LogFAQs > #971047741

BONUS. Sakura Quest
https://myanimelist.net/anime/34494/Sakura_Quest
Spring 2017 (25 episodes)
My Score: TBA, MAL Score: 7.39/10
Best Character: Kouzuki Sanae
Recommended by: @pyresword

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlrPO6dBaxw

Premise: While struggling to find a job after graduating from college, Koharu Yoshino accepts what she thinks is a one-day tourism assignment in a rural town. It turns out to be a year-long contract where she'll act as the Queen of a local attraction and try to revitalize Manoyama.

The Good: Sakura Quest is a slice-of-life comedy about a group of girls trying to reverse the decline of Manoyama, a rural town. Yoshino is brought in by the tourism board to be Queen of a local attraction. This is a PA Works original, which always interests me because a lot of their shows have similar elements. This definitely has shades of Aquatope and Hanasaku Iroha (broadly speaking, all three are about an aimless girl going to a rural location for work, and she ends up learning about life while finding herself). Thankfully, Sakura Quest never fell to the melodramatic lows of either of those other two shows. It does a good job at keeping things lighthearted, even while examining all the factors that go into the decline of rural areas. Yoshino and her friends (who came to be known as royal ministers based on their skills) try a lot of things to bring in tourists, entice new businesses, revitalize locations, revive old customs, and so on. There are setbacks and sad moments, but they feel natural and the show was always fun to watch. It's also the first PA Works original show I've seen where the workplace wasn't a nightmare!

There are five main characters, and I liked all of them. Yoshino started out aimless, but she quickly dedicated herself to Manoyama and her kindhearted enthusiasm was infectious. Shiori already worked for the tourism board and loved Manoyama, so most of her growth came from realizing that some things about the town do need to evolve and change. Maki sees herself as a failed actress, and I enjoyed watching her grapple with the question of what to do with her life now. Ririko is a shy girl with an interest in cryptids, and becoming part of the group helped her come out of her shell. However, my favorite character was easily Sanae, the Minister of IT. She burned out at a Tokyo office job and now lives in the countryside. I laughed a lot at her fear of bugs, and she had great banter with Maki. I also enjoyed watching her grow to love Manoyama as well, even though she essentially moved there at random. The main five had a great group dynamic.

I also liked the large supporting cast of eccentric townspeople. Slowly getting to know all of them really sold the theme of a new place becoming familiar. My favorite one was the foreigner, Sandal. He would often be in the background of scenes doing something funny and random. As for the setting, I liked how it was grounded but also had a lot of entertaining zany elements. It was serious while examining the problems a declining rural town faces, such as aging populations, degrading infrastructure, gender imbalance, and so on. There was also an old dude who created wacky inventions, local legends that were halfway taken seriously, and Yoshino being a Queen added fun little royal touches to a lot of things. This was just a really entertaining anime a lot of the time.

The Bad: I mentioned how Sakura Quest never reached the melodramatic lows of other PA Works originals like Aquatope or Hanasaku Iroha. In my opinion, it never managed to reach the highs of those other two shows either. I hated how everyone in Hanasaku Iroha was a jerk, and I hated how over-the-top terrible the workplace was in Aquatope. However, both of those shows still had some top-notch moments that really resonated with me. Sakura Quest was consistently entertaining. However, for me at least, it never had many moments I would consider great. This is a minor complaint overall, though. SQ was simply trying to be a different kind of show. It's more of a slice-of-life and less of a drama. I just wanted to point this out because I'm probably going to rank this lower than Aquatope, and the good section made it sound like I should've enjoyed SQ more between the two of them.

Overall: Sakura Quest was a consistently enjoyable anime. I liked all five of the main characters as well as pretty much everyone in the supporting cast. The setting was an interesting examination of rural decline while still having wackier elements. A lot of the jokes made me laugh as well. I was glad that SQ never got too melodramatic like a few other PA Works originals. However, it rarely had any great moments either, so in the end this will most likely get a 6/10 and fall near the middle of my ranking. It had a lot of good things going for it, it was just missing that last spark to make it truly resonate with me. Unlike Kukuru from Aquatope, no one from SQ was good enough to reach my top character ranking. Still, there's nothing wrong with a show that's consistently enjoyable! Thanks a lot for recommending this, pyresword. Since I have no faith in Crunchyroll ever fixing the delayed subtitles, I doubt I'd have ever gone out of my way to watch this on Funimation if not for you.