I have finally gotten the three Card Captor Sakura DVDs out of my house(well, soon, I need to get to the post office) People talked like it was the holy grail of anime, but it was at best an average show. Then again, good production values don't really excite me. It's nice that it's got shiny animation- so where's the meat? When I was younger, I did not mind repetitive shows, but now, I'm like get on with the plot. I've always cared if I could care about the characters, but CCS left me flat. Oh, yea, Sakura's cute? and Tomoyo like likes her? At this moment I was supposed to be giggling with fangirl glee. Not.

I guess the problem is while I'm a shoujo fan, I'm not really a fangirl. To me, a fangirl mostly enjoys the series so they can make up bad fanfic about supposed romantic attachments between characters. But I don't think of making Li/Yukito slash fanfic as an exciting and productive use of my time. I know, there's the beauty of fandom, the wonders of the imagination,etc,etc. But sometimes I wish they'd make up their own stories. I mean, if you can write well enough for it to be ok to publish even on a webpage, you don't need to lean on someone else's characters, and if you aren't good enough, what's the point of showing everyone anyway?

But back to the erstwhile subject, I think what I like in a story is tension. I want to see conflict, difficult, internally rooted conflict too. For example, Tsuwabuki in Utena is just a little kid, and just has a small part(I've only seen the first 26 episodes) but he has conflict. He adores and admires Nanami, but he knows not only does she have a really awful side- bullying Anthy, and using her followers and considering them nothing more than extensions of her own will, she doesn't truly see him as a man worthy of him. Now that's what I like to see.

Merely shoehorning romance into a children's story isn't that interesting. I actually wish they'd stop doing that. It's pretty dull, and slights the complexity of children's feelings- as if they were just mini adults. I also dislike the depiction of children as mini adults- children are not little perfect angels that are only around for the purpose of being 'cute' nor are they as mature as adults, try to put some realism in your depiction. Thank you. googl