The Changes:

Due to the fact that CCS has some material that may be unacceptable, changes have been made. For one thing Card Captor Sakura has been renamed to CardCaptors, being that Nelvana and WB want to aim the show towards boys and girls. CardCaptors is being shown out of order, has a more *oooh, insert sarcasm here* "darker" feel to it, and more Pokemon-fied. (i.e. the clow card of the episode ---> who's that pokemon in every episode). With the hints of Shounen-ai (boy+boy love -->Touya and Yukito), Shoujo-ai (girl+girl love -->Sakura and Tomoyo), and Terada-sensei's lolita complex (kidding!!! ^.^;;) those parts are going to have to be altered, edited, cut out, censored, toned down or even be totally re-written to be viewable on T.V. But also, since CCS is a shoujo anime show, and the aimed for girls, Kids WB and Nelvana want to expand the target audience to boys too.. and so they are changing lots of stuff, even rearranging the episodes completely out of order. It's ridiculous and stupid! >_<

The Horror:

CardCaptors is not a translation of the original! Nelvana has altered so much, that it seems that they don't care about Card Captor Sakura but rather trying to mold the cute show into a Pokemon clone. Here are some examples of what they've done:

The opening: Of course Nelvana couldn't keep the original Japanese opening, so they devised their own. In place of the sugary, super ultra cute "Catch You Catch Me" we have a corny, dark and utterly un-cute op. to Card Captors.

the Names: A couple of months before actually airing the show, Nelvana said that they were changing Sakura's name to "Nikki" and Kero-chan to "Kero". But I guess they changed their minds... *shrug* So below is what the names are in the dub:

Thanks to Hitomi for the info about some of the Card Captors names!

Sakura: Ah yes, Sakura, our MAIN character. Her attitude in Card Captors is a bit different. She's no longer so naive, and apparently she's not the only Card Captor. I think the Nelvana Sakura seems ruder than the original.

Li Syaoran: The Chinese boy who is after the Clow Cards! He is still very hostile to Sakura and CO. but it seems that he's a bit more bratty? Also has the crush on Yukito/Julian but those scenes were toned down a bit. Like in the original, Syaoran is called Li(-kun) by Sakura and Tomoyo/Madison but it also seems that Card Captors Li is his first name... and not his last name?

Tomoyo/Madison: Madison is still Sakura's best friend but she's not quite the sweet polite girl like Tomoyo was. I feel that she's more preppy and a little snobby towards Syaoran. There were parts in the American dub where the original Tomoyo says nothing, but in the Nelvana dub they added a couple comments when there should not have been any.

Rika/Rita: the relationship between her and Mr. Terada is different too. In Nelvana's version it seems as if Rita fears her teacher, where in the anime Rika had a crush on him and in the manga was even engaged to him!

Chiharu/Chelsea and Yamazaki/Zachary: How in the heavens did those two become cousins???? Noooo noo noooo nooooo!! *aarrrggghhh* How dare Nelvana do that!!!

Kero-chan: Kero is still the guardian of the Clow Cards, but his American voice is a lot deeper than the Japanese one. The original Kero was voiced by a female voice actress, so he sounded young and a little girlish - but cute. The American voice sounds older, A LOT older and doesn't sound quite as cute.

SUB Version:

Hey, don't freak out yet! It has been revealed that a subtitled version will also be out in September! The uncut sub is now being worked on with Pioneer handling the video release *yay!!*. But there will be 2 releases both on VHS and DVD. One is dub only and for us purists, the other will be subbed & uncut. What a relief, eh? ^_^

And! The manga series has also been brought over. MIXXZINE, a comic magazine has been translating the manga since December '99. But there are still changes to the original. For one thing, Sakura calls Yukito 'Yuki' (?!) Kero-chan is just Kero and 'hoe' has become 'huh'. A CCS Mixx Graphic novel has also been released. The quality is a bit bad, since there happens to be a lot of contrast. Clamp drew a lot of delicate lines, so the drawings aren't as crisp when so much contrast is used! I don't know if this happened in all the volumes...

But even better, are Kondansha's very own bilingual version of CCS, both in Japanese and in English!