I’ll be frank, I really like the Sakura Wars series even though I haven’t finished playing through them (at the time of this writing I’ll be starting the 3rd game after I finish this show) but going into this I wasn’t exactly sure if I was going to like this if it was a straight retelling of the first game.
For context, Sakura Wars is a video game series that started on the Sega Saturn in 1996 that’s about maidens of the world and idealistic but somewhat truthful settings during the Taisho Era. The first game is what this anime focuses on, which features the Teitoku Kagekidan (can be written as either 帝国華撃団 or 帝国歌劇団 as the “Imperial Flower Offensive Group” and the “Imperial Flower Troupe” respectively) who are an imperial acting troupe who also pilot steam-powered robots called the Koubu to fight evil threatening the capital (Teito).

Animated by Madhouse, this anime looks really good with it’s cel painted artwork despite it being released very close to when anime would start adopting a digital format to animate which fits perfectly with the themes of Sakura Wars. Though the main animation studio for the games, OVA’s (and eventually movie) are animated by Production I.G. in what I believe is a digital format. Each character drawn in this anime feels like it fits right in with the games with some new outfits to boot.
However, there’s also a dark atmosphere added to the mix which is very effective but I feel as though it isn’t necessary for this work.

The first episode actually did make me cry a tiny bit as it follows Sakura Shinguji, the main character of this work, getting introduced into the TeiGeki. Due to the… colourful members that are stationed there not taking well to the country bumpkin from Sendai and her constant screw-ups, she has a pretty hard time trying to figure things out before anything can move forward. This route also left me pretty confused considering the tonal departure from the theming of the games I’d grown accustomed to being idyllic in nature with good messages and this confusion would continue as the changes become more apparent while still trying to keep very certain events intact but almost different characters going through them.

The voice acting work is the same quality as the games as it’s all the same voice actors doing their work well even with these changes and the music is also actually taken from the games with an actual performance carrying them instead of a synthetic tune which I find to be pretty good especially when they’re used in similar moments (one point for good, pre-existing bgm being used effectively for an adaptation goes to this anime and not for ufotable's UBW.)

On a side note, when I turned on the dub that was available I decided to stick with that because as much as I like the original voice acting work, I believe that the work done by ADV literally speaks for itself.

Overall, there’re some really cool and good moments but at the same time, there’s just as many confusing decisions. How’d they manage to spoil certain things from Sakura Wars 2 if this somewhat follows the first game with a completely different ending? Why is the final song from that same game? Does Ogami actually work at the theater, because I haven’t seen him do any ticket-clipping or just be generally confused upon his introduction to the theater.
That last part makes a bit more sense though when you realize Sakura is actually the main character instead of Ogami.

I dunno how to feel about this one, to be honest.
I guess I should just keep going with this series ignoring this one, though I wonder how confusing it must’ve been to only follow this as an animated work since no other continuity matches up with this.