Sakura Quest

Sakura Quest

Sakura Quest anime cover art featuring the tourism board and other characters
Sakura Quest Cover Art

Overview

Sakura Quest is an anime about a group of five girls who work for the tourism board of a small town out in the Japanese countryside. Doesn’t sound very exciting? That’s because it’s not.

This anime takes the slice of life genre and then removes anything that could have made it interesting. Watching this show is just watching some girls do their job and interact with the townspeople. Sure, the show has its ups and downs, but there’s not much difference between them because the whole thing is so boring anyway.

This was the anime of the season(s) that I was watching, but dreaded watching every week. I never really felt like I was looking forward to watching the next episode, but at some point, you realize that you’re in too deep and so you need to push onward.

The general plot of the show is that the small town of Manoyama is dying and in need of something to attract more tourists and younger people to live there. The current strategy for this is to attempt to make the town some sort of tourist destination by referring to it as the Kingdom of Chupacabra and hiring someone to be the “Queen” for a year.

Clearly, this is a terrible idea, because why would a gimmick like that attract people? Maybe they should just focus on making the town better instead of coming up with gimmicks to try to attract people. And they do try to make the town somewhat better, but that’s not the main focus of the show.

Characters

Yoshino is the protagonist of the show. She grew up in a small rural town similar to Manoyama and hated it so she moved to Tokyo for school and work. Unfortunately for her, getting an exciting job in the city wasn’t as easy as she expected and so she ended up working with the tourism board in Manoyama (partially by accident).

Shiori I believe is the first of the other girls on the tourism board that we meet. She has lived in Manoyama her whole life and wants to revive the town so more people can come and enjoy the area the way she does.

Ririko is another native of Manoyama who is obsessed with UFOs and the supernatural. She lives with her grandmother who is a leading member of the board of merchants which often opposes the actions of the tourism board.

Next is Maki, a TV actress who is originally from Manoyama. I don’t even remember how she gets involved with the tourism board in the first place, but it probably had something to do with the fact that she’s a local celebrity they could use to promote things.

Finally, we have Sanae. She works remotely doing internet things and so she moved to Manoyama to get away from the busy life of the city. However, she hates bugs and just about everything else about the countryside so it’s a mystery as to why she decided to move there in the first place.

Yoshino Koharu as Queen of Manoyama in the anime Sakura Quest
Yoshino Koharu

Conclusion

In the end, I gave Sakura Quest a 4/10 because of how generally uninteresting the plot was despite how nice the anime looked.

I honestly don’t recommend this anime because there are so many other slice of life shows which do a better job of keeping the viewer entertained. However, if you want to see some girls do their jobs and interact with cranky old people then this is the anime for you.

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