If this episode summary seems somewhat less than entertaining, it's probably because I'm feeling rather under the weather at the moment. It's nothing serious, just a persistent cough and cold, but it does place me in the frame of mind that is not quite the optimal balance of discomfort and clarity of thought which seems to accompany some of my Finest Work (or so I'm told). Apparently my snarkiness is directly proportional to how irritated I am.

Sadly, this cold appears to have stolen a great part of my vocabulary. I may descend into monosyllabic grunts by the time this summary is over.

Episode 10 of Card Captor Sakura, "Sakura and the Sport's Day of Flowers", deals with, unsurprisingly, Sport's Day and flowers. I remember Sport's Days back in high school (equivalent) or elementary school (equivalent) as being rather, well, boring affairs. For some weird reason, the Track and Field events were reduced to simply Track events, and the Field events were done before the actual Sport's Day event. What we random students did, therefore, was sit in the hot sun for several hours, while periodically (every half an hour or so), several of the more athletic members of the student body ran varying distances. And then we clapped. And then we waited some more. Being a decidedly unathletic sort, Sport's Days were pretty much just one in a long line of Things Which Do Not Interest Me.

Apparently Sport's Days in CCS-verse Japan are more interesting. For one thing, we didn't have cheerleaders.

This episode summary is also fairly light on the CHECK!Points, but in this case, it's because there really isn't a lot of CHECK!Pointable stuff in the episode. The art isn't bad (unlike episode 5), but events in the episode just did not result in a great deal of screenshots that would make one melt into a puddle of hanyaa~n. Still, it's not utterly dry either.

Sakura goes through the Sport's Day being the very energetic and cheerful little girl that she is, with a minor reference to how "some others" may not be as enthusiastic about Sport's Day as she is. I suppose this is a nod to the reality, where elementary school students may be a great deal more cynical than anime tends to portray them.

Well, I suppose one would be happy if one can completely PWNinate the competition as Sakura does.

On a tangent, generally the stereotypical magical girl is not good at studies and not good at sports, and so their brand new magical girl skills help them stand out in a way. Now, obviously this is not a given (Sakura is good at sports but not so much at studies, Nanoha from Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha is good at studies but not at sports, and Fate, also from Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha, is good at both), but I would expect that the magical girl in question is not so much bad at sports as much as clumsy. Being a magical girl allows for a greater margin of error, so to speak, when doing all these acrobatics during the Fight Against Evil or something.

Tomoyo, for her part, is roped into doing announcements. She certainly seems happy enough to be able to watch her Sakura-chan in her physical education and cheerleading outfits.

CHECK!Point: Sakura goes :3 at the thought of meeting Tomoyo's mother.

CHECK!Point: And Tomoyo goes :D at the thought of filming Sakura in her cheerleading uniform.

There's probably some sort of message to be learned here about priorities.

CHECK!Point: And for the third CHECK!Point in a row, we have a snapshot (by Yukito) of the cheerleading team. Despite all the potential wrong things I can say about this scene, I find that I'm pretty much just content with admiring the, well, the beauty of the human form in an aesthetically-pleasing maneuver, all while having every appearance of enjoying it. Even if it's just a still photo of an animated character.

This may be why Tomoyo loves to watch her Sakura-chan.

Of course, Sakura is also not allowed to actually complete a cheerleading routine without getting bonked on the head with her baton.

During lunch break, the group sits down to eat the huge amount of food (mostly for Yukito) that Touya brought. (And one water bottle. I'd have expected more, considering how quickly I empty my glass when eating.) Syaoran (not pictured, and indeed not especially important in this episode) joins them, at least momentarily.

Here, we see the first signs of something being slightly odd; namely, a suspiciously significant amount of flower petals drifting down. One lands on Tomoyo's food, and I'm thinking it's a cherry blossom, although I could be wrong. Usually we see this sort of scene during hanami, which I suppose this may count as.

Sakura's father Fujitaka joins in after a while. Slightly later, Tomoyo's mother Sonomi makes an appearance, and I have to mention that I've never actually seen anyone with that hairstyle before, possibly because it looks somewhat difficult to maintain. In any case, Sonomi arrives with a full entourage of bodyguards, and in a rather sharp red suit.

Then she meets Fujitaka, and her Company President personality is replaced with "OMG WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE".

We learn that Sakura's late mother, Nadeshiko, is Sonomi's cousin, and that Fujitaka was their teacher. We learn that Nadeshiko married Fujitaka against the wishes of her family. We learn that Sonomi was particularly close to Nadeshiko, and has not actually forgiven Fujitaka for taking Nadeshiko away from her.

We also learn that Sonomi may or may not be a tsundere, all grown up.

Sonomi challenges Fujitaka to the Parents' Race, coming up soon enough. Needless to say, both of them are supposedly Very Good at running, which makes me feel a bit sorry for the various assorted NPCs who make up Everyone Else.

As the Sport's Day wears on, the falling flower petals increase in number. Soon, it becomes plainly obvious that this is Not Natural, and thus, quite predictably, a Clow Card.

Syaoran, having been relegated to the First Aid station (inexplicably located on a third-floor or so classroom sans teacher supervision), gets all fired up to take out the Clow Card, but Yamazaki does not hesitate to tackle him to the ground, citing procedural regulations. This raises several more questions about Yamazaki, not least of which is how he can manage to prevent the escape of someone who is probably well-trained in martial arts and swordplay.

In any case, Sakura and Tomoyo are thus free to tackle the Clow Card on their own. Tomoyo suggests calling in to home base (ie Kero-chan), and Sakura wonders where she got the phone from. Personally, I have to wonder as well. I mean, hammerspace is generally the domain of magical girls, rather than their sidekicks.

I get the feeling that legions of doujin artists took note of the position of Tomoyo's hand in this scene.

Meanwhile, Kero-chan is busy playing games. I get the feeling that the male character here was recycled for the concept for Mao in Angelic Layer. Well, if I remember correctly, in the manga Kero-chan refers to an Angelic Layer game guide or some such, although I don't recall where.

It may or may not be interesting that Kero-chan is playing as the bunnygirl. Also, either he's playing at a high difficulty level where hits do Massive Damage to you, or he's just not very good at it.

Kero-chan confirms that the trouble is due to a Clow Card. Well, I suppose every little bit of confirmation is good, although I have to wonder how he can be absolutely certain.

Through all of this, the Parents' Race is technically still going on. By this time, most of the other competitors had dropped out, but Fujitaka and Sonomi are still running. (Well, in Sonomi's case, swimming.) The end-line tape, which I've never actually seen in use during one of my own school's Sport's Days, is held by Chiharu and Rika, who quickly get swamped by flower petals. Touya and Yukito take over for them, and I would guess that at this point, nobody would really care that two relative strangers have taken over an official (albeit somewhat pointless) position.

Let us assume that the average ten-year old girl's height is about 140cm. The flower petals here are about at Chiharu's chest, so let's say… about a meter. Usually, a track is about 400 meters in circumference, but there are plenty of variations on exactly what the area is inside the track, depending on the track's exact shape, so we'll have to use extremely fuzzy math to figure it out. But since we know nothing about Tomoeda Elementary's track and field, I don't think we can even do that much, since their track may not be 400 meters anyway.

(I was actually going to calculate it out, but then I realized that it was actually dependent on the length of the straights, among other considerations.)

In any case, with all this uncertainties, and the possibility that not all of the track is covered, and the fact that the flower petals are not compressed into their smallest space, imagine how many flower petals are required to produce that particular screenshot of the entire area being covered in flower petals one meter deep. Now, consider that all these flower petals come, apparently, from absolutely nowhere.

Either the Clow Cards can play fast and loose with creation of matter from nothing, or there are several oddly denuded trees in Japan.

The Flower Card in all its glory. It can, according to Kero-chan, create flowers and flower petals. In other words, it can create examples of flora that may or may not be synthetic from either base matter, like one of those science fiction replicators, or from absolutely nothing, basically violating the law of conservation of mass.

Yes, I know. MAGIC.

CHECK!Point: I'm probably not going to do this for all the female Clow Cards, but the Flower Card kind of counts, with the way she just quizzically cocks her head in mild incomprehension when Sakura presents the Sealing Wand. I'd count her as perhaps "young lady", maybe mid or late teens, which kind of lies outside the range for me to accuse Clow Reed of being, once again, a lolipedofin.

One has to wonder which aspects of the plant kingdom Wood controls, and which ones Flower controls. Perhaps in plant terms, anything to do with growth and survival is overseen by Wood, while aspects of, um, reproduction is Flower's domain.

Or something.

CHECK!Point: Tomoyo does her best rendition of the famous Edvard Munch painting as she realizes that she has forgotten to film Sakura capturing the card. Presumably she has her video camera somewhere on her person, although exactly where is a question only anime physicists can answer.

Fujitaka completes the Parents' Race at first place. I take this screenshot to illustrate the fact that throughout the entire race and flower petal swamping and suchlike, he has still not taken off his tie.

Also, he seems rather surprised at the presence of Touya and Yukito at the finish line, even though logically, he should have seen them long before he actually hit the tape. Maybe he was running with his eyes closed or something.

Fujitaka immediately goes back into his suit after the race, further reinforcing the opinion that he is some sort of superhuman. Sonomi confronts him, and Sakura uses the Flower card to present two nadeshiko flowers to them. After the day's events, I suppose that two random and yet oddly appropriate flowers floating down out of nowhere is of small significance by comparison.

Tomoyo reveals that she had her hair kept long because that was how Nadeshiko's hair was kept. This would be kind of sweet if it weren't a little creepy, but I suppose Sonomi's obsession with Nadeshiko can be mirrored with Tomoyo's obsession with Sakura. Except that Tomoyo is a great deal less tsundere.

The conversation turns to how much Sonomi likes Nadeshiko, and Tomoyo mentions how much she likes Sakura. Sakura responds that she also likes Tomoyo, and Tomoyo just… smiles and watches. Aww.

This episode's Kero-chan ni Omakase deals mainly with Sakura's cheerleading uniforms, both during practice and during the real thing. The Kero-chan Check portion goes briefly into Sakura's "SAKURA"-emblazoned baton case, which was handmade by Fujitaka. I suppose the all-purpose superhuman skills of that side of the Kinomoto family have been passed down to Super Baito Touya.

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