English Dub Season Review: Sakura Wars the Animation Season One

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Tokyo’s Imperial Combat Revue, the Flower Division is a military group that defends the city from demons. They receive a request from their captain to treat Klara, the only survivor of the Moscow Revue like family. However, her sister, Leyla along with a man named Valery Kaminski show up with intentions to take Klara back. The Flower Division refuses their request after seeing Klara scared of them, so the two groups enter a stalemate. Meanwhile the flower division’s captain, Seijuro investigates what happened to the Moscow Revue.

Kaminski breaks the stalemate with an official challenge to the Flower Division on performing and combat. At the end of the challenge, it reveals Klara’s powers as a half-demon. Along with the way, the Flower Division learns more about Klara thanks to Seijuro’s investigation. Leyla takes Klara to Kaminski and attempts to get Klara on their side with a reminder of their former home. Kaminski reveals that he’s an immortal with a god complex while he declares to the world that he shall be their new ruler and that they have only a short amount of time to make their decision. The Flower Division along with Klara stops Kaminski from destroying Tokyo. Afterward, the Flower Division hosts another theater performance for the public with Klara right on stage.

Our Take:

Sakura Wars the Animation is a mecha anime with girls piloting large machines to fight demons. It’s based on the 2019 dating sim video game: Sakura Wars by the company Sega. This anime is about Klara, an amnesia survivor from the Moscow Revue incident. She goes to live with the girls of Tokyo’s Imperial Combat Revue. The girls become family and they safeguard Klara from a suspicious Kaminski and demons.

The 3D animation is slow if you’re not familiar with the style. The voice acting was good at least. However, the show’s plot surrounding Klara is generic. The anime began with the attempted kidnapping of Klara to Klara bonding with the other girls. Then the Flower Division finds out that Klara is a half-demon and they battle Kaminski as the big finale. Admittedly some scenes feel slow especially the hand reaching scenes where you know something bad will happen and it happens. Then there are obvious secret identities like Sakura’s mentor being the White Cape vigilante.

On the other hand, I did find the girl’s double lives interesting. The girls perform at their theater and then if there’s a demon sighting they change gears to protect Tokyo in their mecha suits. However, we only get a few scenes of them performing and taking down the demons after Klara. Furthermore, the girls need spirit power to power their mecha suits and there was no explanation on how it’s possible. Although there’s the implication of the glow of their outfits. It’s one of the few things that the anime doesn’t explain along with the origins of demons. The demons are just there as an additional conflict to the girls bonding and saving Klara from Kaminski.

The girls of the Flower Division have their own colors and have their own fighting styles. However, we aren’t given much time to get to know them because of the conflict. The exceptions to this are Sakura and Hatsuho when Sakura and Klara follow her to her family’s shrine. We get a few basic things about the girls with the tour and the party where they cook their dishes for Seijuro. However, it’s not enough to make a memorable impression. At least we know that Sakura’s got a huge crush on the Flower Division’s captain Seijuro. However, even during their date, Klara is there which leads to Kaminski and Leyla tailing the trio.

Now Klara and Leyla are sisters and half-demons. However, due to Klara’s amnesia, she doesn’t remember Leyla which places Leyla in a tough spot. Admittedly their bond as sisters isn’t apparent at the beginning, but later we see how Leyla cares about her sister. There’s also Leyla’s love for Kaminski that gets her to follow his orders. Then when she has doubts he uses the magical shard that he placed in her to control her. I should add that the magical shard isn’t explained at all. It looks like it was part of a magical large stone from a crater. However, I did like the black and white swan themes that the sisters have with their powers. Leyla’s performance at the challenge was a nice emphasis to her position as the black swan.

Klara’s existence as a half-demon places the Flower Division at a crossroads after knowing about her identity. They get through that decision since they consider Klara to be family and they stick together. It worked well in solidifying the anime’s theme and brings up the whole human and demon coexistence issue. Unfortunately, that issue fizzes out thanks to Kaminski’s plan to rule the world taking the main stage.

Then there’s the main difference between Klara’s powers being stronger than Leyla’s. The reveal of Klara’s powers grows Kaminski’s interest in Klara which is creepy. He has Leyla take her, and then he uses a shard to control the both of them. Thankfully Leyla overcomes his control with her much larger love for Klara to break her shard and Klara’s shard. Unfortunately, she dies in the process and later scares Kaminski as a remnant. Her story is pretty tragic as Klara spirals out of control by unleashing her power before Sakura calms her down.

Kaminski and his outlandish plan to rule the world using Klara’s powers is ridiculously simple. He’s a weary immortal tired of seeing humanity’s greed and decides to take matters into his own hands. Kaminski’s manipulation of Leyla only reinforces the fact that he’s the villain. His god-complex does its work well by making him a nasty piece of work. To add insult to injury he only destroys a mountain rather than a good chunk of Tokyo as a warning. Before he can really destroy Tokyo because the Flower Division defied him, everyone works together to defeat him and save the day.

Overall Sakura Wars isn’t something that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. It only fills out the basics of a show in both plot and the characters. This anime could appeal to the fans of the franchise since they would know the characters better than an average viewer like me.