"Sakura Diaries" is like a Jacuzzi: bubbly, warm and steamy. It leaves you feeling good if you like that kind of thing. But these waters don't run too deep.

Though toting a hackneyed sexpot-chases-doofus storyline, director Tsuguo Ozara manages to find interesting ways to keep the story vibrant.

The characters have only one note each. However, those notes ring sweetly and truly with enough resonance to let character development squeak by with a passing grade.

Ozara's use of playful and artful animation to punch up jokes and emotional turning points saves the show.

The English is fluent, but the translators don't exhibit any special flair for prose.

The voiceover artists were competent enough to catch all the jokes and portray the characters adequately. At times the dialogue sounds stilted, no doubt the fault of the voice director.

Frequent sexual overtones.

"I'm way over the age of consent, ...I had my 18th birthday last month!"

Urara is very absent minded about how much she's wearing, or better yet, not wearing.