{"id":7734,"date":"2017-04-06T16:03:27","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T21:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/?p=7734"},"modified":"2017-04-14T17:16:29","modified_gmt":"2017-04-14T22:16:29","slug":"first-impression-sakura-quest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2017\/04\/06\/first-impression-sakura-quest\/","title":{"rendered":"First impression: Sakura Quest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nTwo years after <cite>Shirobako<\/cite>, P.A. Works still cannot match their moe girl styled protagonist to the more realisic looking secondary characters.\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/pictures\/wissewords\/sakura-quest-01.jpg\" width=\"576\" hieght=\"324\" alt=\"Sakura Quest: our heroine surrounded by wrinklies\" class=\"aligncenter\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nOur protagonist, Koharu Yoshino, has trouble finding a job after finishing college in Tokyo, but refuses to move back to her small town family. Short on cash, she gets a job as &#8220;queen&#8221; for the tourist department of Manoyama, a small town almost aa bad off as her home town. She thinks it&#8217;s for one day only, but not having read her contract, she doesn&#8217;t realise she will actually have to spend a year as the queen of the Kingdom of Chupakabura&#8230; She doesn&#8217;t really want to, tries to flee, but in the end is more or less guilt tripped into staying on.\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/pictures\/wissewords\/sakura-quest-02.jpg\" width=\"576\" hieght=\"324\" alt=\"Sakura Quest: Chupakabura Kingdom\" class=\"aligncenter\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nAs you know, Bob, Japan struggles with a demographic crisis and an aging population, especially out in the countryside where small towns like Manoyama struggle to keep young people living there. At the same time, there&#8217;s a certain nostalgia for and fetishisation of the country side and anime isn&#8217;t adverse to indulging in this. P. A. Works has essentially built a career out of this, even a mecha series like <cite><a href=\"\/wissewords2\/2016\/12\/19\/day-6-mecha-nised-warfare\/\">Kuromukuro<\/a><\/cite> being set in a loveningly rendered beautiful part of Japan. <cite>Sakura Quest<\/cite> is no different, but everything is a little bit more rundown than the norm.\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/pictures\/wissewords\/sakura-quest-03.jpg\" width=\"576\" hieght=\"324\" alt=\"Sakura Quest: down in Tokyo\" class=\"aligncenter\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nThere&#8217;s a depressing undertone to this first episode, especially in the first part as Koharu goes around Tokyo failing to find a job. This is of course to set up a contrast with the more idyllic Manoyama, but you can&#8217;t help but think it reflects just a bit too much of the real Japan and the anxiety of young people trying to find jobs in an ever stagnating economy. It&#8217;ll be interesting to see if <cite>Sakura Quest<\/cite> can keep a bit of this bite going, or whether it&#8217;ll turn more cozy than that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two years after Shirobako, P.A. Works still cannot match their moe girl styled protagonist to the more realisic looking secondary characters. Our protagonist, Koharu Yoshino, has trouble finding a job after finishing college in Tokyo, but refuses to move back to her small town family. Short on cash, she gets a job as &#8220;queen&#8221; for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497],"tags":[2508],"class_list":["post-7734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anime","tag-first-impressions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7734"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7756,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7734\/revisions\/7756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}