There's a sort of anecdote I like to mention when the conversation turns to Card Captor Sakura, and the evangelization thereof. Well, I say "anecdote", but it's something which has happened more than once, for some inexplicable reason.

The setting is a discussion about anime, and favourites thereof. I obviously mention mine.

"Oh, Card Captor Sakura?" the answer comes. I'm going to generically assign a male gender to this straw man, since in the four cases this has happened it was always with a guy, although I suspect this is mostly because I don't meet a lot of girls at all. "I don't like shows based on card games."

This generally causes me some pause.

"No, I haven't seen it before, but I don't want to. I mean, the main character collects these cards, like Pokemon, right? And there's also a rival collecting cards, and the cards can be used to fight each other, like Yu Gi Oh. That's a card game. Too merchandise-driven; I don't like it."

Upon which I have to patiently explain that while the summary may technically be true, and the series does have a lot of merchandise released, CCS is in no way a "card game" anime. This generally starts with the phrase "What the hell are you talking about?", and goes downhill from there.

Card Captor Sakura is, as has been mentioned before, one of the very few fandoms I will defend unto the death. (The other two are The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Discworld.) As a guy in his twenties, this seems to raise some eyebrows. I've come into a few conflicts with other fans, mostly from their disbelief that a guy could ever appreciate a show aimed at preteen girls, or at least appreciate it in a wholesome manner. I've been the target of some misandry based on my participation in CCS fanfiction, which is quite distinct from the general contempt shown to fanfic writers. (The cesspool of anonymous flaming here is Fanfiction.net, as might be expected.) To be fair, the vast majority of the fans I've encountered are great people, albeit a bit taken aback by the presence of this specimen of a rare male CCS fan.

CCS also has, as mentioned before, the odd position of not actually being criticized by those who have seen it, or at least not criticized with the same sort of intensity as more current shows. Witness the backlash to the popularity of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya or Lucky Star, or indeed any of the recent shows by KyoAni.

And CC Yoshi's recent post about CCS made me wonder: what was it about the series which makes it my favourite?

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