Sakura Wars has left no media stone unturned. It started as a videogame and manga, then mushroomed into an OAV series, a TV series, a theatrical feature, novels and live stage reviews.

Sakura Wars TV. V.1, Opening Night. V.2, Overture. V.3, Crescendo. V.4, Intermission. V.5, Stage Fright. V.6, Curtain Call.
TV series (25 episodes), 2000. Director: Hideyuki Morioka. V.1, five episodes/125 minutes; v.2-6, four episodes/100 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: A.D.V. Films.

“Taisho cherry blossoms amidst a fanciful storm!” Sakura Wars (Sakura Taisen) originated as a mega-popular Sega videogame and manga by Ohji Hiroi, which was quickly turned into a four-episode OAV series in 1997. That equally popular anime led to two OAV sequels, this TV series (April 8 — September 23, 2000), and a 2001 theatrical feature, plus novels, live stage reviews and lots more videogames. This TV version is advertised as “Don't miss the further adventures of the Imperial Flower Combat Troop!” But it is a revision and expansion of the story in the original OAV series from four to 25 episodes, rather than a sequel.

The story blends actual Japanese folklore about malign spirits that haunt Tokyo due to cruelties committed in the past (the basis for many Japanese horror novels, movies and other anime such as Doomed Megalopolis), Shinto tenets about teams of temple virgins who combat evil with their spiritual purity (another popular horror-fantasy theme), and an alternate world version of Japanese history of the early 1920s.

Sakura Shinguji is a teenager from rural Sendai whose father was killed in the 1915-18 world war against demons. She is thrilled to be invited to Tokyo in April 1923 to join the new Imperial Flower Combat Troop of young girls with strong psychic powers to defend the capital against new demon attacks. But she discovers that the secret anti-demon team has a cover identity as the Troupe of the new Grand Imperial Theatre, so she must become a polished operatic/music hall actress as well as learning to focus her spiritual energy to operate the experimental mechanical anti-demon battle armor.

This TV version (surprisingly mediocre in animation quality for a Madhouse production) is much more somber than the OAV version. It follows the girls' TV adventure formula of introducing a newly-formed team of talented egotists who each have distinct personalities, focusing upon each of the six girls to establish her personal traits and history, then showing their gradually developing friendship, trust and team spirit -- which may be too slow to combat the menace of the Black Sanctum Council that seeks to destroy Tokyo's ancient spiritual barriers against the demons formed out of centuries of human hatred and corruption.

Sakura Wars is also an intriguing Taisho-era history lesson in a fantasy format. The 1915-18 Kouma War in which Japan becomes a world class military power parallels World War I. The political squabbling to prepare the capital for the next demon attack is the attempt to modernize ancient Tokyo, which in real history was cut short by the great September 1923 earthquake which did destroy the old city.

In episode #12, French girl Iris Chauteaubriand's disappointment at not getting a birthday party shows that birthday parties are a recent Western importation to Japan (traditionally all birthdays were celebrated as part of the New Year festivities). The Imperial Theatre Troupe is the famous Takarazuka all-female production company. The clothing and musical styles are authentic to early 1920s Japan -- although the point is glossed over that the “spiritual demons” the army was being built up to fight were not supernatural as much as encroaching Western cultural influences.

Fred Patten has written on anime for fan and professional magazines since the late 1970s. He wrote the liner notes for Rhino Entertainment’s The Best of Anime music CD (1998), and was a contributor to The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons, 2nd Edition, ed. by Maurice Horn (1999) and Animation in Asia and the Pacific, ed. by John A. Lent (2001).