#1 - Sakura and the Mysterious Magic Book

Opening (Catch You Catch Me): Very catchy opening song and the animation to go with it is, of course, very kawaii. CHANSU! Gotta sing along with this one :)
Ending (Groovy!): Nice song, but the animation is pretty plain.

Let's get started! The usual for a first episode, more complete summary and such :)

We start off in a dream sequence in front of Tokyo Tower. Don't really know what's going on yet, but this dream'll show up later (as they always do). Our protagonist is Kinomoto Sakura, 10 years old, 4th grade student at Tomoeda Elementary School. Likes PE and music, hates math. She lives with her older brother, Touya (who likes to tease her), and her loving father Fujitaka. Her mom passed away when she was young.

Sakura goes with her brother on the way to school so she can meet Touya's friend, Yukito (Yukito-san!). Talk about a crush on somebody.. At school, we're introduced to Sakura's (somewhat odd) best friend, Tomoyo, who loves to do nothing more than videotape and take pictures of Sakura. And constantly talk about how kawaii she is :)

When Sakura goes home after school she hears something in her dad's study, so she goes to investigate and finds a book, "The Clow". She takes a look inside and pulls out a card and reads the name on it, WINDY. A strong wind comes up and blows the other cards away, scattering them all over the city. Soon after, a strange stuffed-animal like thing comes out of the book. He's Keroberos, the guardian of the clow cards (Kero-chan for short). He tells Sakura that she must collect all the cards or else a catastrophe will befall the world. The cards were made by a powerful magician named Clow Reed, each living and having a special power. Kero gives Sakura the "key" (that turns into a cute staff) and makes her a Cardcaptor, one who will collect all of the cards and bring them back where they belong.

A strong wind blows outside and Kero notices that it's one of the Clow Cards, FLY. It's time for Cardcaptor Sakura! ;) Sakura and Kero go out to capture the card and through some nice moves on her rollerblades Sakura uses WINDY to capture FLY. FLY does just what it says, as Sakura finds out :)

So that's episode one. We're just getting started!

In the manga: Lots of differences right off the bat. Sakura is already doing the Cardcaptor thing and we see her capture the JUMP card first (it's on tape thanks to Tomoyo). How she got to be a Cardcaptor is explained in a flashback. She also gets FLY in a different way. She sees that it's injured in a dream and uses WOODY to capture it. Quite a bit different, ne? And that will continue. I should mention that some episodes in the anime are NOT in the manga, and I'll point those out :)