Sakura Diaries

Published by Shogakukan, Sakura Diaries centers on university entrance exams, life as a cram-school student, and messy young romance.

The original manga was collected in 20 volumes.

A sequel, New Sakura Diaries, was published by Nihon Bungeisha in *Comic Heaven* from February 8, 2014, to August 8, 2015.

It was collected in 2 volumes.

The story is framed through the monologue of its protagonist, Touma Inaba, who often narrates events as if he already knows what is going to happen.

This gives the series a confessional and sometimes reflective tone.

Touma Inaba is a student preparing for university entrance exams.

While staying in a Tokyo hotel for the exams, he is visited by his childhood friend Urara Kasuga, a high school girl, but he fails to recognize her and sends her away.

Urara has loved Touma since childhood because of a small but unforgettable moment they shared long ago.

That feeling continues to shape her actions throughout the story.

Touma fails the entrance exams for two universities and is left with only his long-shot attempt at Keio University.

During that exam, he meets the stunning Mieko Yotsuba and falls for her at first sight.

Mieko passes the exam, but Touma does not.

Unable to admit the truth, he lies and claims that he was accepted, then begins pretending to be a Keio student while actually attending a preparatory school.

Later, Touma reunites with Urara at his uncle's house, where he plans to spend his years as a repeat applicant.

The two end up living there together.

From there, the story turns into a tangled triangle involving Touma, Urara, and Mieko.

Complications grow as friends, rivals, family pressure, class anxiety, and sexual tension pile on.

Touma Inaba

Touma Inaba is the protagonist and is voiced in the OVA by Mitsuaki Madono.

He is a repeat university applicant aiming for Keio University because Mieko is there.

His nickname is Tonma.

His parents run an inn, and his relationship with them is poor.

Touma is portrayed as vain, immature, and highly fixated on women's looks and bodies.

Much of the story presents him as selfish, unreliable, and often blind to the feelings of others.

He dates Mieko while hiding that he is actually a cram-school student, and he also maintains a complicated emotional bond with Urara.

Even after becoming involved with both, he continues to have relationships with other women.

A recurring mystery of the series is whether he truly loves Urara in a clear and convincing way.

His behavior often makes that difficult to answer.

In the original manga, his expressions and appearance can shift wildly from scene to scene.

The work also puts him through repeated near-death experiences and dramatic reversals.

Urara Kasuga

Urara Kasuga is the main heroine and is voiced by Kyouko Hikami.

She is Touma's cousin and is one year younger than him.

She is a Tokyo high school student who has loved Touma since childhood.

In the manga, this attachment is tied to a memory involving a drawing behind the Great Buddha of Ushiku.

Urara lost her mother at a young age.

She was also physically abused by her father, whose obsession with academic success and unstable home life deeply damaged her self-esteem.

She often cleans up Touma's mistakes and shows an extreme degree of self-sacrifice toward him.

Her role mixes devotion, emotional dependence, and romantic attachment in a way that defines much of the series.

Her storyline includes several dramatic and unlikely developments, including pregnancy anxiety, studying for Sophia University, and later losing her sight because of a brain tumor linked to a traffic accident.

At the end, she is taken back to Italy by her father.

The final image involving her reunion with Touma is presented ambiguously.

It appears almost like a symbolic or imagined scene rather than a straightforward ending.

Mieko Yotsuba

Mieko Yotsuba is the other main heroine and is voiced by Mako Hyoudou.

She is a literature student at Keio University and wants a relationship with someone from the same university.

She comes from a wealthy family and already has a fiancé.

Although she is described as extraordinarily beautiful, she sees herself as an ordinary young woman.

At the beginning of the story, she gives Touma a false phone number.

She nevertheless becomes one of the central points of his emotional life.

The series often emphasizes her past in high school more than her present life in college.

As a result, her mature side is sometimes underdeveloped despite her importance.

By the final chapter, it is stated that she marries her fiancé.

He remains largely unnamed and indistinct within the narrative.

Komi Natsuki

Komi Natsuki is Urara's friend and is voiced by Rumi Kasahara.

She has a blunt personality and values status, academic prestige, and social branding in men.

She helps Urara earn money for an abortion through a dating club scheme that involves deceiving male clients.

This backfires horribly when the clients assault her.

Later, she is manipulated by Tatsuhiko Mashu, who uses her ambition and insecurity for his own plans.

Without fully understanding the situation, she becomes involved in delivering drugs disguised as incense to Touma.

Afterward, she seems to harden emotionally and eventually works in a sexual fantasy club.

Despite everything, she remains loyal in female friendships and can be unexpectedly sharp and brave.

Naomi Kugenuma

Naomi Kugenuma is a 27-year-old mathematics instructor and tutor at Touma's preparatory school.

She argues that students do not need romance during exam season.

Behind that strict position is a history of romantic disappointment.

She is depicted as a lesbian who has become distrustful of men.

Megumi Yamada

Megumi Yamada is a student at the same preparatory school.

At Kugenuma's direction, she falsely accuses Touma of molestation.

Mizuki Akimoto

Mizuki Akimoto is a girl from the dating club where Urara works.

She has the highest client request rate and suffers from leukemia.

She is the younger sister of Koji Akimoto, who studies at Touma's preparatory school.

Her intimate scenes are mostly shown only in imagined sequences.

She is the same age as Urara and Komi and is taller than Komi.

She also has a highly unusual prosthetic leg designed to resemble a natural bare leg.

Koji Akimoto

Koji Akimoto is voiced by Kazuya Tatekabe in the source text's cast listing equivalent, but the provided Japanese name corresponds to Ryuuji Kizuta?

However, based on the source text, his voice actor is Tatsuki Ryuta.

He is a third-year repeat applicant with an older appearance and an Osaka dialect.

Later, he works at a construction site.

In the final chapter's image sequence, it is said that Mizuki recovers from her illness and that he has a shotgun marriage with Komi.

This too is presented in a dreamlike way.

Miho Odo

Miho Odo is a beautiful nurse.

At the hospital, she becomes infatuated with Koji Akimoto and sexually serves him one-sidedly.

Momoe Shimizu

Momoe Shimizu is Touma's childhood friend and is 14 years old.

She has suffered sexual abuse from her older brother since childhood and has developed a deep distrust of men.

The story portrays her as becoming disturbingly accustomed to abuse.

She also starts using her body to seek male approval and becomes fixated on sexual maturity.

She supports Touma simply because he once gave her a memorable spring experience.

That memory encourages her to try resisting her brother.

Etsuko Koiwai

Etsuko Koiwai is the beautiful 25-year-old receptionist at Kamizono Preparatory School.

She is presented as glamorous, experienced with men, and physically striking.

Her long-distance boyfriend in Okinawa has already rejected her.

Feeling unlucky in love, she toys with Touma even while knowing about Urara.

Kotomi Hayashiba

Kotomi Hayashiba is a female high school student who molests Urara on a train.

She is slightly more interested in women than men and wears a hairstyle compared to an anime character.

She manipulates situations just to observe Urara's reactions.

She even arranges for Touma and Urara to be pushed into humiliating and invasive situations.

A profile published with chapter 145 describes her as the youngest daughter of a family of beautiful sisters.

She is a senior in high school, attends Kamizono Preparatory School, hopes to enter Aoyama Gakuin University, is 157 centimeters tall, and prefers women slightly more than men.

Mieko Hotta

Mieko Hotta is a 19-year-old preparatory school student who meets Touma after he returns her lost mobile phone.

At first he dismisses her as unattractive because of her glasses and small-looking eyes.

Once she removes her glasses, she is revealed to be beautiful and voluptuous.

After switching to contact lenses, she also reveals a strong sexual appetite.

She is strongly concerned with academic ranking and deviation scores.

That obsession links her to one of the series' recurring social themes.

Rinko Asahina

Rinko Asahina is another preparatory school student.

She is attacked in a park by a group called HSS, a clique obsessed with ranking and academic superiority.

Tatsuhiko Mashu

Tatsuhiko Mashu is a Keio University economics student and is voiced by Kunihiko Yasui.

He is in love with Mieko and sees Touma as a nuisance.

He comes from a wealthy self-employed family and acts obedient toward his father while showing arrogance to everyone else.

This split behavior makes him one of the story's more obviously twisted figures.

He is handsome, drives expensive cars, and carefully maintains a model-like body.

Though he is a playboy, he is not shown outright belittling Mieko.

He manipulates Komi, uses her sexually, and then discards her.

In the final image montage, he is said to have gone traveling in Southeast Asia and disappeared.

Ryuichi Kazama

Ryuichi Kazama is a student in the commerce faculty at Hitotsubashi University.

He is Urara's childhood friend and later becomes her tutor.

He functions less as a romantic rival than as an informer connected to Urara's father.

His presence adds pressure to Touma and Urara's already fragile relationship.

Jo Ibuki

Jo Ibuki is a teacher at the fictional Kamizono Preparatory School.

He is presented as passionately devoted to education.

After the school he runs goes bankrupt, he opens a learning center for elementary school children.

At one point, he is even detained in prison.

Takuya Tsuchida

Takuya Tsuchida is a cram-school student and another repeat applicant.

As a child he was called a prodigy, but his academic performance dropped sharply after middle school.

His nickname is 184.

In the final chapter's image sequence, he is said to run a herbal tea cafe with his once-estranged mother.

The series mixes academic pressure, romance, deception, sexual jealousy, and class anxiety.

It frequently returns to themes such as entrance-exam obsession, wealth, emotional dependency, and distorted ideas about love and success.

Much of the manga is provocative and melodramatic.

It also uses abrupt tonal shifts, dreamlike imagery, and symbolic framing, especially near the ending.

The narration suggests that the story may carry a deeper critical layer beneath its romantic surface.

That subtext points toward social problems such as child abuse, sexual exploitation, extreme academic competition, and materialism.

The Sakura Diaries original video animation was released in 1997.

It consists of 12 episodes.

The OVA was directed by Kunitoshi Okajima.

Series composition and scripts were handled by Kenji Terada.

Character design was by Nobuyuki Takeuchi and Hideo Shimosaka.

Music was composed by Mitsuo Hagita.

The animation was produced by Shaft.

The version differs from the manga in some character details and simplifies parts of the original setup.

Episode List

Episode 1

Tokyo Success

Episode 2

My Cousin, the Burusera High School Girl

Episode 3

The Fake Student Is a Slave to Love?

Episode 4

Temptation at the Love Hotel

Episode 5

First Time in Bed?

Episode 6

First Love in Kamakura

Episode 7

The Love Triangle

Episode 8

Mieko's Confession

Episode 9

First Kiss in the Rain

Episode 10

Two People in the Bathroom

Episode 11

Examinee Syndrome

Episode 12

The Examinee's Decision

Manga

Original creator: Yujin.

Original serialization: *Weekly Young Sunday*.

Original publisher: Shogakukan.

Collected edition: 20 volumes.

Sequel

Title: New Sakura Diaries.

Publisher: Nihon Bungeisha.

Serialization: *Comic Heaven*.

Publication period: February 8, 2014, to August 8, 2015.

Collected edition: 2 volumes.

The sequel continues the franchise under a different publisher and magazine.

OVA

Director: Kunitoshi Okajima.

Series composition and screenplay: Kenji Terada.

Character design: Nobuyuki Takeuchi and Hideo Shimosaka.

Music: Mitsuo Hagita.

Art direction: Hitoshi Nagao.

Color direction: Yoko Mitsuhashi.

Director of photography: Tsugio Ozawa.

Sound director: Yasunori Honda.

Animation production: Shaft.

The work is also associated with Kitty Film.

A Sega Saturn game based on Sakura Diaries was also released.

It was developed in Japan.

The series is closely tied to the culture of university entrance examinations in Japan.

It also belongs to the wider field of adult-oriented manga and anime.