The List

Card Captor Sakura's 8 Most Useful Clow Cards

I've lived my whole life sharing a birthday with April Fool's Day, perhaps the the second worst holiday to have as a birthday behind Christmas. No one believes you when it is your birthday and as unfortunate coincidence, I'm sometimes spend a good portion of it doing the April Fool's Round-ups for the Interest section here. There is one plus though: my birthday is also the same day that CLAMP was formed and as a result, many of their characters also have the April 1 birthday. This includes the original card captor herself, Sakura Kinomoto.

Sakura has run through a few decks since taking up the magician mantle but the original Clow Cards are what won me over first. I even had my own deck at one point, picked up from a merch shelf at Blockbuster Video. I liked to pretend they had real magic properties and how I might use them if I was so lucky to awaken Kerberos. While many are designed for offense magic to help capture other cards or magical foes, I'd like to think in reality most magic users would use their deck for mundane day-to-day tasks. At least, that's what I would do. Below you'll find my picks for the most useful Clow Cards for every day life.

So let's, as Sakura would say, RELEASE!

The Create

This card was not utilized to its full potential in the anime because The Create is easily one of the most powerful magic concepts at Sakura's disposal. It's all in the name. Create can bring to life any idea its owner dreams up after its written or drawn on its pages. This seems like an amazing cost-saving measure for any magician on a budget. Furniture, clothing, accessories, pretty much any material object needs only to to be written down within Create to cause it to spring to life. Who says you even need to be a wiz with words either? I'd try cutting out images from a magazine and pasting it in there to see what happens.

The Lock

I'm an adult and I've got stuff I don't need every Nosy Nelly getting into. The Lock is like owning your own high-security vault. Your mom, dad, or sticky-fingered roommate is not going to be able to get their hands on whatever you choose to put in there, assuming they don't have magic capabilities. Heck, if you want to spend an uninterrupted weekend playing video games, The Lock can magically seal off an entire room to ensure nobody is bugging you while you take down the final boss. I'd catch up on so much manga with this thing.

The Dream

If given the opportunity to see the future and better prepare, would you do it? If you have a Type-A personality like me, you probably said 'yes.' The Dream grants prophetic dreams to its owner. Sakura seemed to mostly suffer from apocalyptic nightmares but since most of us don't live incredibly dramatic lives filled with life-and-death decisions, I'd just rather know things like what the weather is going to be like on the day of a big event or see a clearer path for major life decisions. The card also lets you dictate what kind of dream you have, so when I get bored of the usual stuff I can take a dream vacation for a night.

The Libra

Sakura never uses this card in the anime which just mind-boggling because it would have tons of real-life application (assuming you don't go paranoid in the process). The Libra tells you if someone is lying. Now, I wouldn't condone using this kind of magic on your loved ones but planning on buying a used car or a house? Or I don't know, almost any encounter that involves someone trying to sell you something? Hell yes. Even has a pretty skeptical person, there are a few times I wish I could have had this power at my disposal. (I was TOLD my Prius had seat warmers, it definitely does not have seat warmers).

The Float

This is just a shortcut to developing high level telekinesis. Float allows Sakura to levitate (honestly, the girl has at least three cards that lets her do variations of this) but also can be used to move other objects which is why I'd pick it over, say, The Jump. Attending some kind of standing room only event? Nope, gonna just float a head above that crowd. Gotta rearrange a room full of heavy furniture? Skip the couch sliders and just float that sofa to its new spot across the room. I would never carry groceries up my ridiculous driveway again.

The Fly

The Float is for hovering but The Fly would be my main means of transportation. Strap on a motorcycle helmet to deal with the high-speed bug impacts and go. Gas, vehicle tags and registration, TRAFFIC? The Fly eliminates all of it. This is basically what The Jetsons promised me decades ago but I don't have to share the skies with anyone so long as I keep my altitude reasonable. The local birds would be confused at first but eventually they'd accept me as one of their own. I'd fly around town with a flock of geese, no longer hindered by construction projects or all the people who don't know how to merge correctly on the interstate.

The Illusion

This is purely for my favorite holiday of the year: Halloween. The Illusion is pretty tricky when uncontrolled, but I'm not interested in deceiving people. The Illusion can take any shape its Master wants and in my case, it'd be some amazing Halloween costumes. There'd be no limit to what creepy monster I could become for an evening. I could even make-up for my lack of craftsmanship skills to reinvent myself as a professional cosplayer. "Lynzee, that's cheating." Okay, yes, stick in the mud, technically it IS cheating. But I'm the one with magic abilities in this scenario so who's going to catch me? That's what I thought.

The Silent

Have you ever been in a scenario where an obnoxious, repetitive noise was blaring from some place and you couldn't make it stop? Maybe your neighbor has a dog that barks for hours on end or they play really loud music through the shared walls of your apartment at late hours. Car alarms, screaming kids, smacking eating noises, or just a really long-winded conversation can start to raise your blood pressure. The Silent fixes all that by muting the sound at its source. In extreme situations, you could even teleport the offender a distance away from yourself. A perfect solution to the chatty person at the bar who won't take a hint.