It takes a village to restore the scattered cards of a powerful wizard whose soul split after he died. Cardcaptor Sakura shows us that perfectly with its huge cast of heroes. To be blunt, though ... not everyone on the team is pulling the same weight. No disrespect, but every team has its star players, and the Clow Crew is no exception. Some of our beloved card-capturing heroes are just more powerful than the others. This list is going to do the hard work of ranking them from the bottom to the top.
This may seem harsh, but remember: there are no small parts. Only small magical girl mascots.
7 Meiling Li
Sorry, Meiling fans, but your favorite martial artist is on the bottom. It's not that Meiling is weak -- she's just surrounded by people that would outdo her in a showdown. She's definitely skilled at combat, but that's about all she has. Her colleagues, including her cousin Syaoran, have the power of magic to back them up. No matter how hard you can kick, it can be difficult to beat someone who can wave a wand and send you flying. Still, don't count her out just because she came in last place.
The anime shows that she's incredibly clever and can notice things that her fellow fighters might miss out on. Could she be swept off her feet by some Clow power? Probably. But as Batman has shown us, prep time can make difference.
6 Kero
Is Kero a giant, fire-breathing lion? Yes. Does he have much going on outside of that? Debatable. Of course, Sakura would be nothing without her trusty companion teaching her the ropes and guiding her along the way. But Kero is arguably one of the least powerful members of the cast. Don't let his size fool you, his powers don't outrank his fellow warriors by much.
Sure, he has magical sensory abilities, but so does everyone else on the team. He can spit fire, but Yue has control of the water cards. And it bears remembering that in his borrowed form, Kero isn't much more than a stuffed doll. And as adorable as he is, cuteness doesn't save you in combat, magical or otherwise. This low ranking doesn't mean much, though. Kero could still cook most bad guys like a rotisserie chicken on a good day.
5 Syaoran Li
The Li family can't catch a break. But martial arts won't save you when Sakura's got a full deck of magical cards in her pocket. Syaoran gets a leg up on his cousin because of two key abilities: his swordsmanship and his magical prowess. Syaoran has the power to control the elements -- everything from fire to ice -- with the power of his jufu. On top of that he has the mastery of his jian, a Chinese sword where he hones his magic abilities. Then, just because he's that good, he has a particularly strong ability to sense magic, something he beats even Sakura at. It goes without saying that Syaoran is probably the toughest eight-year-old in his school.
Well, except for one.
4 Spinel Sun & Ruby Moon
These two go hand-in-hand, so much so that Eriol keeps them around as a pair. As far as powers go, they're pretty evenly matched too. They get their energy from the two planets they're named after, and can do everything from put up barriers to shoot beams. Let's be frank here, though: they're just a lesser version of Clow's original two guardians, Yue and Kero. Sure, Spinel and Ruby aren't pushovers, but the knockoff is rarely as good as the original. Kero on his own might not be able to take them, but in a fair two-on-two match up, they probably wouldn't last. It's also worth mentioning that Sakura becomes the master of the cards by the end of the series. If they serve Clow, she ends up becoming their boss too.
Kero and Yue are just lightning in a bottle, and their predecessors wouldn't be able to stack up. That doesn't mean they're not tough, though.
3 Sakura Kinomoto
This ranking has the potential to be a little controversial for a few reasons. Some fans might be surprised she's not ranked higher. She is the protagonist after all. But it's important to remember that Sakura is still a little wet behind the ears. Unlike people like Yue and Syaoran, she doesn't have years of training or imbued ability to back her up. To that end, some readers might be surprised that she's above Syaoran. After all, he's been training his whole life to be a warrior. Sakura sort of fell into it.
The Clow Cards are her, ahem, trump cards here. When she's fully loaded, she has a total arsenal of elements and abilities that she can use to fight an enemy. Remember, Sakura was able to best Yue in the Final Judgment. That was at the end of the series, though, and it took a lot of work to get to that point. So there's no perfect answer. No matter how you slice it, Sakura isn't all-powerful, but she's certainly not one to mess with.
2 Yue
Yue comes in next, but only by a nose. As it was said in the previous section, he fell to the power of the mighty Sakura eventually. This was only after she spent dozens of episodes becoming the new master of the Clow Cards, of course. For this extended period of power, Yue gets to slip ahead. Yue has plenty of powers that he can whip out in battle, including the ability to manipulate the Clow Cards. In a series where the cards hold all the power, that's something that can't be taken lightly. He also has a set of powers over the moon, allowing him to manipulate moonbeams for his own use and create powerful shields. This doesn't even touch on the energy crystals he can create. Yue only got more powerful when Touya gave him his magical abilities to let Yukito survive.
So yes, Yue is among the toughest in the series. But remember: Sakura is gunning for him, and she's in charge at the end.
1 Clow Reed
Who else could be at the top of the heap but the wizard who gave the cards his name? Okay, sure, Clow spends basically the entire series dead (kind of). But that's a mere technicality. Clow Reed is one of the most popular characters in the entire CLAMP universe. There's a reason why he crops up in everything from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles to XXXHolic. He's so powerful that his soul has been split up into about a million different characters. He didn't just make the Clow cards, he made the adorable Mokonas alongside the witch Yuuko.
Everything that the rest of the heroes can do, Clow's got it in his tool belt. While the CLAMP universe is chock full of tough warriors, wizards and swordsmen, all of them pale in comparison to the big man behind the cards himself. He's so powerful that his soul couldn't even find its home in just one vessel. A piece of him exists in both Sakura's father and her classmate Eriol. The pet fire-breathing lion probably helps his case, too.