Hello everyone, and welcome to the halfway point of Clear Card-hen— whoa, wait a minute, Akiho is having weird dreams too?? o_O
In her dream, Akiho takes the POV of the person in the robes (presumably – she doesn’t specify what she’s wearing but since we all know which dream Akiho is referring to…) and she’s looking down at someone she can’t see (Sakura). That person has something she wants (likely Sakura’s Clow key), but Akiho doesn’t know what that something is specifically. Yet. Kaito suggests that Akiho’s dreams are “progressing” because of her consciousness, implying the more she has that dream the more details will be revealed. So shit will hit the fan when Akiho realizes it’s Sakura she’s dreaming of. Perhaps Sakura will also be able to see Akiho when Akiho is able to see Sakura in her dream?
Anyways, on this morning Sakura is running very late, Kero helps Sakura get ready for school and she has a very quick breakfast with her dad before leaving for school. En route she bumps into Syaoran, who is behind because Wei called while he was preparing to leave. Both Sakura and Syaoran rush to school, leaving 
no time for talking or anything adorable between them.
Sakura makes it to class in the nick of time and her teacher announces that there will be a ball-sports tournament that day starting in third period. Sakura and Tomoyo are both looking forward to it, but Tomoyo is disappointed that she won’t be able to film Sakura because students can’t film while at school. But what a minute, isn’t Kero with Sakura? ;D
The episode cuts to Sakura playing basketball with Tomoyo. Kero is hiding up in a tree with a spare head-mounted camera that Tomoyo brought to school. After Sakura’s game is over, she and Tomoyo move to a neighbouring court to watch Akiho and Syaoran face off against each other in a game of badminton. The game is very close, with Akiho leading by only a point! But then Syaoran catches up by smashing down the birdee, and oh man this could go either way!
Suddenly dark, ominous clouds roll in from nowhere and the weather turns from sun to hail. The badminton game is halted and all the students rush inside. Sakura knows that this extreme weather change is due to a new card, but which one? Sakura, Tomoyo and Syaoran manage to sneak away with Kero so they can talk in private; it turns out the hail is only falling around the school.
Tomoyo pulls out a new outfit for Sakura, who wastes no time putting it on. And it’s a good thing too because this mysterious new hail-like card starts throwing hail balls at Sakura! She deflects them using the Reflect card but has to find another defense because simply bouncing the hail away causes the ice chunks to damage the school building.
Syaoran suggests that Sakura fight the hail with fire, but there’s a problem – Sakura doesn’t have any fire-based cards yet! ;~; Syaoran pulls out his sword and casts a fire spell at the hail but it does nothing, for some unknown reason. What next?!
Sakura can only run away from the hail, and Syaoran becomes increasingly frustrated. Out of his desperation to protect Sakura Syaoran pulls out some kind of orb and uses it to cast a more powerful fire spell. Flames fly out of the orb and encircle the unknown card. Sakura runs forward and quickly captures it while Syaoran has it entangled with his fire spell. What is this new card? … Hail. xD
Once the card is captured, the hail on the ground mostly disappears. Akiho catches up with our trio and notices that Sakura has changed her clothes! Luckily Akiho only thinks that this new costume for another play and doesn’t suspect anything else is up.
Later that evening after dinner, Sakura and Yukito talk on the phone together for a bit. Sakura rants to him about Toya pushing himself too hard at work and how he’s always so mean to her, but it’s obvious to Yukito (and us viewers) that Toya only teases Sakura because he loves his little sister. After ending the call Sakura makes the observation that Kero has been sleeping a lot more lately – could this have anything to do with Sakura’s power or the clear cards? Hearing that observation made me think back to the original anime when Yukito had to eat more because, on a subconscious level, Sakura’s power wasn’t enough to sustain Yue’s existence. Hmmm…
That night Sakura has the dream in the sparkly-clock world again. This time the figure appeared and tried to take Sakura’s Clow key once more. She managed to hold onto it but was pulled towards the figure, and for the first time we heard the unknown person speak! They have a female voice, so that plus the conversation with Kaito at the beginning of the episode all but confirms (for me) that Akiho is the person in the robes. Although I still think she’s being manipulated by Kaito, so we know that relationship is going to get sticky once Akiho knows the truth.
The expression on Sakura’s face when she woke up also makes me think that she recognized Akiho’s voice in her dream. Sakura doesn’t seem to be able to sense the robed figure’s presence in the real world though (possibly because she can’t pick up on Moon-based magic?).
As for the new clear card Sakura captured…. it’s another weather-based one, which seems a little excessive to me, but it also strikes me as a card that doesn’t have many uses. I guess because it’s an offensive card Sakura could cast it to throw hail at people? ^^;; I find the effect cards more interesting than the weather-based cards, so here’s me hoping we’ll see more of those.
I’m excited for next week’s episode because Meiling will be visiting Sakura! So she’ll get to see Sakura and Syaoran’s budding romantic relationship in person, and hopefully there will be some embarrassing cutesy-blushy moments. 😉 Ahhh I’m such a sap ~
Author’s note: As you might’ve noticed from the Spring 2018 preview, I’m on hiatus for the upcoming season. However I will be continuing with my coverage of Clear Card-hen; I just won’t be covering any new titles. Thank you to all who’ve read and/or commented on my posts thus far! I haven’t read the manga so it’s fun to speculate about what I don’t yet know about.
Author’s Note #2: A belated edit here, but apparently CCH is taking the weekend of Mar. 31 off, and will resume on Apr. 8. See you then!