桜姫華伝

SAKURA-HIME KADEN

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
12
RELEASE
December 1, 2012
CHAPTERS
56

DESCRIPTION

Sakura is a princess who lives alone with a few maids in a mansion deep in the mountains. She’s been engaged to the prince of the country since she was born. She doesn’t like that fact, as she wants to decide her fate on her own. However, one day, a messenger from the prince suddenly came to take her to the capital…

Note: The chapter count includes six extra stories.

CAST

Sakura
Aoba
Asagiri
Kohaku
Byakuya
Hayate
Ukyou
Fujimurasaki
Oumi
Shuri
Mai Mai
Enju
Rurijou

CHAPTERS

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REVIEWS

RoseFaerie
86/100
Despite having some issues towards the end, Sakura-hime is, in my opinion, Arina Tanemura's best work.
It's no secret that I have some mixed feelings about Arina Tanemura as a mangaka. While I've enjoyed almost everything I've read by her, there's usually a ton of issues. Full Moon was rushed and badly executed, Phantom Thief Jeanne was good but had a ton of romanticized sexual assault, and The Gentlemen's Alliance Cross was very clearly just Tanemura making up random things as she went. Sakura-hime is her last work to be published in Ribon, and it's nowhere near as famous as the other three series I mentioned. But Sakura-hime is also my favorite of her works by a long shot.

Sakura is an isolated princess, betrothed to Prince Oura, a man she's never seen, and instructed to never gaze at the full moon. When the prince's emissary comes to bring Sakura to her betrothed, she hatches a plan to escape and gazes at the full moon in the sky, only to be attacked by a demon. It is revealed that Sakura is the granddaughter of Princess Kaguya, the princess from the moon who fought the demons known as youko with her mystical sword. However, Sakura herself isn't too different from the youko she must fight, especially when her soul symbol, her destiny, is "destroy".

Sakura-hime explores love and life. Various characters discover their feelings of love, as well as what they intend to live for. Many of the characters are trying to find their purpose and reason for living, and the majority connect it to platonic, familial, and romantic love. These characters are lonely and traumatized, often with their most precious things taken from them. When something you treasure is gone, how do you find the drive to keep going? Why were we born? What purpose do we have? These questions are what the characters are constantly asking.

Sakura is very lonely and isolated, groomed to eventually become emotionally dependent on the prince she would one day marry. She's very attached to Aoba (Aoba is Prince Oura's real name) and can't seem to let him go because of what he represents to her. She hates him because he never was there for her despite her loneliness, never visiting, never allowing her to leave her palace. And yet she loves him because his letters were what kept her sane. They represented the outside world, the fact that someone would one day send for her, someone cared enough to send her letters. Her beloved family is gone, and Aoba and a few handmaidens are all she has in her life.

And for Sakura, becoming a magical girl with monster slaying powers is more of a curse than a blessing. She's immortal, but immortality is painful. She can die but she comes back to life with the memories and pain that came from dying. Moon people and youko (the demons she fights) aren't so different. If Sakura isn't careful, she will become the very thing she fights and kills with her sword. She also lives as half-moon person and half human, forced to choose a side, though both sides are more than willing to manipulate her to join them. In the end she must choose between the two people most precious to her from her past and present.

Aoba was actually a very boring character, though I preferred him to the vast majority of Arina Tanemura love interests, since he's not as prone to sexual harassment and is generally respectful. Of course, there will be sexual harassment, but it's to be expected from Arina Tanemura at this point. I think the only full series I've read from her that doesn't have it is I.O.N, which is one volume. Anyways, Aoba is a nice guy with his own tortured past and secrets. He's a charismatic leader, but there isn't much else to him. The other male characters were much more interesting to me.

Sakura's companions include Asagiri, a small spirit with a dark secret, Kohaku, a clumsy but skilled ninja aiming to become the head of her village, and Hayate, Kohaku's childhood friend who Kohaku accidentally turned into a frog. There's also Fujimurasaki, Aoba's uncle, on her side, but I hate him (I'll explain later). All these characters are properly fleshed out and have their own internal struggles and torments. Asagiri struggles to find a reason to live, burdened by her own darkness. Kohaku has her ambitions, drive to live up to her family's expectations, and guilt for what she did to Hayate. And Hayate, I actually didn't like him at first. He's Kohaku's voice of reason, but he was also quite pushy with her and a bit of a pervert character (I'm not a fan of those, since they tend to push boundaries a lot). However, it's his bond with another character and his struggle with his own morals and empathy that made me come to love him. He grows tremendously over the course of the story. One thing I noticed was that the antagonists of the series were all connected to one of Sakura's allies in some way, and their bonds affected their decisions and shaped their choices, which ties into the themes of love and the eventual answer to the question "Why were we born?" The antagonists were equally sympathetic, well-constructed and interesting, except for maybe one who was a bit weaker and annoyed me.

My personal favorite was Rurijo, a member of the moon clan, but not quite. She's a sentient stone in a makeshift body of wood and leaves, made by the main antagonist in the image of Sakura. She struggles with her own identity, aware that she's simply a substitute for the real Sakura. She doesn't get the love and recognition she craves from her master, an immortal whose life she could never drain, someone who gave her companionship when she had no one. She hates Sakura for being the person she was modeled after, the person her master loved most. Rurijo feels like as long as Sakura exists, she can never have her own identity. She will always remain her substitute. I find it interesting how the two are complete opposites, as Rurijo is far more aggressive and free-spirited than Sakura, but the two are both manipulated through their loneliness. I appreciated her arc about forming relationships and healthy attachments to people who care for her and show empathy, even though the ending really undermined that with some stuff Arina Tanemura pulled out of nowhere. It was frustrating because of how it took away the impact of Rurijo's struggle for agency.

I'm spoiler tagging my discussion of the main antagonist because I want to avoid major plot spoilers.

Enju is complicated to talk about. He's Sakura's brother, not dead but kidnapped and tortured until he lost his sanity and empathy for human beings. He's more of a moon person than a human, more bloodthirsty and losing touch with his identity as Kai, a human boy. He craves destruction and revenge for all the pain he suffered, as well as what the emperor planned to do with his younger sister. He's a terrible person, murdering people, turning them into the very youko they hated, and abusing some of his comrades.

His relationship with Sakura has some weird incestuous undertones, especially since Arina Tanemura brought up some very unnecessary historical context about sibling marriage when Sakura said she wanted to marry her brother when she was like an actual toddler who didn't fully understand the concept of marriage. And then there's the romantic stuff with him and Rurijo who he literally made in the image of his sister... No one can tell me that isn't weird. Of course, in the end, it's revealed he has no romantic feelings for Sakura in an aside by Arina Tanemura, but another can of worms is opened... I'm adding another spoiler tag, since I will be discussing how Enju is written in the end. He's interesting, complex, and beautifully written up until the very end where Tanemura drops the ball completely.

The ending was interesting and thematically relevant. I loved most of the stuff that happened in the ending and found it to be one of the most fitting endings I have seen for a series. However, some things made no sense and Arina Tanemura definitely pulled some stuff out of nowhere. I wish Princess Kaguya as a character was elaborated on more, since I never really figured out why the antagonists wanted to revive her or how they knew she would be on their side. But my biggest issues are with how Enju, the main antagonist was written.

Enju gets redeemed in the end, and he's shilled for by the traitor in his group. It's so weird since his teammates left one by one because they realized that the life he offered them was not the life they wanted to lead. Even his most loyal companion, Rurijo, realized how she was taken advantage of and abused, and yet Shuri of all people is like, "He was kind to me. Let him live." And I was like, "Where?" He literally went on a murderous spree a few chapters ago. It was just so annoying. This manga would have been a 9 if Tanemura didn't fumble how she wrote him in the end so badly.

We also get the absolutely out of nowhere revelation that Enju had feelings for Rurijo. Which is weird since he literally created her to be a replacement for his sister, and he treated her horribly. In the end he was mistaking Sakura for Rurijo and crying to her, even though from what we saw, it was more likely that he would mistake Rurijo for Sakura. It would have been so satisfying if in the end Rurijo was the one to fight him, he mistakes her for Sakura on his last leg, and then she's like, "I'm Rurijo, not Sakura." And then she kills him. It would have been great for her character development, since she's letting go of the person who treats her badly and won't let her form her own identity.

I do think Rurijo still having feelings for Enju in the end makes sense. Most people have a challenging time letting go of feelings for their abusers and people they trusted in the past. However, I did not like how they kind of ended up together in the end. It was so frustrating since Rurijo actually had great chemistry and made great progress as a character and as a person with her relationship with Hayate. I think as a couple they would have been my favorite Arina Tanemura pairing, even beating Maora and Maguri from The Gentlemen's Alliance. They had great chemistry, inspired each other for the better, and they felt like a balanced couple. It was more engaging for me to watch them begin to trust each other and begin a caring relationship, as opposed to Arina Tanemura just telling us that Kohaku and Hayate are in love without any explanation. The potential was there, and she squandered it.

The only other thing I got really annoyed with was just how Sakura was 14. Tanemura could have made her 16 and nothing would change, and the story would be less weird. Aoba, her love interest is 17, which isn't the worst possible age gap since they'd be in high school together and a lot of weird illegal stuff happened in that time period, but it's still weird to think about. Despite the age difference, I do feel like they're better than most Tanemura couples, even though the discussion of sex was kind of weird given how young she was. And Fujimuraski, Aoba's uncle is also in love with Sakura, and he's the second male lead and he sexually assaults her at one point. Aoba is 3 years older than Sakura and he's the most appropriate love interest for her. His actual uncle who is an adult man has feelings for a 14-year-old girl he barely knows right off the bat. It's so... ugh. I hated him, and Tanemura had the audacity to call him the most pure-hearted character in the series.

The art is typical Tanemura fare. The outfits are beautiful, and I particularly adored Sakura's moon princess outfit for combat. It's my favorite magical girl transformation outfit in general from Tanemura's works. The characters could be a bit same-y at times, but I was generally able to tell them apart. The eyes are also a bit bigger than the Tanemura norm, which was not as appealing to me personally as some of her other stuff. Her eyes were already huge, we don't need even bigger ones.

Overall, I enjoyed this manga a lot, even though I feel like some of the stuff at the end was poorly executed, mostly revolving around Enju. I did like the way the manga ended other than the Enju stuff and found it fitting. The story explores and utilizes its huge cast to its full potential, and I never felt like a single character was wasted (it reminds me of Pandora Hearts in that regard). If anyone is a fan of Arina Tanemura or magical girls, I strongly recommend Sakura-hime.
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