Anime lingerie set is clearly inspired by Cardcaptor Sakura, copyright status …

While Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon remains the most famous and marketable member of the pantheon, she’s not the only anime magical girl with a devoted and passionate following. Four-member manga creative team Clamp has dipped its collective 40 toes in the genre from time to time, most successfully with Cardcaptor Sakura, which debuted in 1996.

In the run-up to the series’ 20th anniversary, we’ve been seeing more and more Sakura items being pitched to fans who grew up loving the franchise. Now it seems like someone has designed the most adult merchandise yet: Cardcaptor Sakura lingerie.

Even though Clamp is seldom deterred concepts of what society considers taboo, the idea of Cardcaptor undies is pretty surprising, seeing as how titular protagonist Sakura Kinomoto is a 10-year-old elementary school student when the series opens. This bra and panty set quite possibly isn’t a case of Clamp challenging mainstream attitudes, though, as it’s not clear whether or not it’s actually an officially licensed product.

We stumbled across the photos, which feature a bra with a color scheme and design reminiscent of Sakura’s Tomoeda Elementary School uniform, on the Vietnamese-language Facebook page of Con Méo. Right in the middle of them, though, is the watermark of Taobao, a Chinese Internet shopping site run by Alibaba Group.

While China does have a robust anime fandom, it seems a little unlikely that the Japanese rights owners to Cardcaptor Sakura would bypass their home market to sell themed-undies abroad.

The Con Méo Facebook page also includes concept sketches for a number of other Cardcaptor fashion items, including bags and shoes, derived from four of the heroine’s costumes.

Compared to the illustration, the actual version of the Tomoeda Elementary School-inspired lingerie looks a little different, especially the bottom. As a matter of fact, it almost seems like a swimsuit, and it’s even paired with a skirt in a couple of photos.

Still, given that the other three outfit illustrations are clearly lingerie, it seems like the school uniform-style getup is intended for the bedroom, rather than the beach. Clearer in purpose is this shoulder bag.

▼ Because it’s not like you’re just going to carry all those cards you capture in your hand now, is it?

Likewise, these Cardcaptor shoes are obviously intended to be worn when you’re out and about in public where people can see them.

Whether or not the original Cardcaptor Sakura creators (and their legal team) know about these items isn’t the only mystery surrounding them, either. While tracing the watermark back to Taobao leads to an anime-based fashion brand called Vivice, the trail goes cold soon after, with the illustrations, but not the photos of the items themselves, visible.

▼ Don’t worry, though, Vivice still seems well-stocked with Sailor Moon merch of questionable copyright status.

Source: Con Méo Facebook
Top image: Con Méo Facebook (1, 2) (edited by RocketNews24)
Insert image: Taobao

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