Sakura Diaries

A Parent's Guide to Anime
Rated: M

Recommended for Mature Audiences

Reviewed by Suzanne Houghton:

Sakura Diaries focuses around the classic "teenage love triangle" formula so popular in anime. The three points of this triangle are Touma Inaba, a boy from the sticks, freshly graduated from high school and trying to get into a Tokyo college; Mieko Yatsuba, a model-beautiful co-ed with whom Touma is immediately smitten; and Urara Kasuga, a high-school junior obsessed with getting Touma's love. The series is beautifully animated, with high production values, but it gets a solid M rating.

Parents should be advised that much of the subject matter (numerous sexual situations, sex play, animated nudity, minor subtitled swearing and sex talk, and one scene of attempted rape) makes this series inappropriate for children or teenagers.

Parent's Guide Rating:

red (recommended for mature audiences)

Urara and Touma are cousins, a fact which Urara knows and Touma becomes aware of early on. This facet of their relationship adds a distinctly incestuous bent to the storyline.