It looks like the Arcade Card just eliminates the occasional load time in the regular game.
For the first animated cinema before the title screen, it adds some extra animation and eliminates a couple short loads, but there is still a bunch of smooth animation running as a Super CD.
For the cinema after the title screen, it looks like it only eliminates the short loads since its pretty much the same as Super CD mode.
However, before each of these cinemas, you have to wait a very long time for the Arcade Card to preload, probably ten times as long as the combined individual load times you're saving.
When I played through the game a ways for what seemed like hours, it was pretty much all still screens.
The animated cinemas mentioned above have some decent animation, but its not much (if any) better than Lunar EB and Popful Mail on Sega-CD from what I remember. Also, they're heavily dithered and look like a Sega-CD game color-wise. I remember both Lunar EB and Popful Mail looking cleaner overall.
