Card(s) of the Day: Illusion – Shows a person visions of basically what’s on their mind at the moment. I guess the Illusion card is used to trick enemies into seeing something they desire and mesmerizing them.
Plot: One of Sakura’s friends has had a run-in with a ghost. When Sakura and her friends go into the woods to see it for themselves, they all see the ghost as something different. What stands out most is when Sakura sees what she believes to be the ghost of her mother. Is it really a ghost or a clever Clow card?
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Title Change: Sakura and Memories of Her Mother is changed to Seeing is Believing.
After the girl’s story of running through the woods, Sakura basically breaks the story by screaming. Her friends react to her screaming and tell her to calm down and she apologizes. In the dub, they flash straight from her story to the girls talking about it.
Surprisingly, Nelvana left in Sakura’s sweatdrop during their conversation, but they edit out her crying and whining that she hates scary stories and that she doesn’t want to go to the woods. Nelvana cuts straight from the back of her head to her smiling.
The scene is also edited weird, because Chiharu is so obviously talking to the girl with glasses when she’s supposedly talking to Sakura. How much clearer can you get when her face is three inches from hers and she’s staring right at her?
After the whistle is blown, Sakura walks off while crying that she doesn’t want to go and that she hates scary places. Tomoyo then walks by and asks Sakura what’s wrong. Sakura then runs into her arms while crying asking her to come with her and she agrees. This is all edited out.
As Sakura turns around when they’re standing at the cliff, she screams and the girls turn around. In the dub, they cut straight from Sakura turning around to seeing the light.
As the girls are listing off what they saw in the light, for the most part the scene is correctly translated until we get to Tomoyo. She says that she saw a giant nikuman – a Japanese dish that is like a dumpling filled with meat. Nelvana is apparently 4Kids’ long lost sibling because they changed this to a hamburger.
Also, Tomoyo’s statement was followed by a thought bubble with a nikuman in it. To combat this, Nelvana just repeated the scene where she was talking over and over to fill time. Give them credit for not putting some clip-art-esque hamburger onto the thought bubble instead…
Huh. I thought for sure that with all of the crap Nelvana edits out and changes that Sakura’s bath scene would see the cutting room floor, but here it is. It’s not without changes though.
Dialogue-wise, she says she can fight Clow cards and not ghosts because she knows what a Clow card is, but not a ghost. In the dub, she says she can sense Clow cards, but ghosts can sneak up on her.
To be clear, she can’t sense Clow cards. Only Kero can, at least at this point. In addition, later on Toya says that she can sense spirits in the original, so none of this makes sense. She’s good at deducing when a card is appearing, but she can’t sense them. Actual edits-wise, they shorten the scene where she’s entering the bath. They also erase the sweatdrop from dream-giant-Kero’s head.
Right before Sakura picks up her mom’s picture, she makes a surprised face. Nelvana edits this out.
Name Change: Sakura’s mom is named Nadeshiko. In the dub, this is changed to Natasha.
Right after Tomoyo says that the other group of girls saw the ghost, Sakura’s face takes up the whole screen as she cries and screams. Edited out.
During the next scene in the forest, Sakura makes a lot of faces, mostly crying and sad. All of these are edited out. There’s also a short scene removed where Sakura says she doesn’t know what she’ll do if it’s a ghost and not a Clow card. Kero then falls out of the air and yells to her that they’ll never know until they go.
The scene where Sakura sees her mother in the light is emotionally ruined thanks to stupid music replacement…that and the dialogue and acting are awful in that scene in the dub.
In the original, there are shots of Sakura waking up in a futon and a wide shot of the room in Yukito’s house. Since the bedding and décor are very much Japanese, this got edited out. Also, the very slight passing thought that Yukito might’ve changed Sakura’s clothes is left out. (His Grandma really changed her clothes)
Slightly after the scene where we see the women in sunglasses, Sakura imagines an angry Toya giving what I loving call a Kyo Sohma face. This is edited out due to those damn anime/cartoon-ish faces.
After Sakura gives the cup back to Yukito, he nudges her down and tells her to get more rest as she starts to get drowsy. Yukito then pats her head and Sakura explains that she believes the ghost in the woods is her mother. Her brother told her that there are reasons that ghosts appear and she wonders if and why her mother would be there. Yukito then asks if it really was her mother since it put her in danger. Then the scene slowly ends.
All of this is edited out in the dub whether to reduce the amount of Yukito or because he was being too affectionate with her. Who knows? Also remember this edit for later.
Somewhat minor, but when Sakura sniffs the flower she says that it smells good. In the dub, she sniffs the flower and says it’s pretty. Seeing with your nose!
Right before we cut back to the woods, we see another shot of her mother’s photo. Edited out.
Remember that scene they edited out with the long conversation Yukito and Sakura had about her mother? Remember that last line about asking if it was her mom, does she really believe that she would put her in danger and how that wasn’t present in the dub? Well, in the original, Sakura flashes back to that line as she’s falling again. In the dub, they leave this scene in. So basically we have a scene in the dub where she’s flashing back to a scene that never happened. Something that easily could’ve been avoided if they weren’t so edit happy.
The ending scene is slightly different. In the original, Sakura’s mostly crying because she’s happy her mother’s ghost isn’t wandering around because it’s sad or lonely and that she’s in that beautiful place up in the sky. In the dub, she’s crying because she really wanted to see her, but is happy enough that she’s watching over her.
I nearly cried at the subbed version. The dubbed version just drains the emotional impact so much…The music, dialogue, acting is bad enough, but when they try to do emotional episodes, it almost pisses me off.
Next episode, Silent’s debut. A trip to the art museum has Sakura hunting after a card that seems to be defacing a young boy’s treasured portrait that his dad painted.
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The Anime Madhouse 