Ladies and gentlemen, meet Akiho Shinomoto. She’s the same age as Sakura and her friends, and with her curly silver hair she’s a total cutiepie. Of course she’s super friendly and a little shy because she’s new, but she and Sakura become fast friends.
Sakura’s other friends take to Akiho quickly too. When they all sit together outside to eat their lunches during their meal break, everyone is very kind to Akiho. She’s even as gullible as Sakura and Syaoran when it comes to believing Takashi’s “elaborate stories” aka bullshit lies, and Chiharu’s frustration with him is pretty funny.
After lunch the rest of the day proceeds smoothly, until Sakura spots the trees outside moving around that is. Sakura makes so much noise in class that Tomoyo is all but forced to come up with the excuse that Sakura isn’t feeling well, so the two of them can leave class together under the guise of going to the nurse’s office.
Tomoyo has conveniently brought a new costume for Sakura to school, so Sakura changes into it quick and together the girls run outside to investigate. Sure enough all of the trees in the schoolyard have picked up their roots and are running towards the front gate!
Sakura tries to capture the trees with Seige to prevent them from running away, but they push at Seige’s walls and threaten to overwhelm the card. Sakura’s next idea is to use Aqua, to flood the box to the point where the trees’ roots can’t touch the ground. Sure enough the trees bobs like corks in a bucket, which is enough for Sakura to spot this new card’s power centre and capture it. What is this new card? Lights, camera…. Action!
This is one of those cards where you have to suspend your disbelief when watching the episode. Because really, all of those trees 
moving around and no one spotted anything outside? No one saw Sakura running around in new clothes, not at all sick, using magical powers? And then no one saw her moving the trees back to their proper spots with her new Action card? I mean really. >>; (I know I know, it’s fiction!)
Anyways, after school Sakura and Kero take the new card to show Yue. He can sense no magic in the Action card, but theorizes that perhaps the key to the mystery of the clear cards lies in Sakura’s new key (staff) instead of in the cards themselves. With this theory hanging in the air, Yue changes back to Yukito. As Yukito gets up to make some tea for the three of them, Syaoran calls Sakura and she fills him in on her newest card capture.
The two lovebirds are cute, with Syaoran shyly saying that Sakura can call him anytime (not just when she needs something or wants to discuss her cards), and Sakura asking Syaoran if she can make him a lunch for school. Oh to be in love in middle school.
But the biggest revelation of the episode was what happened afterwards. For after Syaoran gets off the phone with Sakura, he calls Eriol and repeats everything Sakura told him. Suddenly a lot of his recent behaviors make sense. Like why he’s been a little more reserved, even around Akiho, and why he hasn’t revealed much about his move back to Tomoeda. For the same reason why Eriol hasn’t yet returned Sakura’s message, Syaoran has returned to Tomoeda: he needs to be next to Sakura because something BIG is going to happen. Something related to Sakura’s clear cards and her new key. (I’m assuming this big event is what Sakura keeps dreaming about.) Syaoran’s observations also match up with Eriol’s tarot predictions: Akiho is not a threat, as far as Syaoran can tell anyways. On his end, Eriol can only tell using his cards that Sakura and Akiho get along very well, and that they will be good friends. But given that no one can detect any magic in Sakura’s clear cards aside from hers, is it significant that no one can pick up a sense of magic from Akiho? Hmmm…
Like I said in my last review, Akiho would be my main guess as to who the creepy person in the long robes is. But CCS has also gone down that road already via Eriol, so I’m hoping this new villain is someone else entirely, maybe a character introduced a little later in the series?
Also on a side note: the amount of attention that gets paid to some really small details in CCS just blows my mind sometimes. Like in the last scene with Syaoran talking to Eriol on the phone, anyone else notice that Syaoran’s earbud headphones have a little wing motif on them? So cute! x3
Anyways I’m really enjoying CCH so far, and I’m super excited to find out more about this big mystery behind the clear cards and the robed villain. I can’t wait for next week’s episode – see you all then!
