Yeah, I'm not sure what the mental block with CCS is - when I muster up the energy and motivation, it always continues to be the most amazing show that I utterly adore, but for some reason, it's so difficult to get past that. I think I'll have more in me next week to get a few episodes done.
The plot has been relatively dark and certainly much more serious than I expected, but it doesn't feel as dark as you might necessarily expect based on how I described it. In addition to the show just feeling more old-fashioned than you might expect (in terms of tone and style, it really feels more like something closer to...say, Heidi than like...Sailor Moon, if that makes any sense), I think the biggest thing that prevents it from feeling more dark is that the uncle is like moustache-twirlingly evil while also being an utter baboon, and I would bet my life on him biting it in some way sooner or later here because this just cannot stand. Oh, and here's the intro if you want to watch it (note: watch in video player, not browser, because my video recorder decided to encode in x265 instead of x264 and apparently neither Firefox nor Chrome know how to play x265 or at least neither of mine do): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/tft08mgc1oe0l8c/OSwMO1UqEr.mp4
I certainly didn't expect all this terrible stuff to happen right away with a silly, gentle intro like that, .
(e): On top of x265 not playing in browsers, it appears to be a little choppy - I see some funky chugging and frame skipping in that recording. Grr!