Sakura Tsuushin

A Keio University (one of the top three colleges in Japan) exam candidate, Touma Inaba, is interupted when a cute young girl, Urara Kasuga, arrives at his hotel room door. She later turns out to be his cousin who he barely remembers from his childhood. Urara, who had felt something special for him (an other-than-cousinly-love), invites Touma to live with her since he has no place to stay other than the hotel room. Before taking the test, Touma meets Meiko Yotsuba, a beautiful, sophisticated woman also trying to get into Keio. Meiko gets into Keio but Touma does not, due to a cold Urara had given him shortly before. Although he did not make it, he pretends he does to earn the respect of Meiko. Touma is caught up in a love triangle with Urara and Meiko, while struggling to keep Meiko believing he's really a Keio student and still be there for Urara at the same time.

(Source: ANN)

Kasuga, Urara Main

Hikami, Kyouko Japanese

Inaba, Touma Main

Madono, Mitsuaki Japanese

Yotsuba, Mieko Supporting

Hyoudou, Mako Japanese

Akimoto, Kouji Supporting

Tatsuta, Naoki Japanese

Natsuki, Koumi Supporting

Kasahara, Rumi Japanese

Mashuu, Tatsuhiko Supporting

Yasui, Kunihiko Japanese

Campbell, Charles Producer, ADR Director

Okajima, Kunitoshi Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Suzuki, Toshimasa Episode Director, Storyboard

Komura, Toshiaki Episode Director, Storyboard, Key Animation

Reviews

Jun 9, 2012

Romie-chan

Recommended

Sakura Diaries really pulls at the love strings the entire way through.
It really is an amazing story touching on taboos, reality and the difficulties of life in general.

The art style is your typical 80's and 90's look.
What grabbed my attention was how the artists paid so much attention to detail. The backgrounds were fully drawn, the frequently visited environments did not change at all detail-wise. It's as if they had a fully drawn out environment for every scene.
There is frequent nudity in this show, although you don't ever get to see anything "too" revealing or inappropriate.
This show is a very impressive work of art.

The sounds ... were great. The English dub is surprisingly good for this show. The music was great and sometimes I felt that the voice-actors understood the emotions the characters were feeling. There isn't a lot of extra unnecessary dialogue and there isn't paragraphs and paragraphs of explanations, it makes things feel realistic.

The story is outstanding. Tonma goes to Tokyo trying to get into any college or university that he can. But the night before his important entrance exam, he is interrupted by his cousin Urara. She acts like a call girl (because he didn't remember her), getting Tonma both excited and upset, making him get sick with a cold. He fails his exam and runs into a beautiful woman named Meiko who is also taking the entrance exam. But he doesn't want her to know that he failed, so he lies and tries to go out with her anyway.
Along his journey's he will fail in virtually everything from obvious everyday things to big romance and important events. Disappointment after disappointment, it makes me wonder if he'll ever find love or find what he needs the most.

The main character Urara seemed to get the most character depth in the show. Although she is a high school girl, she is apparently very deep and her love for Tonma is also just as deep. Meiko has a surprising background to her and she turns to not be as bad as I thought she was. The other supporting characters get very little depth. But surprisingly enough, Tonma the main character this show is about, doesn't get as much depth to him as I wanted. Even until the very end, he seemed like a shallow-shell of a person.

I really enjoyed this show. The love strings were constantly being pulled and making me want to watch the entire show in one sitting.
I literally lost sleep over this.

Overall, a great show, something I wish was longer than just 12 episodes. But what I didn't enjoy was the ending. It left me confused and wanting more. The show ended with me having so many questions and so many things unresolved. I want more! More! More! More! More!

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Jul 14, 2008

Ranivus

Mixed Feelings

::QUICK REVIEW::
Story: 6 (Lots of taboo but its a good love story)
Art: 5 (90's Cel Art isn't my thing, looks better than DBZ)
Sound: 5 (Old school sound effects, overemphasize things with sound)
Character: 7 (Relate w/ main character very well, minus the sis-con)
Enjoyment: 8 (Lotta fanservice... she's not my cousin ^_^)
Overall: 30/50 = 6.0 (Balancing two girls and a double life can be hard)


::FULL REVIEW::
Sakura diaries is an ecchi drama comedy centered around your typical character failure named Touma Inaba. His problems start right off the bat in episode one when an unknown call girl barges in his hotel room and hinders his test performance. But ... between failing so much and so many chance encounters with a girl of his dreams. A fairly fun drama unfolds. I would like to emphasize the rating of the show since it is R+ there are nudity but no hentai. So if you do/don't mind seeing a nipple or two you might have to think twice. For the most part, the nudity serves purpose other than giving Touma nosebleeds and kind of enhances the story further, since Touma is not just a failure but more like a "average joe" kind of failure that im sure some male viewers can relate to.

Thats another reason why i kept on watching this since i can relate to the main character very well, minus all the taboo parts. Well once you realize the taboo situation, you'll understand why Touma is so torn between these relationships.
...Remember its not taboo unless they're related by blood right? >_<

On a technical stand point, its pretty average in terms of cel animated shows of the late 90's But like animations during that time, the emphasis was more into the sound effects instead of the animation. So you'll get your usual random soundeffects while zooming in at something pretty/sexy/hilarious. For what its worth, it plays out fine, but it still has the 'old school' nostalgic feel to it if you know what i mean.

Overall, for a 12-episode OVA, it wasn't THAT bad. I wouldn't buy it but it was nice to see a fairly decent drama that didn't center the plot and cliffhangers on indecisive love. It centers more on juggling love and how to maintain it no matter how inappropriate it might be. If that sounds good for you then pick it up, you might be surprised.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jul 30, 2019

Kristiwazhere

Not Recommended

Usually when I watch an anime that has a large following I can understand why people might like it even if I dislike it. This on the other hand is one of the few times that I don't understand what the appeal might be at all.
The art and animation is decent, it's not outstanding by any means, but it does the job, isn't stilted, and doesn't have a ton of animation errors.
The sound work is ok, the ending and opening music was really my cup of tea and there were spots here and there where the music didn't really match the scene but I ... didn't find myself getting angry over any of the sound choices.
What I did find myself getting angry over was everything else about the anime. The story it's self was a frustrating jumbled mess. It almost felt stubborn in a why, like it was refusing to budge, refusing to go anywhere. It felt almost like the first few seasons of Natsume's Book of Friends, where there would be deep character progression and then it would all be forgotten next season. Though in this case after every episode, that love confession last episode? yeah, nope, doesn't matter, it's some how shocking again next episode. Character figures out that uncle isn't living in the apartment anymore episodes ago? OMG, better move out because the uncle isn't actually living there anymore. Not only that, the story it's self is very poorly written, people will reference major plot points that won't even be explained until an episode later. Not really in any way that's supposed to be mysterious, but in a way that's pretty much "oh, yeah, we better explain that". Where in the mean time you are confused as to why the female lead is just casually talking about something that the show hasn't even referenced yet.
Well, you might be thinking, if the writing is so bad, then the characters must be likable, relatable, or charming. Nope, not at all, we have a main character that I'm pretty sure was supposed to be your standard naive country bumpkin but instead just comes of as a just plain idiot. Then we have the female lead, who is probably supposed to come off as a teenager in puppy love, but instead comes off as a near psychotic stalker. Finally our secondary female lead is a stuck up bitch that uses people. The only character in this anime that I found ever remotely likable was the "more wise than you would assume" character who has been in cram school for numerous years.
So all in all I would not recommend this anime, it was a painful experience and not in the least bit a rewarding watch and I don't understand how so many people can like it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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