From Geneon Animation comes the release of Sakura Wars: The Movie on UMD for the Sony PSP. Actually Sakura Wars itself is not a new concept which is what leads to the movie's biggest flaw. Sakura Wars has been out for a while as a game for the Sega and on television as a series show as well as multiple movie releases. This is where the problem comes into play as the creators just assume that anyone watching must be a fan in the first place which isn’t always true.

The general idea (for anyone who has never heard of Sakura Wars) is that after the great demon war in 1920’s Tokyo the rebuilding includes great technological advancements in steam power (leading to most things running from or on it). The biggest defense they have from any future attacks by the demons is their secret group of young girls called the imperial flower combat troupe who hide their identity by posing as an acting troupe. The reason Tokyo relies on a young group of girls for their defense is that they alone posses enough spirit to operate the big robots known as Koubu. Everything seems to be going fine for the group until the American based company Douglas Stewart send their representative Brent Furlon to introduce the "powers to be" in Tokyo to a new kind of robot.

Called Japhkiel, these new robots not only fly but will operate unmanned, which is an almost immediate replacement to the girls who get put on indefinite standby. But when some of the girls disappear it's obvious that something funny is happening which leads to the girls putting themselves back in action. It's at this point that there’s a huge battle between the girls, the new robots, as well as the attacking demons.

I really wish there had been a few more battle scenes and maybe a little less time focused on the plays the girls performed at the beginning and then at the end, not that the music isn’t great that they play at these parts it is just that it seems they run for an awful long time making it kind of easy to lose interest.

Now I have to say again that if you’re a big fan of Sakura Wars and have seen a lot of the previous stuff relating to it than this will be a decent movie for you to add to your collection.. but if you haven’t seen a lot or anything at all then you’ll find this movie lacking on most every level. The biggest problem with this film (especially as a stand alone film) is there is absolutely no character development and that creates a lot of problems. For instance if you don’t know some background these girls they come across as very daft, obnoxious, and sometimes downright ignorant people. Another problem you’ll notice is that there conversations often refer to things a first time watcher (of the movies or series) just wont understand. This whole "assuming weve seen everything leading up to" idea that creators of anime have, is really starting to get irritating and as far as i'm concerned it’s a great way to lose future fans and supporters of a show.If you do a little character development in these movies it would more than likely help first time watchers get interested.

As previously stated for those who know a little something about the characters this is a pretty good movie, especially the artwork. I honestly think the art in Sakura Wars is amongst the best in anime and not only this movie I think that rings true for most of there other stuff. Of course the subtitles don’t translate over as good as they should and the dialog is kind of cheesy but that’s not a first for anime either. This umd is 50 minutes long and on sale now.