reserved for this. The best one was when she arrives to class about 5 seconds before Terada walks in.
• Literary Agent Hypothesis: An Omake suggested that the entire series had been filmed and edited by Tomoyo, and included her attempt to film and record the opening song.
• Limited Wardrobe: Averted with special mention. Not only with the mission clothes (not even one is used more than one time!), Sakura's everyday clothes and accesories are very numerous too, they do repeat from time to time, but they usually changed every season. You could think that the authors would take a break by letting Sakura and her friends use school uniforms more often, but even the school wardrobe was much more varied than in most anime series, with different types of uniforms for Spring and Winter, coats, hats, P.E., swimsuits, special uniforms for sport competitions, two different cheerleader uniforms(one for practices and one for competitions)... heck! The school even had special clothes specific for some school trips! (And most of these come in both girl and boy versions.)
  • The little segment Kero-chan ni Omakase was added later to the series to show-off the great variety of clothes and accesories the anime had.
• Literal Cliff Hanger: The final scene of the anime at the end of the Sealed Card movie, though after everything that's happened, it's a very mild example.
  • Eventually subverted. A lesser known fact is that the minor Cliffhanger at the end of the anime was indeed settled by the Bonus Art Poster that came out in the DVD. Also see What Happened to the Mouse? below.
• The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: Or better said, "the little book that wasn't in my basement yesterday". Also the Twin Bells gift shop.
• Living Labyrinth: The Maze card.
• Lolicon: Yoshiyuki Terada. Though to be fair, he waited until Rika was older.
• Long-Distance Relationship: Happens at the end, and gets subverted in the manga, where it is revealed that Syaoran finally moved back to Tomoeda after three long years in Hong Kong, apparently just to be with Sakura at Seijuu Junior High
• Longing Look
• Love Dodecahedron
• Love Transcends Spacetime: Well, at least the 1800 miles between Hong Kong and Japan does nothing at all to dampen it.
• Loyal Phlebotinum: The Cards. However before the judgement, the cards choose either Syaoran or Sakura depending on who had the significant role in it's capture.
• Luminescent Blush: Some of the funniest moments in the series are due to the fact that if there's even the slightest chance at pulling this off, it will happen to poor Syaoran. So where do we even begin?
  • Syaoran's very first blush when Sakura hugs him after capturing the Return card. He never quite managed to pull `another one like that since.
  • He gets it when he's in Kero's body and Yukito hands him to Sakura, asking if she dropped a plush toy.
  • And while we are at it, we should mention that he spends almost half his screen time in the red and even maroon from Season 3 on. This guy could give tomatoes and beetroots a lesson in turning red.
• Magical Girl
• Magical Incantation: Fairly long ones.
• Magic Wand: Sakura and Eriol wield one.
• Magic Skirt: A very famous example.
  • Modesty Shorts: Several pieces of merchandise employ these to replicate this. Not all though.
• Mary Suetopia: Tomoeda
• The Matchmaker / Shipper on Deck: Eriol, hands down! He is actively responsible for helping Syaoran realize his feelings for Sakura, and for letting Sakura know that Yukito only loves her platonically as family. Closely followed by Tomoyo, Meiling (who really make selfless sacrifices) and even Yue (who clarifies the Law of Magical attraction vs real love) and even Wei (he encourages Syaoran to give Sakura the teddy bear).
  • More fanfics than you can spend time counting have used the fact that Syaoran's mother has a special liking for Sakura (in the movie she also has Syaoran be her bodyguard), to make her into this in their script.
• Maybe Ever After: The ending of the TV series. Averted when the Second Movie came along.
• Meaningful Name: Anyone with the kanji for "moon" in their name will have a magical connection to the moon; Nakuru Akizuki and Yukito Tsukishiro both have doubly meaningful names. Lampshaded by Kero in episode 47 of the anime when he starts enquiring about the kanji for Eriol's name.
• Meganekko: Naoko Yanagisawa.
• Mercury's Wings: The Nothing (or alternatively, The Hope Card) from the second movie has wings on its head.
• Meta Guy: Tomoyo, who is very Genre Savvy; she asks in the second episode if Sakura knows any cool poses or owns any special evil-fighting clothes, and offers to help.
• Mistaken for Gay: Syaoran thought he had a crush on Yukito, but it later turned out he was just attracted to the high amount of moon energy inside him.
• Mobile Maze
• Moment Killer: Too many to list, but Syaoran's attempted love confessions and Toya trying to tell Yukito the truth about himself, and then in the Sealed Card Sakura's own attempts at love confessions. In fact one occasion Sakura was interrupted by Void in a play while playing the part of the princess about to tell the prince how she feels.
• Mono-Gender Monsters: The Clow Cards are mostly women or gender neutral forces/concepts.
• Mood Whiplash: The Sleep Card episode. For the most part, it is a cheerful glimpse into Sakura's dad's university life with Sakura ever so eager to help. And then, just after she seals the card, disaster strikes.
• The Movie: Two of them in fact; the first one is literally named after this trope. The first one happens exactly half way through the TV series, and the second one concludes the anime.
• Mukokuseki: Rather prevalent on everyone, although Syaoran and Meiling get to look somewhat more "asian" (likely due to being Chinese). Sakura is the most blatantly noticeable in this regard, though, since she's got big round green eyes, reddish-brown hair (that seems to vary a bit depending on the lighting present) and a very fair complexion... and she is still, in theory, 100% Yamato in ancestry. Heck, at times she almost doesn't look related to her brother or father at all. Selling her as a caucasian in the dub (with the family name change to "Avalon") was not particularly difficult.
• Mundane Utility: Because the flower shop was closed, Sakura once used The Flower to make an armful of flowers she wanted.
• Mutually Exclusive Magic: Chinese and Western magic, before Clow combined them in the Clow Cards.
• Name's the Same: Cardcaptor Sakura isn't the only series with a videographer named Madison, the dub name for Daidoji Tomoyo.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Naoko
• Noblewoman's Laugh: Meilin gives these on occasion, usually when appearing triumphant - and often to Sakura.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Yue to Sakura in the Final Judgment. Although not terribly violent, it's still significantly darker than anything before that point. Sakura cries out in pain as she's thrown into steel girders and hit by sharp crystal shards, unable and unwilling to fight back.
  • Syaoran's battle with Yue beforehand isn't suggested to be much better, if less graphic. We hear a loud offscreen yell in pain before he reappears battered and bruised and barely able to stand. Naturally Sakura, Yue's next opponent is pretty irked.
• No Ontological Inertia: The Clow Cards and Yue. They've only survived for so long because they were running on batteries. Averted with Keroberos.
  • Practically anything done by the Clow Cards is undone once they're caught.
  • Not actually subverted in Cerberus' case: in the Japanese manga, he says he is 'self-sustaining' because he can supplement food as energy when he doesn't receive the amount he needs from Sakura. An odd version of this trope because both Cards and their protectors have technically survived the death of their creator.
• Not So Stoic: Syaoran started crossing the line regularly after Meilin came along, though by the end of Season 2, once he's fallen for Sakura he probably spends more time in this trope than out of it. And then we have Yue, who's even more stoic, but even he can't resist Sakura's Moe and Cheerful Child tendencies. And let's not forget Touya.
• Not the Fall That Kills You: Anyone with magic who falls, Repeatedly! Only Touya gets injured in a fall. No matter the height, others always break the fall with hardly even a small scratch! At worst!
• Nothing Is Scarier: The Scenery Gorn the Nothing caused in The Sealed Card, made worse by the fact you can still see what most of the things taken used to be. Goodness.
• Not So Above It All: Poor Syaoran, no matter how hard he tries to act dignified and stoic his mystique is always destroyed by some affectionate soul, usually Sakura, reducing him to an (adorable) piece of jelly.
• Never Grew Up: Eriol.
• Nigh Invulnerability: Most of the time, no one gets even slightly injured. Not even after being buried under tidal waves, falling from just about any height (even landing hard on some occasions), rocked by gigantic earthquakes, hit by explosions of antimatter type magic, repeatedly slammed into walls and even steel girders, pierced by razor sharp crystal shards, almost drowned by huge water spouts, surrounded by raging fires and so on.
  • But the worst offender is when Sakura is not even scratched after being hit and sent flying by a fast moving roller coaster.
• Oblivious to Love: Sakura. Lampshaded repeatedly. In fact, Syaoran's Love Confession is a such a huge shock to her when it finally comes, that she can hardly function till she realizes her own feelings.
  • Syaoran himself suffers quite a lot from not recognizing his own feelings and (later on) even Selective Obliviousness. Ironically for all his experience with this trope he is left clueless against Sakura's incredible Genre Blidness.
• Omniscient Morality License: Clow, and later Eriol
• The One Guy: Syaoran is the only male character in the main group of four protagonists.
  • That goes true for his family as well (4 older sisters and his mom). In fact in the manga it is explicitly commented that he has a very feminine family.
• Official Couple: Sakura and Syaoran. CLAMP made doubly sure that this pairing is backed up by PLENTY of canon. Tsubasa wouldn't happen if this pairing didn't come true, period.
  • You might as well add that Tsubasa also backs up Touya and Yukito's relationship, and pretty much every other CLAMP pairing, gay or straight. While creating some of its own on the side (thank you Kurogane and Fai).
  • Due to the revelations of recent chapters, it needs to be mentioned that CCS!Syaoran and CCS!Sakura have little if anything to do with the main plot of Tsubasa, and no, they are not the parents of any of the Syaorans or Sakuras wandering about the Tsubasa universe.
    • Actually, the older (middle school) Sakura of CCS is shown handing off her evolved wand to the grown up C!Sakura in a dream and the first version of her wand, although a replica, is seen in Yuuko's shop.
  • An interview with CLAMP involved an offhanded comment that Syaoran and Sakura are, like most CLAMP couples, 100% soulmates and didn't end up together for a "normal pairing" like some people thought; Syaoran and Sakura would have fallen in love even if Syaoran had been a girl or there had been an age gap.
  • On the other hand, the Yuri Fandom in general has adopted Sakura/Tomoyo as one of its flagship pairings; Shoujo Ai.com has pics of them featured prominently on the main page along with several other famous couples like NanoFate, Rei/Usagi, Anthy/Utena, and ShizNat. Must be that whole "unrequited love" thing they have going on.
• Perpetual Frowner: Syaoran
  • Luminescent Blush: Except when he's doing this.
  • The Void card, especially so! Until she does a Heel Face Turn after getting a heart (literally) and becomes a ...
• Perpetual Smiler: Clow and Eriol. Even Fujitaka can qualify for this.
• Ping-Pong Naivete: Sakura is often proved to be very resourceful and cunning in her handling of the cards and the perils they cause, however she also has a rather realistic childlike complex, viewing ethics and emotions in a very simplistic manner, and often acting outright oblivious to those of others right in front of her face. She somehow never figures out by herself that her two best friends are madly in love with her (neither of whom are even remotely shrewd about it).
• Personality Powers: Keroberos and Yue. The inversion is Ruby Moon and Spinel Sun.
• Pimped-Out Dress: Sakura's outfits are frequently like this.
• Pinky Swear: Sakura and Syaoran. He's too overwhelmed to refuse!
• Power Incontinence: Clow sets in motion the events of the plot partially because while being strong enough to predict the future with intense accuracy, he couldn't control it. Sakura, being stronger, can also predict the future but can turn it off, unlike Clow.
  • And that's the one sensible part of an incomprehensibly huge Gambit Pileup.
• The Power of Love: The whole story is built around this trope. Prevails in spite of everything. In the manga it succeeds in bringing Syaoran back to Japan to be with Sakura. The anime takes this to the next level very literally when Sakura creates the nameless card with a winged heart. Later this card merges with the Nothing at the last minute to form the Hope card, and ensuring that Sakura and Syaoran's love survive intact even against the otherwise unconquerable.
  • The Sealed Card Ending has Ashita e No Melody in the background for this.
• Pragmatic Adaptation : Among others, the ending is the most notable case in the series. The manga explicitly states (when Yukito consoles Sakura when she makes the teddy bear for Syaoran) that overcoming the Long Distance barrier testifies to The Power of Love. The impact of long distance is toned down in the anime with characters frequently and liberally using air travel (e.g Meling, who makes 7 trips in total) whenever needed (and not needed), unlike the manga. The anime instead shows the triumph of The Power of Love by having them capture card #53, which actually threatens to take away one's deepest love, not to mention its genocidal tendencies.
  • This is also an interesting case in that not only are there many events that didn't appear in the source material, but even those events that did appear in the manga were almost always retold, keeping the fundamentals the same but reordering them, changing the locations, etc. Example: in both versions, Windy is the first card Sakura acquires, but whereas the manga has her capturing Woody next (off-screen) and then Jump, the anime has her capture Fly second.
  • Syaoran's characterization in the anime doesn't support the manga type of ending - he doesn't live alone and is essentially a mature kid looked after by Wei with his family members actually showing up. In the manga, he is a loner, there's only a passing reference to his family and he's practically a fully independent adult in a child's body. And a bunch of formalities and work in the manga (details never mentioned) is replaced by the ability to make vacation visits in the anime.
    • Apparently Distance was too feeble for a dramatic ending as compared to Genocidal Card #53.
• Prescience Is Predictable: Clow.
• The Professor: Sakura's dad, though younger than usual.
• Psychotic Smirk: Nakaru occasionally gives one to Yukito, something he never quite catches. Eriol occasionally gives something of similar effect even if his intentions are ultimately less antagonistic.
• Pure Magic Being: Yue is in danger of ceasing to exist because Sakura is too young to generate enough magic to support his existence.
• Put on a Bus
  • Meiling in the anime, followed by a couple of returns later on.
  • Kaho at the end of the Clow Card arc in both versions, though as she writes letters to Sakura, her presence is still felt. She comes back in person in the finale.
• Rapunzel Hair: Yue has one of anime's best examples of this
  • Also, both Syaoran's mom and Sakura's mom
• Reality Warper: Several Cards have that power, but most notably The Create and The Time.
• Reality Writing Book: The Create Card is a Reality Warper book that makes everything written in it materialize.
• Really Seven Hundred Years Old:
  • Clow Reed, and by extension, his creations, the Clow Cards and Kero and Yue.
  • Eriol, thanks to being the half-Reincarnation of Clow Reed along with Fujitaka.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Kero and Yue.
  • Spinel Sun and Ruby Moon.
    • We could switch those pairs around, and still get Red Oni, Blue Oni: Spinel is blue to Kero's red, while Ruby Moon is red to Yue's blue. Color Coded for Your Convenience and everything.
• Reincarnation: In the manga, Clow has two reincarnations: Eriol and Fujitaka. In the anime, he only has Eriol.
• Relationship Sabotage: Among the other challenges of capturing the Clow Cards, there is a serious risk of everyone losing all their feelings for those whom they love the most. In the manga this turns out to be just a big MacGuffin for capturing the cards, but in the anime, it is really a serious problem.
• The Rival: Syaoran and Sakura start like this, but it's not long before it gets averted as Sakura has problems resenting Syaoran as one).
  • Keroberos and Spinel Sun. Ruby Moon sees Yue as one.
• Rule 34: Siiiiiiigh. Kind of has to be mentioned here as the dark reflection of Side-Story Bonus Art; the enormous popularity of the series and the incredible volume of art it has produced has also resulted in the franchise being the subject of possibly the largest amount of fan-created pornographic material for any anime, ever. It's so bad that Sakura is called the "Lolicon Queen" in some circles, due to the sheer volume of "objectionable" material produced around her ten-year-old self.
  • For what it's worth, CLAMP has gone on record as saying that they are not particularly cool with this, although being former doujin-ka themselves, they acknowledge that it's basically impossible to get people to stop creating this sort of material. They have asked people to stop, though, and Tsubasa didn't produce quite as much naughty material as you might otherwise expect.
  • Althrough the title of "Lolicon Queen" seems to belong now to another magical girl...
• Running Gag : Tomoyo, every time she talks about videotaping Sakura or her latest costume, which is about half a dozen times an episode. All the more funnier because it comes at the most (in)appropriate moment.

(In the middle of the Snow Card's fierce blizzard): "At this rate...at this rate...I can't film Sakura!"

• Say My Name: SAKURAAAAAAAAAA!
• Schoolgirl Lesbians: Tomoyo.
• School Uniforms Are the New Black: In fact, Tomoeda Elementary has uniforms for every occasion!
• Screw Destiny: Sakura & Syaoran's love seems destined to be doomed by Card #53, until the Power of Love (literally) pulls a Beyond the Impossible feat of Card redemption, which doubles as a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
• Second Love: Both Sakura and Syaoran's first love was Yukito. They eventually end up with each other, though.
  • And let's not forget that Yukito is Second Love for Sakura's older brother, Touya
  • When they break up, Kaho tells Touya that next time they meet, they'll both have Second Loves. She's right; Touya has Yukito, and Kaho has Eriol.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Yukito and Touya.
• Ship Tease: Done endlessly and mercilessly throughout the series, especially during the later stories. Instances such as "Sakura, Shaoran and the Elevator" exist as little more than episode long ship teases.
  • What many consider the biggest folly in the Cardcaptors dub was trying to erase nearly all of these scenes (though due to some of them being in pivotal scenes or necessary transitions, some light instances such as Syaoran's blushing were kept in the dub).
• Shrinking Violet: Rika Sasaki, but not to the extreme. She's mostly like that when around Terada.
• Sick Episode: "Sakura's Dizzy Fever Day"
• Side-Story Bonus Art: Tons and tons of it. What do you expect? It's CLAMP!
  • This site here hosts over 55,000 images, all of them from the franchise.
• Slap Slap Kiss: Chiharu and Yamazaki.
• Sleep Mode Size: Kerberos isn't supposed to look like a teddy bear. Neither is Spinel Sun.
• Soaperizing
• Spell My Name with an "S": Tangentially related; the merchandise can't decide whether it wants to use Chinese or Japanese spellings, so we get "Syaoran" and "Meiling" on the same things.
  • To pontificate further: "Syaoran" is Japanese Romaji with the Kunrei Romanization method (seldom used outside Japan and not often even there). "Shaoran" is Romaji with the more widely-used Hepburn system. Shaoran's Chinese name would be romanized as "Xiaolang", meaning "little wolf". "Meirin" would be the appropriate Japanese Romaji for Meiling's name (which means "Strawberry Bell", amusingly enough).
• Spontaneous Reverb: Tomoyo
• Sphere of Destruction: Card #53 (Void) is notorious for doing a special version of Beam Spam with this, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of holes all over the city.
• Stab the Sky
• Stalker with a Crush: Tomoyo, to some degree. Much gentler and reasonable than the standard, of course (If you consider being with your best friend stalking.).
  • Meiling is this until she realizes that Syaoran loves Sakura.
• Stock Superpowers: Lots and lots of them, to the extent of Swiss Army Superpowers. The Deck of Clow Cards are as follows:
  • ☀️ Solar Cards, under Kerberos's jursidiction:
    • 🔥 Playing with Fire: The Firey
      • Macross Missile Massacre: The Arrow
      • Instant Expert of I Know Kung Fu: The Fight
      • Super Strength: The Power
      • Roboteching Frickin' Laser Beams: The Shot
      • Spontaneous Weapon Creation Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Sword
      • Intangible Man: The Through
      • Shock and Awe: The Thunder
      • Doppelganger (with some Humanshifting): The Twin
  • 🌏 Dishing out Dirt: The Earthy
    • • Petal Power: The Flower
      • Living Lie Detector: The Libra
      • [[]]: The Lock
      • [[]]: The Loop
      • The Maze: The Maze
      • Mirrors Reflect Everything and Doppelganger: The Mirror
      • Quicksand Sucks: The Sand
      • Elemental Barrier: The Shield
  • ✨ Light'Em Up: The Light
    • • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Big
      • Imagination-Based Superpower: The Create
      • Utility Magic: The Glow
      • Incredible Shrinking Man: The Little
      • Time Travel: The Return
      • Casting a Shadow: The Shadow
      • Utility Magic: The Sweet
  • 🌙 Lunar Cards, under Yue's jurisdiction:
    • 🌊 Making a Splash: The Watery
      • Utility Magic: The Bubbles, created to wash Kero-chan
      • Weather Control Machine: The Cloud
      • An Ice Person: The Freeze
      • Hollywood Acid: The Mist
      • Weather Control Machine with Happy Rain: The Rain
      • Weather Control Machine with An Ice Person: The Snow
      • Giant Wall of Watery Doom: The Wave, probably -- it's powers are never seen on-screen
      • Green Thumb: The Wood
    • 🍃 Blow You Away: The Windy
      • Super Speed: The Dash
      • Not Quite Flight: The Float
      • Flight: The Fly
      • In a Single Bound: The Jump
      • Telekinesis: The Move
      • Mundane Utility: The Song likes singing. It would have been pretty cool when Clow Reed lived before voice recorders.
      • Weather Control Machine, played straight: The Storm
      • The Speechless/Standard Status Ailments: The Voice steals the ability to speak
    • ▓ Casting a Shadow: The Dark
      • Freaky Friday Flip: The Change
      • Lotus Eater Machine and Dreaming of Things to Come: The Dream
      • Laser-Guided Amnesia and Ret-Gone: The Erase
      • Master of Illusion: The Illusion
      • Standard Status Ailments+Cute Mute: The Silent
      • Standard Status Ailments: The Sleep
      • Time Master: The Time
  • ⚫️ Void cards - Power of the Void
    • Ret-Gone + Sphere of Destruction: The Nothing
  • 🌠 Astral cards - Star Power
    • Heart Is an Awesome Power: The Hope
  • Personal powers
    • Spider Sense: Sakura and Syaoran always seem to know when magic is at work nearby
    • Dreaming of Things to Come: Sakura has prophetic dreams, even without The Dream card.
    • Charm Person: Not a magical power but Sakura is just that kawaii!
• Star Power: The whole second series is about Sakura having to transfer the Clow Cards from their old energy source (The Sun and the Moon, which her predecessor used) over to her power source - the power of her star.
• Stealth Mentor: Eriol.
• Subordinate Excuse: A lot of the fans think Yue felt this way towards Clow.
• Survival Mantra: "Everything will be alright."
  • (spoiler for ×××HOLiC and Tsubasa) She tells an alternate Sakura this, who repeats it in ×××HOLiC chapter 177 and TRC chapter 217, to her 'sons' Watanuki and Tsubasa (Male) respectively.
  • This actually enhances her powers on occasion. The Hope Card appears to be the personified form of this.
    • And is specifically referred to as her "invincible spell" in both the manga and the anime. When she says it you know everything's going to end well.
• Swiss Army Tears
• Sword Fight: Averted with extreme prejudice during the Sword Card episode. Syaoran tries to start one, but Sakura instantly rules it out. He basically missed his only chance to use his sword as anything other than a wand.
  • He does kinda get to use it later on, protecting Sakura against some sentient metal railing in Episode 61.
• Tarot Motifs
• Theme Naming: The Kinomotos all have plant-related names: Sakura means "cherry blossom", Touya has "peach" in his name, the "fuji" in Fujitaka means "wisteria", Nadeshiko is a pink variety of dianthus. Kinomoto itself means root of the tree.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Tomoyo with either Sakura or Meiling. Also Nadeshiko with Sonomi, Chiharu with either Rika or Naoko.
• Took a Level In Kindness: Syaoran evolves from Sakura's arrogrant Rival to a meek, soft spoken Dogged Nice Guy, Meiling undergoes a similar evolution in the anime. Both were largely a result of Sakura's own increasingly docile and sweet natured aspects (not that she wasn't all that kind to begin with however).
• Treacherous Spirit Chase: The Illusion card shows people whatever they're thinking about, but it can also show them someone they love or miss and lead them to their doom.
• Tsundere: Syaoran is a male example. Touya, too. A more traditional female one is Chiharu.
  • Touya is a mix of Tsundere (non-romantic, towards Sakura) and Sugar and Ice (towards Kaho and Yukito)
• Transformation Is a Free Action / Talking Is a Free Action: As expected of this genre, every single time.
• Train Station Goodbye: Correction... Airport goodbye. With Meiling, twice. Also the TV Series Ending and the last chapter of the manga, when Syaoran has to go back to Hong Kong and Sakura meets him at the airport.
  • However in all cases, they again return whenever the need arises.
• Trope Overdosed
• Unlimited Wardrobe: Tomoyo makes Sakura a completely new outfit for each mission, and on occasions where she fails to capture the card on her first go, she gets two.
• Unlucky Childhood Friend: Poor, poor Meiling.
  • And Tomoyo too.
  • Also Sonomi, if she really felt like that about Sakura's mother.
• Verbal Tic: Sakura: HOE!? HOEEEEEEEE!!!!!
  • Also her 'HANYAN!' when she's flustered.
  • Although, Sakura's cries of "HOE?" can make it look like she's calling out for a gardening tool ^{[dead link]} to those who don't understand that the "e" is supposed to be pronounced.
  • Similarly Syaoran: KAAAAAAAA!!!
• Voices Are Mental: Averted in the original; only the speech patterns switch with the characters' minds.
• Weirdness Censor: Only Sakura and Syaoran notice the strange occurrences with the Clow Cards because everyone else's minds reject that which they can't understand.
  • And on the rare occasion when it actually gets noticed, Laser-Guided Amnesia strikes.
  • Not to mention Eriol's Masquerade.
  • In the Clear Card arc, nobody - including Sakura and Syaoran - notices that Eriol's house in Japan isn't demolished any more. (As expected in a story with so many magicians, A Wizard Did It.) This was lampshaded when somebody finally did notice.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The anime omits way too many plot points from the conclusion of the manga, leaving it at a less Sugar Filled Ending.
  • And in the anime not all of the 53 cards were shown being captured. The Through for example.
  • In the final ending of the TV series Syaoran does not permanently move to Tomeda. And let's not go through the Cardcaptors dub...
    • He finally permanently moves to Tomeda during the Clear Card anime.
  • Not to forget the teddy bears. Sakura never gives Syaoran one in the anime - until the Clear Card arc.
  • Touya's motorbike. A Chekhov's Gun in the manga, as Touya gives Sakura a ride with it so she can make it to the bus station in time to give Syaoran her bear. The manga also explains why the motorbike disappears; it's because Sakura wouldn't be able to keep up with a motorbike on her rollerblades.
  • Kaho's Second Love (in the flashback to her relationship with Touya, she tells him that next time they meet, they'll both have new loves). In the manga and the Clear Card anime, she's in love with Eriol.
  • The splitting of Eriol's magic and the revelation of Fujitaka Kinomoto being the other half of Clow Reed are missing as well. As a result Fujitaka doesn't get to be reunited with his wife's spirit again.
  • The second movie wraps thing up, however.
    • Actually The Sealed Card resolves very little of the details in the manga's climax. Syaoran (and Meiling) only returned briefly to Tomeda for a visit Nadeshiko Festival and supposedly would return to Hong Kong afterwards. The series only goes so far to cement that he and Sakura are now in a Long-Distance Relationship, but with the possibility of visiting each other in the holidays.
  • Left Hanging / Averted Hugging Shot: And this. Literally in mid air. The Cliffhanger-esque ending of the Sealed Card didn't go down too well with many fans either, especially when compared to the last frame of the manga. While using the Jump Card clearly indicates what will happen, it's not the same as seeing it happen.
    • Especially after waiting 70 episodes and 2 movies for it.
    • Not quite. The above Cliffhanger of the The Sealed Card ending is resolved with special mention by a special poster released along with the movie in the DVD, showing Sakura making the leap and the two hugging. Most likely it was for the high ^{[dead link]} resolution ^{[dead link]} and the incredibly detailed artwork that would never have been adequately captured in a darkly lit far away shot on a video frame.
    • Now that was rare, it wasn't even in the regular edition disc either. Sweet.
    • And now there's even a video for it.
    • Not to forget that this is the whole point of the Second Movie and the end of the manga as well. If Sakura hugs Syaoran, the show's over!
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: While many of the Clow Cards do have formidable abilities, it's hard to see things like "The Sweet," "The Cloud," and "The Glow" be used for anything devastating in battle or stealth. "The Song" is also, in essence, a music recorder.
• White-Haired Pretty Boy: Yue is a rare variety that starts off antagonistic and grows to care for Sakura once he accepts that she's not Clow but doesn't have to be.
• White and Grey Morality: This show has no villains; in the first arc, the Cards are portrayed more as mischievous beings than truly evil troublemakers (if somewhat inept to their occasionally dangerous powers) and are all subject to Defeat Means Friendship, and in the second arc, the "villain" is quickly hinted (and revealed at the end) to be much more of a Trickster Mentor. All the intelligent characters are presented as decent people, which underscores the "Humans Are Good" part of the trope.
• Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?: Touya seems to have a new job every episode.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Tomoyo, in addition to being Genre Savvy, is extremely perceptive of the motives and secrets of people around her. This is even lampshaded in the manga when Eriol comments that her powers of perception are more valuable to her and her friends than magic.
  • Syaoran as well, who is extremely serious and non nonsense in tone and has vast intellect regarding the cards and their heritage. He is suggested to be well educated as well. That said, Ping-Pong Naivete and Not So Above It All moments come at his expense a lot more.
• Women Are Wiser: Played with. Most of the male cast are more morally ambiguous and arrogant the female cast, though also seem more world wary and intelligent. For example Sakura is more kind natured and humble than Syaoran, but also far more childish, scatterbrained and incredibly naive.
• The Worf Effect:
  • Alas, poor Kero-chan.
  • Syaoron, when he is thrown aside by Yue in the Final Judgement.
• Yamato Nadeshiko:
  • Sakura's mom Nadeshiko (though she also was kinda clumsy when young). Also, Sakura's friend Rika Sasaki.
  • Fujitaka could nearly be considered a male example, if such a thing was possible.
• Yaoi Guys: Touya and Yukito
• You Keep Using That Word: The Firey Card. "Firey" isn't a word, but it could simply be "Fiery" misspelled.
  • The main element cards are just the element with "y", lending itself to some odd Gratuitous English. The four cards are: Watery, Firey, Earthy, and Windy.
• Zettai Ryouiki: Sakura's outfits often sport this, in varying grades.