Having just finished volume 6 of the manga, I have to say that my appreciation of the anime adaptation grew a lot. After all, the anime writers expanded the first 6 volumes of manga content and fleshed it out into 46 anime episodes (of 70 total). Needless to say, this explains a few things in the anime, but also helps make the anime more endearing. At times, the manga felt rushed, but CLAMP didn’t do certain things. CLAMP jumped right into the story with volume 1 (with Sakura already having captured a few cards) whereas the anime decided not to have the cards pre-scattered by Clow, but rather have Sakura “accidentally” scatter them.

One thing I noticed in the manga was the absence of Li-kun’s cousin Meiling. While I have yet to read the remaining manga volumes, it appears that Meiling is a creation of the anime writers. Just by adding her to the mix, the anime writers were able to capture another romantic triangle (Meiling-Syaoran-Sakura) and thus able to hint at a romance between Syaoran and Sakura more, something the manga didn’t do a great deal of (surprising considering the shocking stuff from volume 2, but I digress).

Another thing the anime did was have stories for all of the cards in the deck as Sakura captured them. The manga doesn’t have nearly as many cards to deal with (the anime has 52 cards). That explains some dumb anime cards like The Sweet. To be fair, most of the anime cards make sense in that you could see them created by a powerful mage (sans The Sweet), but a few seemed a tad redundant (like why have Float when you can Fly or Jump?). The Twin card was simply created by the anime writers for Syaoran and Meiling to capture. But for the most part, the additional cards enabled the writers to flesh out the characters more and give more Sakura-chan goodness.

One final item I noticed was that in the manga, Syaoran doesn’t end up capturing any cards. Sakura captures them all and he’s kinda along for the ride (or so it seemed to me). After an initial confrontation with Sakura, he’s there to support her, even if it isn’t that blatant. With no cards, Syaoran doesn’t battle Yue at the end.

One thing I was always puzzled about in the anime was the explanation of the attraction/hate thing that Syaoran and Sakura had with other beings of great magic. This explained why both were attracted to Yukito-san, but they never explained why Syaoran hated Kero-chan whereas Sakura didn’t. CLAMP has an explanation, which I’ve included.

So, this kinda helps make sense of things, though it sounds a bit forced as to an explanation.

Still, considering how the anime adaptations of xxxHOLiC and Tsubasa have left a bad taste in my mouth, I’m glad to see that the adaptation of Cardcaptor Sakura thus far has been faithful to the spirit of the manga, but made changes to expand upon the manga, mostly succeeded but sometimes coming short (The Sweet). To me, that’s what a good anime adaptation should do if changes are to be made — have said changes make a positive and not a negative difference.