CLAMP's Cardcaptor Sakura was one of the epitomes of '90s era anime, capturing the hearts of children and adults around the world. One of its most alluring features was the beautiful and heartwarming relationship between the protagonist, Sakura Kinomoto, and her best friend Tomoyo Daidouji.
Their relationship overflows with love for one another, so much so that it becomes increasingly obvious throughout the story that Tomoyo has romantic feelings towards Sakura. Sakura winds up pairing off with her unlikely ally, Syaoran, towards the end of the story but Tomoyo remains alone, her feelings unreturned. If not Sakura, Tomoyo at least deserved a girlfriend. She had a lot of love to give and deserved to have it returned.
Throughout Cardcaptor Sakura, Tomoyo is the ideal BFF. She constantly supports everything Sakura does, giving her the most sincere compliments, and is always a good friend. In addition, Tomoyo always shares her family's extravagant wealth to outfit Sakura in the cutest clothes -- mostly so that Tomoyo can film her while she wears them.
In the manga, Tomoyo indirectly confesses her true feelings to Sakura on multiple occasions. Unfortunately, Sakura takes these feelings as nothing more than tokens of their amazing friendship and remains ignorant of Tomoyo's true intent. In the anime, Tomoyo is even less confrontational about her feelings but it is very clear that she thinks an awful lot of Sakura.
What makes this dynamic even purer is that Tomoyo never harbors resentment towards Sakura for not returning her romantic feelings; acting completely selflessly and devoted to Sakura. She values Sakura's happiness so highly that it towers above her own standards. This is all not to say that Sakura is a bad friend -- she's an excellent one to Tomoyo, though she is unable to reciprocate the romantic feelings.
Tomoyo comes by her love for Sakura in a way that strangely mimics the feelings that her mother, Sonomi, had for Sakura's mother, Nadeshiko. Though Nadeshiko dies before the story of Cardcaptor Sakura, through Sonomi, we learn that they were best friends (much like their daughters) and that Sonomi had more than friendly feelings for Nadeshiko, as well. Unlike her daughter, Sonomi was more bitter about her unreturned feelings, especially when Nadeshiko married Sakura's father, Fujitaka, a previous teacher of theirs.
Though Tomoyo may not fully know about Sonomi's history with Sakura's mother, Tomoyo shares the same big heart as her mother and shows it in similar ways. They both absolutely adore their best friend and will do anything for them. When one frames Sakura and Tomoyo's friendship against the backdrop of their mother's friendship, the parallels become obvious. Both mother and daughter find unrequited love and deal with it the best they can.
In an anime that revolves around the protagonist's love life, it is appallingly sad that Tomoyo winds up with no one. For the sake of the story, it is fair that Tomoyo didn't end up with Sakura -- their relationship is beautiful as it is. But Tomoyo had so much romantic love to give and it deserved a place to go. While Sakura appreciated and loved Tomoyo in her own way, Tomoyo and her big heart needed more than that. It would have really made the ending of Cardcaptor Sakura special to see Tomoyo finally get the happy ending that she deserved.
