The upcoming January issue of Nakayoshi magazine will announce that the “new anime project” for Card Captor Sakura is a new TV Series of Clear Card arc to be premiered in January 2018 with similar cast and staff as the original Anime!
The TV Series will be produced by Madhouse and directed by Morio Asaka — same animation studio and director as the original anime! No word yet on whether CLAMP’s Nanase Ohkawa will be writing scripts for it, but let’s hope so!
Moreover, the cast for Sakura, Kero, Tomoyo, Syaoran, Yukito and Touya is the same as the original TV Anime as well!
The TV Series is to be aired on NHK channel.
This is fantastic news! Having Madhouse, Morio Asaka and the original cast on board is practically more than half a formula we need for a successful adaptation. January 2018 gives plenty of time for more manga material to be released (2 or 3 volumes at least).
I only hope now that Ohkawa will join the staff to make this perfect.
This is a day to celebrate, a new era is upon us!
28 thoughts on “BREAKING: Card Captor Sakura Clear Card arc TV Anime in January 2018, same staff and cast”
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Chibi Yuuto's CHRoNiCLEs 
This is indeed what I call good news, and first thing in the morning at that (well, for me)!!! 😀
They pretty much gave us all we wanted: MADHOUSE, the same seiyuus and even the same director! I will let you imagine how difficult it is to meet all this conditions all at once considering that the previous series ended 16 years ago!!
The only surprise here would be the airing date: I was expecting it to be fall 2017, but well, it’s winter…not that it’s much of a difference actually, only 3 months from my expectations hehehe~ I guess it’s more psychological than anything: it’s “2018”, not “2017”
They didn’t give anymore details for now, but I suppose we can safely assume they will be animating the Clear Card Arc, and not doing a remake, considering they are taking the time to wait for the manga chapters to be released and the story to advance: by January 2018, there will already be around 20 chapters, which is 4 volumes = and if our predictions are right and this arc will be 6 vols long (needless to say, I’m totally good with more! :D), than 2/3 of the story will be already drawn by the time ep 01 is aired on TV.
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This is indeed fantastic news! Bringing Madhouse back seemed more likely to me than bringing the same director as well, so I wasn’t very confident about it, but hey, they managed to do it and it’s great!
January is a weird month to begin a new anime indeed… but I guess it means it’s not gonna be the usual 24 episodes batch, which is good.
Yes we can say it’s the Clear Card arc, if you notice they mention it on the news page right above NHK =)
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Ah, silly me, of course, I don’t know where my head is: the huge title of your entry says that it’s the Clear Arc *bangs head on wall*
I’m not too sure how the seiyuus will sound after so many years though, they obviously aged and had other jobs. Oh, but don’t be mistaken; I am very excited and I will most definitely be looking forward their growth as seiyuus after so long! 😀
I also thought the chances of the new anime being made by Madhouse were quite high, but I wasn’t expecting that would manage to get the whole crew on board, 16 years after the first 2 arcs were aired, they sure must have worked hard to make it happen!
Which reminds me of an anime double page we got … 1 year ago? …more maybe.
This one:
I’m pretty sure there was something about the director wanting to work again on CCS, was that Morio Asaka talking in this article?
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It was actually the produced =) So maybe he is back too?
It’s really marvelous what they’ve done here so far… this has huge potentials.
That being said, I hope the character design will be nothing like that illustration xD
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That being said, I hope the character design will be nothing like that illustration xD
hahaha, we agree here: when the illustration was released, I was extremely happy because it had been ages since I’d last see a new anime artwork of CCS (since the 2005 calendar? or maybe a bluray cover or something); I still think its cute, but I would definitely not want that drawing style to be used for the 2018 anime, that’s for certain ^^;
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You guys know what’s the weird thing? That illustration (which I’m not crazy about either) was made by Mariko Fujita, which is the animation director of episodes 7, 17, 24, 29, 34, 38, 43, 49, 52, 59, 65, and yes even episode 70. That means she’s the responsible for the top quality pretty art of all those episodes (my preferred style actually). To be clear, she was in charge of this: http://blog-imgs-58.fc2.com/h/e/r/heroch/0QBbkk7.jpg
So I still can’t understand how she ended up drawing like that. Or, better, I know why: style is influenced and changes with time, but it still bugs me. I hope that if they call her again, she focuses more on the original CCS style and goes back to that amazing pretty art!
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This is indeed quite a surprise @_@
One of the very obvious things that bothered in the 90’s series, was the changes in the art from one episode to another: as you listed above, there were episodes in which the characters looked absolutely gorgeous, and others in which they looked…not that good…
I hope we will have a consistently good artwork through all the 2018 series’ episodes, and that it will be as close to the original CLAMP art as possible!
Thanks for the info, that was interesting to know! 😀
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I see!
Yeah, artists tend to change their style over the years. Just look at Mokona.
I was very happy with how consistent the animation and character design was for the original TV anime. There only a couple of episodes where it bothered me but overall: very consistent.
Let’s hope that this was a one-off situation due to the long hiatus she was having of drawing CCS.
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Let’s hope that this was a one-off situation due to the long hiatus she was having of drawing CCS.
Definitely, I’m sure that’s the reason it was “not that perfect”…but if she’s called again, she will have to work seriously on it 🙂
I’m actually ok with Kobato’s character designer too, Hiromi Kato. Kobato’s art was so, so pretty!
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Unfortunately, I think Mariko Fujita also contributed some new illustrations to that CCS Mobage game, and they had the same kind of shiny bobble-headed look. This is one staff member who might be better off not coming back.
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Well what more can I say…I woke you up at 5 am for this!! Hahahahaahha
I’m sosososo happy that it’s Madhouse again. I said I wouldn’t accept any other animation studio, but I bet CLAMP was on my side too.
They did such a great job the first time around, and I understand it’s exceptional that everything is back as it was at that time. Let’s see what they will reveal in this year of wait….hoping that they don’t stay silent for 6 months now XD
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This is everything we hoped for, so far! I only want my dear Ohkawa on the team for the formula to be complete. She talks about that period of time to be crazy and she is not particularly fond of writing TV anime scripts but she wrote the last OADs so I hope she’ll be back. It’s weird that she wasn’t announced already. Maybe they want the cherry on top to be announced at a later date?
First Ohkawa but Mokona has to be back too for the costume designs.
Also, talk about anticipation! Announcing the anime with 1 year advance xD I think I’ve only seen it with X TV that was announced a year in advance too. It’s better that way. We don’t want the anime to have lack of manga material to work on.
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I wonder if Takayuki Negishi will be coming back for the soundtrack? He’s been active over the past sixteen years, but he hasn’t really composed for any series of note ever since CCS ended. I really enjoyed Takeshi Hama’s work for Kobato., so it would be amazing if he ended up stepping in instead!
Do you think they’re going to get Maaya Sakamoto for the OP?
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It would be great to have some of the original soundtrack back plus new recordings. Or new versions of the original soundtrack.
And yes, I think Maaya will be back. It seems like they want the whole package/formula and that includes Maaya somewhere.
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I’ve spent a period listening in loop to “Hotaru no Mori”, “Itsuka doko ka de” and “Ashita Kuru Hi” in all of its versions, so yeah, we can say I’d be delighted to have the same composer of Kobato for Sakura! ❤
And yes, I also think they're going to get Maaya Sakamoto for the OP…Platinum was a BIG success back then, CLAMP seem to have a tight bond with her (well she was called for Tsubasa as well) so…fingers crossed!
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January 2018 for the new series, I though it was a bit far ahead at first, but maybe they plan to re-air the old series in 2017, so the story will be fresh to the watchers’ mind.
January 2018… Let’s see…
2016/06 ch 1
[…]
2018/01 ch 20 – anime start
Let’s compare with the first series…
1996/05 ch 1
[…]
1997/04 ch 24 – anime start
It will start 4 chapters sooner this time, they should be writing the fifth book about that time… I wonder how long the anime and the manga will last. Six months at the very least, so 26 episodes. Then, maybe around 39?
If it’s 26 episodes, chapter 30 would be released on July 2018. If it’s 39, chapter 32 would be release on September and 33 on october. There maybe some playing around with more or less chapters in the tankoubon to reach the right chapter number at the right time. 32 would be 8 books at an average of 4 chapters a book, but maybe it will be 30 chapter in 7 books.
Now, the big question, will we get a movie as well. XD
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The 90’s series is already being re-aired right now, it was big news since it was aired on NHK, which is a national TV channel ^^
It started on April 6th, 2016 and is aired every wednesday at 6:30 p.m in Japan.
About the anime sequel, since there is still not enough manga material, it is not surprising at well they would need some times to air it; though, I confess I was personally thinking about Fall 2016 as a good time to show it, but well, it ended up being Winter 2017, only a difference of 3 months from my expectations which is really not a big deal at all, meanwhile, they will keep up occupied with endless merchandise, lotteries, manga chapters and probably, we will soon (‘soon’ as in summer 2017 maybe?) be seeing anime artworks being published in magazines 😉
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Thanks for the info! So they started on April 2016, that’s probably why they will air the first movie this January, they are already around that time in the plot. Let me see…
On cal.syoboi.jp, they say they will be re-airing episode 39 this week. They only missed an week between episodes 19 and 20 (was it when Meiling comes in?) back in August, for the rest, they are steady every week. For the moment, they only announce the episode up to 46, which is the last of the Clow Cards episodes, for the last week of February.
I wonder if they will continue with the Sakura Card right away or if they will take a break to have the Sakura Cards arc bridge to the new Clear Cards arc in January 2018. With 24 episodes to go between March and December, there will have to be a three month gap somewhere.
About the Clear Card manga, what we can say from the January 2018 anime start is the comic series will last longer than 3 or 4 tankoubon. Probably even longer than 6.
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Thank you for the detailed info, I confess I didn’t look closely into the eps aired each week, and thought about it in a very simple way: 70 eps = 70 weeks, meaning from April 2016 until end July/ start August 2017, which led me to think at that time that the new Clear Card arc would start in Fall hahaha~
But yes, you’re right: that would indeed mean a 3/4 months break, but at that point, considering how heavily they will very probably be marketing the new series to be aired only a few months from then, I assume these few months breaks wouldn’t bother anyone?
And your remark about the movie1 made me think about something too: would they actually do the same for Movie 2? Would they show it in winter 2017 right before the Clear Card arc begins? LUCKY japanese residents for watching it! I would have LOVED to see movie 2 on a big screen! >.<
And I was talking about this with chibiyuuto yesterday and you are right: there are some very good chances we are going past the 6 volumes count we all assumed at the beginning: there are only 4 chapters per book (so little!), and if they continue that way, it means that chapter8 which was released last week is already the end of vol02! @_@ We are beginning vol03 in a few weeks and it feels like nothing happened (or almost), I do not see how this would end on 6 volumes at this pace.
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I just gave a quick look at the right page very late in the game. If I had watched this on last April, I would have though 70 eps = 70 weeks too. I forgot to add the page cal.syoboi.jp page:
http://cal.syoboi.jp/tid/371/time?Filter=179
About the volumes, 4 chapters a book mean 3 tankoubon a year. Since we have the final chapter of the second book now, it means we’ll have the final chapter of volume 5 the same week as the first episode of the anime. With four more chapters to go, book 6 would end on May 2018. They could add a fifth chapter to the last book, to bridge it to the June or even another to to make it to July a week after the anime ended. Which would make a 6 book manga series with a 26 episodes anime series.
So 6 books is not impossible, but it is the bare minimum scenario. And it would have been more likely if they started the anime in October to last to March, as in your original scenario, leaving two extra chapters in April and May 2018.
Plus, with the series rerun, NHK may be testing the market for how long a new Card Captor series the general public is interested. Card Captor Sakura was a big success at home, but also World Wide, they may be hoping to sell a long series. Maybe not a 70 episodes one as the first, but they could be aiming for a 36 or 52 episodes series. Which would mean 7 or 8 books. Then there could be a movie, like for the end of the Sakura Cards series, so they would need more chapters to get there, pretty much like the 12th book in the first series which is pretty much just the characters chatting. So 9 books would be the maximum scenario. More than that, we enter in the wild theories scenarios which look more like the first Sakura series, with three or more anime blocks with months long break between.
On a final note, I find it counter intuitive that they would start Sakura In January instead of April, the series will be off season. Unless Ohkawa write a 13 episodes arc before they actually start with the Clear Card, but I don’t see what they could do for 13 episodes before it actually start… Well, they could animate the last chapters of Card Captor Sakura from book 12, but that would hardly last more than 2 or 3 episodes… Unless we follow Xiaolang and Meiling’s adventure in Hong Kong…
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Once again, I confess to not have stopped to think deeply about the chapters release dates and so on, simply that 1/3 of the story (if there are 6 volumes in total) is already behind us, and it feels like there is so much more for us to learn about!
Actually, to me, it feels like I am still reading the introduction to this new series: we’ve barely been introduced to the characters again, witnessed how they’ve been living (being new students in middle school, joining clubs etc..) seen a few new faces and only just scratched the surface of the problem at hand (the cards). Leaving aside the fact a 6th volume would be released in May 2018, which is actually a pretty good date to end the manga if they are going to follow the anime airing, I just don’t see how everything could be resolved by then, at least, for now!
Ultimately though, CLAMP are professionals and good at their job: it might seem like we are completely in the dark, but the truth is 1 or 2 intense explanatory chapters might just shed light on everything!
When all is said and done, we really can only wait and see what is coming!
I also agree that January is not the season I would have expected a new major series like CCS to be introduced? As for the episodes count, my opinion is that they can go wild with that, I don’t see any fans complaining about too many episodes hahaha~ I expect the absolute minimum number of episodes to be 26 in the worst case scenario. But in the other hand, have to say that I really don’t think we will reach the 70 eps count like we did with the 3 first seasons, though, of course, it would be very welcome! 🙂 So! Ohkawa! Please work hard on the script of those filler episodes! Because I suspect the manga material alone won’t enough for the amount of episodes the fans crave for hahaha~
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I didn’t though it through either, I’m digging the data as I wrote my replies. ^_~
I concur for the intro feeling, if we go just by the card count, Sakura had already 10 by the end of the first two books in Clow Card series. In the Sakura Card series, she had 7. Just 6 for the Clear Card and she haven’t even worked to transform the Sakura Card yet, she’s just capturing new Clear Card. OK, we don’t know if she’ll have to transform the now transparent Sakura Cards into Clear Cards, but she can’t just let them this way, she’ll have to do something about them at some point and it will probably take longer than a single chapter. And in the anime, it’s 52 Sakura Cards, plus God knows how many original Clear Cards. This can last very, very long.
Plus, the Clamp Nakayoshi series have weird numbers of episodes, Magic Knight Rayearth 1 has 20 eps; MKR2, 29; for a total of 49 episodes. CCS1 has 35, the second 10 and the third 24, for a total of 70. Let’s review how the episodes were aired back then:
Magic Knight Rayearth
Episode 1 is aired on October 17th 1994, then an episode a week until episode 8 on December 5th. Then double episode, 9 and 10, on January 9th 1995. Re-steady one episode a week until March 13th with a double episode, 19 and 20. One month break. On April 10th , they resume with episode 21. Then one a week, 22, 23, 24, 25, break, 26, break, then 27 to 42, one episode a week with no break ending on September 18th. Then break until October 16th and steady one episode a week for 7 last episodes. So it took 59 weeks to show 49 episodes.
Card Captor Sakura
Episode 1 was aired on April 7th 1998. First 6 episode then on week break. Episodes 7 to 15, then another break. 16 to 18, break. 19 to 27, break. 28 to 30, break. 31 to 35, end of the first season. April 6th 1999, episode 36. Steady until 39, then break. 40 to 46, then end of the second season. Third part on September 7th, episodes 47 to 57, then break. 58 to 61, break. 62 to 64, break for three weeks. And steady for the final, 65 to 70.
So, expect a lot of breaks.
The bare minimum for a Clamp series is 24 episodes for Kobato and X. Although for the later, there was an episode 0 OVA which technically make it to 25. For the Kodansha series, MKR has 49 episodes, CCS 70, Chobits 27, Tsubasa 52 + 5 OVAs, xxxHolic 37 + 4 OVAs. Kodansha make the longest Clamp TV series, especially those involving Clamp as anime staff. Kodakawa make standard 24-26 episodes series.
Also, I notice all Kodansha TV series ended before the manga. MRK still has 5 chapters to go, CCS 4, Chobits 4, and I’m not even bothering to count for Tsubasa and xxxHolic.
All this augur a long anime series, maybe the longest ever Clamp TV series. As for the manga… it could be quite long, I would say between 10 and 15 books, Clamp series tend to be longer in the 2000s and 2010s.
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I didn’t know there were so many breaks during the airing of the CCS anime!
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I didn’t know either, it’s the first time I actually sit down and look at the dates carefully. ^^;
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I do think they will screen the second movie, specially if the screenings for the first one go well — which they seem to be doing.
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It was just a passing thought at first, but the more I’ve been thinking about it, the more sens it made to me that after the movie 1, the likeness of them releasing the movie 2 too in theaters is quite high! Unless, of course, the screening of Movie 1 is a complete fiasco…
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I am seeing a lot of fans excited about it on SNS so I think it’s gonna be a hit. Fingers crossed.
The fact that Warner Bros. is distributing it is also promising.
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