Sakura Kinomoto - Creation and Conception

Creation and Conception

Sakura's character design for the manga was originally developed by Mokona of Clamp. She was designed to capture the image of Mokona's then two-year-old niece Kawaji. Kawaji wore short hair in pigtails much like Sakura does in the anime and manga.

In Nelvana's English adaptation titled "Cardcaptors", Sakura was originally going to be called "Nikki," but they later decided to keep her first original given name because of the reception of the Cardcaptors adaptation plus the difficulty and expense of editing out numerous appearances of her name in rōmaji in the Anime series. However, her family name was changed to "Avalon". Her first name is also pronounced differently from the original Japanese.

Her many magical costumes were introduced as CLAMP felt it was "sad" for a girl to wear the same magical costume all the time.