カードキャプターさくら・Card Captor Sakura Book Club 🌸 Home Thread — Starting September 7th

[araigoshi]

Welcome to the カードキャプターさくら Card Captor Sakura Book Club!

View this book on Natively!

This is the main thread for reading the manga along with the Absolute Beginner Book Club here on the forums. If you have a bit of experience with Japanese, but you are still easing into reading, then this would be a good place to start! If you have questions about whether or not you think you’re ready, feel free to ask them here, or in the ABBC main thread, but also please check out @ChristopherFritz’s guide for joining the Absolute beginner book club.

View the nomination post here!

Where to purchase

Physical: Honto | Rakuten | CD Japan | Amazon US | Amazon JP | Kinokuniya JP
Digital: eBook Japan | BookWalker | Amazon Kindle JP

Schedule

Note about page numbers

Two sets of page numbers are provided, for the original (OG) edition, and for the Refurbished (RE) edition. The paperpack copy and some digital copies use the original edition, while the original hardcover and most digital copies are the refurbished edition. The difference is some inter-chapter art that was added for the refurbished edition. There’s also the anniversary edition (AE) which is a newer hardback edition. This should follow the same page numbers as the RE, but then has next two chapters that are part of volume 2 in the OG or RE edition. The best way to check your edition is to look for the stamp with a picture of Kero-chan and the words “Refurbished Edition” between chapters, or to check the page count (186 for the OG, 196 for RE, or 256 for AE).

(Note: The menu in the bookwalker app (and most e-readers) will be show a page number 2 higher than the actual page number, due to treating the covers as pages)

Week	Date	Chapter	Page # (OG)	Page # (RE/AE)	Pages With Text
1	September 7th	1 pt 1	7 - 13	7 - 13	5
2	September 14th	1 pt 2	14 - 20	14 - 20	7
3	September 21st	1 pt 3	21 - 27	21 - 27	8
4	September 28th	1 pt 4	28 - 39	28 - 39	11
5	October 5th	1 pt 5	40 - 50	40 - 52	11
6	October 12th	2 pt 1	51 - 62	53 - 64	12
7	October 19th	2 pt 2	63 - 76	65 - 78	12
8	October 26th	2 pt 3	77 - 90	79 - 94	14
9	November 2nd	3 pt 1	91 - 104	95 - 108	13
10	November 9th	3 pt 2	105 - 122	109 - 128	14
11	November 16th	4 pt 1	123 - 136	129 - 142	14
12	November 23rd	4 pt 2	137 - 155	143 - 163	15
13	November 30th	5 pt 1	155 - 171	163 - 179	17
14	December 7th	5 pt 2	172 - 186	180 - 196	17

Vocabulary

Google Sheet (editable)

Wanikani Absolute Beginner Book Club - Card Captor Sakura Vocab Sheet

See also Manga Kotoba

Discussion Guidelines

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.

Instructions for Spoiler Tags

Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).

Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:

Example

This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.

The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.

This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.

Posting Advice

• When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.

• Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!

Proper Nouns

Name	Reading	Image	Notes
Main Characters
木之本桜	きのもと さくら		Main character
大道寺知世	だいどうじ ともよ		Sakura’s cousin and best friend
木之本桃矢	きのもと とうや		Sakura’s Older Brother
月城雪兎	つきしろ ゆきと		Sakura’s Older Brother’s Best Friend
ケルベロス ケロ	ケルベロス		Sakura’s companion, the beast of the seal
Locations
友枝	ともえだ		Sakura’s Neighbourhood (and school)

Resources

Membership

Will you be reading with us?

• Yes
• Yes, but I might start late
• Maybe
• No

Which version will you be reading?

• eBook
• Paperback
• Hardcover

Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to be notified when weekly threads get posted!

[davepirat]

Card Captor? I loved the anime when I was small. I’ll be here reading.

[polysciguy]

i feel like i should point out for those in the us that want physical copies kinokunya also has a US page, Kinokuniya US, where you can order the japanese versions of books from…as well as japanese textbooks themselves, its where i ordered my genki and japanese from zero books from

[kittyaphrodite]

hey this is so cool! I’ve been wanting to read through CCS for a while since I bought the pretty Nakayoshi 60th version on eBay…

so exciting!

[araigoshi]

Proposed Schedule

Page Numbers are based on the numbers which appear in my Bookwalker digital copy, which are 2 lower than the page numbers reported in the Bookwalker app. This is a 90s manga, so there have been a few editions, so page numbers on your copy may vary. I’ll include the last panel and last line of dialogue on each weekly thread when we split chapters.

Also my edition at least places the chapter title card (along with a brief featured character bio) pretty randomly mid-chapter, so don’t mistake them for the chapter boundaries.

So the breakdown of the book is as follows:

(Pages hand counted, “with text” means at least one, non-sfx, dialogue box)

Chapter	Start Page	End Page	Pages With Text
1	7	52	42
2	53	94	38
3	95	128	27
4	129	162	29
5	163	196	34

As a result, I suggest the following schedule:

Week	Date	Chapter	Page Numbers	Pages With Text
1	September 7th	1 pt 1	7 - 13	5
2	September 14th	1 pt 2	14 - 20	7
3	September 21st	1 pt 3	21 - 27	8
4	September 28th	1 pt 4	28 - 39	11
5	October 5th	1 pt 5	40 - 52	11
6	October 12th	2 pt 1	53 - 64	12
7	October 19th	2 pt 2	65 - 78	12
8	October 26th	2 pt 3	79 - 94	14
9	November 2nd	3 pt 1	95 - 108	13
10	November 9th	3 pt 2	109 - 128	14
11	November 16th	4 pt 1	129 - 142	14
12	November 23rd	4 pt 2	143 - 163	15
13	November 30th	5 pt 1	163 - 179	17
14	December 7th	5 pt 2	180 - 196	17

Thoughts?

[Marriachan]

Same but only bought the first one long time ago. Time to read it finally

[MeishaPlum]

Looking forward to this! Definitely past the target audience as I’m reading along with the IMC, but I read all of the Clear Card Arc in Japanese, so now this is reason to revisit the original in Japanese.

[ChristopherFritz]

@araigoshi

so there have been a few editions

For anyone reading the Nakayoshi 60th Anniversary edition, your volume will have 7 chapters whereas other releases have 5 chapters. Incentive for an offshoot club?

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I’m reading digital, but I did buy the physical set a few years back with the intent to read it eventually:

[soggyboy]

I want physical copies now too! Must… resist

[TobiasW]

It was almost perfectly going in one direction, but then week 8 had to come along and ruin everything

Apart from that fatal flaw the schedule looks good. 13 weeks seems appropriate for 196 pages at L20, and looking at the chapter lengths I don’t see any way to make less weeks without crossing chapters anyway.

The only thing I’m wondering about is if the first week should be even shorter. Something like 8 10 12 12 for the first 4 weeks maybe, if there are decent enough points to split like that?

[Marriachan]

If someone shows me screenshots of the first and last frame from every week, I could check which pages they would be in my edition (Nakayoshi 60th)

[ChristopherFritz]

I was going to suggest we compare table of contents, but apparently that isn’t a thing in this manga…

But I did enjoy this text where I expected a table of contents to be:

How do the chapter start-page numbers compare in the 60th?

Chapter	Start Page
1	7
2	53
3	95
4	129
5	163

[Marriachan]

Nope, no table contents unfortunatly.

There’s this page 3 that I don’t know if it should be considered

page 3

And then this one with no text on page 6

page 6

@ChristopherFritz

Chapter	Start Page
1	3? 6?
2	50
3	90
4	122
5	154

Every chapter starting with a draw. Then, there’s chapter 6, 7 and 8 too

[ChristopherFritz]

@Marriachan

And then this one with no text on page 6

This one’s page 6 for me digitally as well.

But the rest of the chapters start pages, it looks a bit off.

Here is what I have for the color page and first content page of each chapter, with page numbers in the file names.

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And this is completely unrelated. I just like this being “the refurbishment version”.

[Marriachan]

I don’t have that Kero on mine Is just so cute.

I’ve noticed those coloured pages are B&W on mine, so they’re just another regular page. That’s why the number of the pages get more and more far from each other as you get close to the end. I guess at your version, a coloured page equals to two/three pages.

For example:
Page 51 → 50 (mine)
Page 53 → 51
Page 93 → 90
Page 95 → 91
Page 127 → 122
Page 129 → 123
Page 161 → 154
Page 163 → 155

[araigoshi]

@TobiasW

The only thing I’m wondering about is if the first week should be even shorter. Something like 8 10 12 12 for the first 4 weeks maybe, if there are decent enough points to split like that?

So chapter 1 is broken up like follows:

Chapter 1 Structural Spoilers

pg 7-13: cold open (note pages 7 and 13 are sfx only, so this is only 5 pages of actual text, otherwise it would be a good stopping point for week 1)
pg 14-20: Sakura’s family + kero intros
pg 20-24: Sakura goes to school
pg 25-26: Tomoyo introduction
pg 27-33: backstory (this is likely to be the hard part for our newbies)
pg 34-40: transformation sequence (very text light)
pg 40-44: Tomoyo and Sakura’s relationship
pg 45-49: PE lesson
pg 50-52: Inter chapter art

The latter part actually fits the story well to the schedule, but the first part isn’t so well fitted. Unfortunately, without a 5th week for chapter 1 (making the first 3 weeks 7-13, 14-20, 21-26), I don’t see a better fit. If people are willing to go to 14 weeks for a smoother intro, we can do that, but the feedback I got on my last two book club schedules was the schedule I was proposing was too slow, so I didn’t.

[TobiasW]

I checked out the pages in question (it’s free to read until Sunday here) and wow, that’s a lot of text per page after page 13. I think adding a 5th week to chapter 1 with your proposed 3 first weeks sounds great. Not just to relax the week 1, but also to relax weeks 2 and 3 which really need it, I think.

So if you’d rather go with a 14 week schedule, I’d say: Go for it!

[araigoshi]

Ok, I’ve updated my suggestion to the 14 week proposal. If there’s no other thoughts/proposals on it by Sunday, I’ll make it official.

[Fideosconqueso]

Does any website besides Amazon US do worldwide shipping?

[TobiasW]

Manga Republic does that, I think. You could search it there.