Urara wants Touma.

Young and coquettish Urara Kasuga bursts into Touma Inaba's Tokyo hotel room, interrupting his first night of entrance exam cramming. She throws herself at him, claiming to be a hooker. Flushed with masochistic sexual inhibition, Touma kicks Urara out (but not before she accidentally sneezes on him) without recognizing the flirty redhead as his lovely cousin with whom he had a one-day romantic fling years earlier.

Touma blames his first two exam failures on the sniffles Urara has given him, and so snubs her when she brings him lunch on the day of his third, last, and most difficult test, the entrance exam for the prestigious Keio University.

Touma doesn't think he has a chance of getting in, but finds inspiration to study when he meets his dream girl at the college, the poised and sophisticated Mieko Yotsuba (much to the chagrin of Urara). With renewed confidence, he shouts, "I will pass this test! I will haaavve heeeerrr!!!"

When Touma fails to get into Keio, his fresh daydreams of marrying Mieko are shattered. However, he is unable to admit his failure to Mieko. Driven by his desire for her, he enrolls in preparatory classes to study for the next year's entrance exams, during which time he resolves to date Mieko, pretending to be her classmate. To top off his little plot, he arranges to stay with an uncle who lives near Keio.

Touma still doesn't realize that his uncle's daughter is Urara, the high school girl who's hot for Touma's love. When he shows up at the apartment, Urara greets him wearing only an apron and panties, and proceeds to serve Touma a home cooked meal.

Touma begins attending college prep classes and arranges a date with Mieko, who continues to be fooled by the illusion that Touma is her classmate at Keio. However, Touma's conscience gets the better of him and, racked with guilt over deceiving the object of his desire, Touma resolves to tell Meiko the truth about his failed Keio entrance exams.

All the while, unnoticed and unappreciated, Urara cares for Touma's daily wants and needs, cooking for him, attending to him, and laying plans to win Touma's heart.

When Touma meets Meiko under the blooming cherry blossom trees to make his confession, the ever-watching Urara is there in hiding.

Ever see an anime series about a perfect, sexy tart going ga-ga over a nitwit who's too fixated on some stuck-up bitch to notice? Did you enjoy it? Wanna see the same thing over again? "Sakura Dairies" can't fail to please those entertained by this formula.

On the other hand, those put off by melodramatic love triangles, or nauseated by super-sweet, empty-headed high school honeys with ultra-cutsy voices, shouldn't even give the pink cover of the "Sakura Diaries" a second glance. (Then again, if you're one of those people, what are you doing watching anime in the first place?)

Creator Kunitoshi Okajima delivers no suprises in the by the numbers casting of his starring characters. He creates a love triangle, the centerpiece of the series, with three clean strokes of his pen. Urara, his wide-eyed, ditzy title character has a soft heart dedicated to her cousin, Touma, and a traffic stopping body which gets shown off in every episode with plenty of slow-motion close-up pans to pander to a male audience. Of course, Okajima's hero, Touma, creates more sympathy for Urara by ignoring the luscious gumdrop in favor of Meiko, a flighty "dream-girl" character as flat as the paper she's drawn on. Touma's tunnel vision would wax annoying if he were not so guileless and stammering, but his buffoonery keeps him on the audience's good side. For the rest, a small ensemble of shallow characters adds nothing more to the show than a range that spans from lighthearted fluff to sugary nothing.

Despite the simple premise and characters, writer Takefumi Terada pilots the cookie cutter caricatures smoothly through alternating waves of teasing romantic situations and teasing sexual silliness. Competent comic dialogue lends to a tone of playful, winking fun.

The animation, though, stands out as the single most substantial redeeming aspect of "Sakura Diaries." Every time Touma sees Urara's lovingly drawn body, his face contorts in some creative new way. Sometimes he screams, blushes and sweats, sometimes his nose runs, sometimes his nose vanishes - whatever, it's always funny. Touma's copious introspective moments, which would otherwise grow tedious, are rescued by a myriad of playful comic renderings such as bursts of flame and lightning and bickering angels and devils that humorously depict his state of mind as he makes decisions.

On a final positive note, this review would be remiss if it didn't mention the folksy, bubble gum soundtrack, put together simply with nothing more than an acoustic guitar, a drum, and a sweet voiced girl. The soundtrack produces a light, poppy sound, which really enhances the feel of the show. The silly, sappy lyrics of the theme song match the silly sappy tone of the series exactly, first rambling about wind, blossoms, rain, dreams and girls doing their hair, and then concluding with "You and I, in the midst of this unbelievable scenery, we are meant to be together."

Okajima and his team have created a cotton candy production without feeling the need to weigh themselves down with complex characters or layered, unpredictable story lines. They are satisfied simply to plug instantly familiar characters into instantly recognizable situations. They concentrate their energies into making those characters and situations as snappy and entertaining as possible, and, as evinced by the overwhelmingly fun-spirited tone that drives the show, they've had a great time doing so. That warm feeling comes washing across to the viewer, making harsh criticism seem petty. Formulaic or not, "Sakura Diaries" delivers on all of its promises; it's sexy, funny and sweet for 23 minutes at a time.