Waaayy back, right after Sailor Moon took the west by storm, almost all of the voice cast were in high demand. A few of them landed in an adorable magical girl anime created by the all-female studio that goes by the name CLAMP…and another blockbuster series was born.

Tokyopop licensed Cardcaptor Sakura, and did a very decent job with it, but it came out just slightly too soon for the big shoujo popularity wave. CCS was infamously licensed for TV as Card Captors, and hacked into pieces, to make the Li Syaoran the lead, instead of the titular character Sakura. I know people who are still angry about that. ^_^

More importantly, this series just had the worst timing ever in terms of the US market. It just sort of disappeared into the gap after Sailor Moon and before Fruits Basket. Then Tokyopop went under and CCS faded away.

But, having hit a major anniversary in Japan, a new premium box set was released there. I’ve had it on my personal wish list of licenses since it was announced and yesterday the news hit – NIS America is releasing a Blu-Ray Premium box set of the Cardcaptor Sakura TV anime, with a dub (that I will never ever listen to. ^_^) I will totally be getting this for a number of reasons:

CLAMP series on Blu-Ray

Yue

Voice actors who win the universe

Gender and age bent relationships up the wazoo

Fabulous story

Did I mention Yue? Really…he’s worth the entire series.

Stolen directly from ANN: The Premium Edition, will be US$249.99, will include all 70 episodes on nine Blu-ray Discs, a 76-page hardcover art book, clean openings and endings, and a collectable slip case. The Standard edition will include three 4-DVD volumes for US$59.99 each. This is slated for an August release.

I know what I’m getting myself as a birthday present.