#234: Sakura Diaries (1997)

 

Studio: Shaft

Director: Kunitoshi Okajima

Screenplay: Kenji Terada

Based on the manga by U-Jin

Voice Cast:

Japanese:

Kyoko Hikami as Urara Kasuga; Mitsuaki Madono as Touma Inaba; Mako Hyoudou as Koumi Natsuki; Rumi Kasahara as Meiko Yotsuba; Kunihiko Yasui as Tatsuhiko Mashu; Masa Saito as Touma's Mother; Masamichi Ota as Keisuke

English:

Lauren Worsham as Urara Kasuga; Mariela Ortiz as Urara Kasuga (2005 dub); Martin Burke as Touma Inaba; Robert Martinez as Touma Inaba (2005 dub); Monica Rial as Mieko Yotsuba (2005 dub); Rebecca Davis as Meiko Yotsuba

Viewed in English Dub

 

This sadly was a review, an act of revisiting an anime I saw when I was younger, where I found myself having completely forgotten most of the content, including how one dramatic choice can entirely capsize your production, a reminder of how something can go grossly wrong as an artistic choice, and ruin what sadly also had, even as an average sex comedy, moments of virtues. Sakura Diaries is a twelve episode series, yet it was released straight-to-video, all in spite of the fact that, even as an explicit sex comedy, it only once or twice ever uses the creative freedoms of the medium choice to be more sexually provocative, or even have actual nudity. The rest feels like a quieter comedy with dramatic moments and a lot of innuendo. Trying to get into college, a young guy from the country Touma Inaba fails the entrance exams to get into a university. When he falls for a red headed woman named Mieko Yotsuba, he claims he has passed into that prestigious university in a moment of panic and attraction to her. Wishing not to just damn Sakura Diaries, and instead present the sad minefield where a show can make one wrongheaded choice but still be interesting, it is that this aspect of the story becomes the most fascinating and having had the potential to grow into something inspired.

Namely that Touma, whilst a cliché of a young man protagonist who can be a pervert, also presents all the neurosis of someone in his position, that whilst the show has tone deaf and misogynistic choices, he is a fascinating character of a virginal young guy who is trying to get away from working in the family hot spring. Having fallen in love with Mieko, even if lying that he enter the most prestigious college in Tokyo, he has the desire to enter cram school so he can get into the college for real. His sex fantasies are lewd, sometimes inappropriate, but when the tone works, his flights of fantasy, about romance and losing his virginity, become comedic in how he has his heads in the clouds as much as in his pants, who is stuck masturbating to porn and admits he is neurotic of his inexperience that he would unsatisfying women like Mieko even in bed. Feeling Mieko is entirely out of his league, even his dreams about trying to succeed in cram school are interesting, in a tragically humoured way, in how his subconscious can cruelly make him dream he has failed the exam, even more cruelly making him believe he is awake and has passed to exams, or involve his sexual hang-ups, which are some of the most rewarding moments. Even the crass jokes about Touma realising his libido is preventing his studying, in this anxiety, is thoughtful for being blunt about this.

The facade of being in college is complicated as he is living with his young female cousin Urara Kasuga, who has clearly lied about her father being constantly away on business but managing to keep the lie one. This is something some will find icky, and Urara is viewed as the show's central icon of sexuality, but again with mind that this could have gotten to be a more thoughtful story, Sakura Diaries does have the set up to have been more dramatically complex than it does briefly have. Urara is already eccentric, if questionable, in her relationship with Touma, meeting him by pretending to be a sex worker upon the first time he has seen her grown up, soon into him living at her uncle's wearing only an apron when preparing a meal, all in what is her blatant attempts to attract him to her. In a show if it focused on this drama more than the moments it does, it would have been compelling as a tale of a cousin whose love for Touma comes from a tragic moment in her life, the passing of a close relative, which is complicated by the fact that the emotional dependency involved years on is not healthy for either of them. [Major Spoiler Warning] The ending, where she has to learn to have a broken heart as Touma moves out of the house, realising the relationship is not healthy for either, is a good ending in context for this. [Spoilers End] Mieko realises she herself is in an existential position, where the debonair guy in the college, obsessed with her and trying to undermine Touma, is someone with his own psychological baggage, but also when confronted by her is rightly damned for wanting to own her like a won prize. The drama here is compelling for that reason.

The problem is in the tone. Specifically, and this is why the review now has to come with a trigger warning, entirely for Episode Five where, after a drunken game of strip paper rock scissors, Touma suddenly becoming a violent figure who attempts to rape Urara before realising what he is doing. That, in mind to a show whose tone is soft, lightly coloured and gentle even as a lewd sex comedy, is the most abrupt and inappropriate tonal shift possible. It is ugly, it is unacceptable, and it makes it impossible to like Touma as a protagonist for good reason, especially as the show references this moment a few times over the last episodes rather than pretend it did not happen. It is an absolute disaster in terms of a dramatic choice. The surprising thing is that, if you look into what the source manga is, this one segment is just one moment in a show which entirely jettisoned what the tone was for the manga, which makes this creative choice even more cursed. Even though I do not what to criticise the manga or its author without having seen the source material, there was a lot of content which, if done wrong, would have been far worse than here.  

The Sakura Diaries manga is hentai, which is not a thing to criticise. What is more shocking is that, looking into synopsis on what content is within it, it has a lot of content which sounds absolutely tasteless and crass if it had been presented with the tone of Episode 5's misguided change into serious drama. That it includes Urara becoming pregnant, entering sex work with a friend, and an incident trying to swindle money from a client involving one of them being gang raped. Yes, that in itself does feel, especially for a hentai manga, legitimately uncomfortable to consider as working as good let alone acceptable storytelling. U-Jin, the source manga author, is unapologetically someone, looking at their career, which wrote transgressive content - some, depending on the tone, to kink shame, such as Vixens (1994), which involves BDSM and Omorashi (the arousal from wetting oneself), but other material as plot threads in Sakura Diaries, would dangerously skirt the line between offending people or if they managed to get the tone right. The tragedy is that, for one moment, Sakura Diaries the show makes one mistake with one storytelling choice, and thus ruins itself when it is, for the most part, a gentle comedy drama which, despite some dated sexual politics, had the right trajectory with its production.

It is a shame as, even with the crass sex comedy, of Touma lusting over women, the show is a mostly fluffy story whose drama in the end, accepting a romance that will not happen and growing up, is absolutely alien to its one tasteless shock moment. The opening and ending credits are light coloured and sweet, contrasted by two choices of songs which actually are good for this tone, the first an acoustic song which a gentle earworm. It is however with realisation, a perfect example here, of how one decision is able to capsize a story fully. It does evoke Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise (1987), a legendary science fiction theatrical anime which made as equally as misguided choice in sexual violence involving the main male protagonist. Honnêamise though, whilst not defendable and a decision which should have been excised in its production, was attempting a moment of great existentialism, a horrible mistake nearly done in a moment of exceptional world bearing crisis, leading to an existential enlightenment learning from this idiocy, even if again a scene which is rightly challenged as nearly capsizing Honnêamise's incredible achievements fully. Honnêamise is however also a film of such magnitude that, in its complexity, this problematic scene is still there and undermines it, but is a work dealing with such complexity on a psychological level, which can be grasped even if that artistic mistake is to be challenged. Sakura Diaries is a light hearted sex comedy, even for its emotional complexity, suddenly shows a horrible misogynistic side in how Touma acts to Urara before the sexual violence is even considered, never meant for real complexity even if misguided. It completely deflates Sakura Diaries fully even if the drama afterwards is interesting and of reward.

The odd thing is that no one on the production is really someone who should have known better. Kunitoshi Okajima, the director, was prolific in the animation side of anime productions the decade before, and screenwriter Kenji Terada, with this one of the last works of their career, had a long filmography beforehand, having penned for franchises including the original series of Kimagure Orange Road (1987-1988) as its key screenwriter. This is a very early production from Shaft as a studio, one which would grow and be prolific over the decades after, including being the home of Akiyuki Shinbo, who started helming productions there in the mid-2000s, and to the current day is his home, meaning they were the ones who brought his big hitters of the 2010s to life. If anything, this feels like an awkward stumble for the studio that, in this time, also brought about Arcade Gamer Fubuki (2002-3), a work with too many tasteless aspects to defend, even if there are grains of gold within it too.

Sakura Diaries, were it not for Episode 5's conclusion, would be an all right, if not perfect drama, one which could have been significantly better but has virtues. As it stands, including Episode 5, that is enough to put people off decades on, and it really emphasises how one mistake in tone, even over anime which is more openly lurid and tasteless, has a far worse influence when, here, there were virtues. The only thing I had remembered from this series originally when I had watched it, which is a tasteless moment, is that there is a scene where exchanging pubic hair is considered a good luck charm. It is something which comes from actual Japan belief¹, and is not a bad thing inherently in itself to include, but considering Touma emotionally bullies Urara into it to help him pass his exams, there is a streak of toxicity to the drama which does undermine its tone too. The English dub, one of two ADV Films recorded, and in the UK was the only language track they included in their DVD release for us, neither helps, not good and actually emphasising how, for every moment Touma does come off (if lecherous) as a sympathetic figure, there are so many scenes which do not work because they paint him as a detestable figure we are meant to sympathise with. Sakura Diaries' problems are more than one horrible drama choice, but that one choice does emphasis how this series failed to reach the virtues it occasionally clings to, which is heartbreaking to experience. This should have been a melodrama where the knife stabs into the viewer - like Touma going to karaoke with Meiko, only for Urara to have gone to the same one, with the pain where she lies about being his sister - not stab the viewer in a way that this has aged badly and destroys its own virtues at the same time.

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1) Japanese Lucky Charm: Pubic hair, written by Timothy Takemoto for Burogu on April 6th 2012