Summary: >

Touma is a high school graduate who is under a lot of pressure to get into college. While staying in a hotel in Tokyo the night before he was to take entrance exams, a girl appeared at his door. Urara actually knew Touma from a long time ago, and jokingly offered to do him certain favors. Unfortunately Touma didn't get the joke, and he threw her out. That night he also got sick and failed the entrance exams the next day. Thus Touma was decided to endure a year of prep-school in order to try next year to get into college. And Urara? Well as it happens, she is his cousin, who really adores him and is obviously trying to start a relationship even if he doesn't want to.

Things get complicated when Touma has his sights set on another girl in college. He decides to fake getting into college in order to talk to her. So where does that leave Urara? In the middle of a love triangle unfortunately. Will Touma and Urara get together, or will Urara get a clue and realize there are better guys out there like ME.

Thoughts: >

This is a male oriented romance. As such you'll find that depth is turned down, and fan service is turned up. The way this all pans out I can't discuss that outright since it's woven in with the rest of the series, so lets start with the main character Touma.

Touma, like almost every male in anime; is a loser of sorts. He's not particularly smart, nor does he stand out. He's such an idiot you may bang your head against the wall watching this. As such I found I wasn't too particular on Touma, but at least I could sometimes sympathize with his situation. He makes dumb decisions but heck I've made enough of those myself. Still my disconnect with the main character probably left me feeling more indifferent about this show than I should have.

Then we have his cousin: cute little Urara. She's a sweet girl, fairly domestic, and doesn't seem particularly stupid either. Through the series I started to ask myself, why does she even like Touma? Why put up with all of this crap for him? Then I started thinking. Where had seen this before? Main character with hardly any redeeming values chased by the multiple members of the opposite sex. I realized that I had stumbled on an of evil twin of Fushigi Yuugi, but instead of all the guys having a goatee in this evil universe, women seem to always end up in tantalizing situations.. Then again if Miaka had been more apt to show some skin like Urara then maybe I would have liked Fushigi Yuugi a bit more.

This show comes from an era when "fanservice" wasn't just a background thing, but was instead much more deliberate. The resqué stuff is intended to be "tantalising". In the context of todays anime, viewers are probably desensitized to this stuff, so much of Sakura Diaries seems pretty cheesy. Some parts are just puzzling. Like some cute girl is going to cook you breakfast wearing NOTHING but an apron, and still claim to be innocent. Is that even safe? The story comes across better than expected. It looks like there's no substance, but the story is decent underneath all that. Characters never act totally over the top even if the setup isn't very realistic.

Sakura Diaries was created for a target audience that no longer exists in the same form it once did. The sexy teasing visuals are pretty tame by today's standards, and it's hard for a title to get by on those alone (although there was a time some shows actually did). Past that, the story is alright provided you can look past flaws in the characters.