History Anime / SakuraQuest

** Yoshino's development as a whole can be seen as this. [[spoiler:Forced by her year-long contract and a a sense of obligation, Yoshino reluctantly accepts the job of helping out the town of Manoyama, only to find herself enamored by its people during her stay.]]

* LeftHanging: [[spoiler: How will Manoyama deal with the merger? Will the shopping district be fine? Will the repurposing of the old school succesful? What will Kadota do after closing the Kingdom he had maintained for ''decades''? Sure, we get glimpses of the main characters' lives, but none of these questions get answered in any meaningful way.]]

* LeftHanging: [[spoiler: How will Manoyama deal with the merger? Will the shopping district be fine? Will the the repurposing of the old school succesful? What will Kadota do after closing the Kingdom he had maintained for ''decades''? Sure, we get glimpses of the main characters' lives, but none of these questions get answered in any meaningful way.]]

* LeftHanging: [[spoiler: How will Manoyama deal with the merger? Will the shopping district be fine? Is the repurposing of the old school succesful? What will Kadota do after closing the Kingdom he had maintained for ''decades''? Sure, we get glimpses of the main characters' lives, but none of these questions get answered in any meaningful way.]]

* LeftHanging: [[spoiler: How will Manoyama deal with the merger? Will the shopping district be fine? Is the repurposing of the old school succesful? What will Kadota do after closing the Kingdom he had maintained for ''decades''? Sure, we get glimpses of the main characters doing okay, but none of these questions get answered in any meaningful way.]]

** Yoshino's development as a whole can be seen as this. [[spoiler:Forced by her year-long contract and a a sense of obligation, Yoshino reluctantly accepts the job of helping out the town of Manoyama, only to find herself enamored by its people during the course of her stay.]]

** Yoshino's development as a whole could be seen as this. [[spoiler:Forced by her year-long contract and a feeling of obligation, Yoshino reluctantly decides to help out the town of Manoyama, only to find herself enamored by its people during the course of her stay.]]

* StockholmSyndrome: The senior citizens living in the nearby Warabiya village take Yoshino "hostage" and declare their intention to leave the kingdom of Manoyama due to the bus route they rely on being cancelled. Yoshino decides to happily play her role as hostage, much to the frustration of Sanae.

* RealPlaceBackground: The town is pretty much a real town of Nanto, Toyama, with Manoyama Station being a carbon copy of a real life Johana Station, the shuttered-up shopping street also being in Johana, while the wood-carving district is in Inami, another of the town constituents. Even the PAW's building itself basically sits just across the Sakura Pond from the Chupakabura Kingdom building (which doesn't exist in RealLife).

* IWasQuiteTheLooker: Oribe was HOT as a teenager. Kudota too.

* TheRunaway: [[spoiler:Kudota, Oribe, and Busujima planned to all run from home together to play music in Tokyo, but gave up when Kudota chickened out at the very last minute. This sparked the enmity between Kudota and Oribe that persisted for fifty years.]]

* StreisandEffect: Kudota's stunts trying to hide [[spoiler:the remains of the Summer Festival Float in the lake]] only renews an interest in the town's history for Yoshino.

* WoundedGazelleGambit: Shiori attempts this when Yoshino tries to leave Manoyama during her first night by pretending to be assaulted by a Chupakabura. Instead of using a plastic sword placed nearby, Yoshino beats the Cuphakabura with her bag, injuring Mister Kadota who was wearing the costume. Mister Kudota is hospitalized, and Yoshino is guilted into staying longer.

* CreatorProvincialism[=/=]WriteWhatYouKnow: PAW, bein the fierce local patriots, continue to showcase their native Toyama prefecture.

* BittersweetEnding: In episode 11, Ririko learns that the folk dance meant to keep the dragon lady away actually had a song that accompanied it. When Sandal approaches them singing the song, he says he learned it from his mother, who learned it from her grandmother, who was a Manoyama native. [[spoiler:Additionally, the song and dance was meant to honor the dragon lady after she passed away due to misinterpreting the villager's intent with the bonfire and dance. But the song was gradually forgotten throughout time until Sandal sung it.]]

* OldShame: An In-Universe example with Kadota. [[spoiler:As a teenager he performed a reckless stunt that destroyed an expensive Shrine Float and led to the cancellation of the summer festival]]. The chance that someone may rediscover the evidence prompts him to nearly drown trying to remove it.

* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: It is an anime, but with the exception of Yoshino, everyone has pretty normal hair, and she doesn't seem to be dying it pink as she had it as a child.

* FreudianExcuse: Chitose is highly suspicious of Yoshino, an out of town person who moved to their village to work for their tourism board. It's later revealed that her son married a woman who came from outside the village. However, she was bored in the village, and convinced him to move away. They later had Ririko, but then divorced shortly afterwards, and Ririko's father was then reassigned overseas for the company he worked for. As a result, Ririko had to live with Chitose, who then had to raise her on her own. Chitose had intended for her son to take over the sweets shop she ran, and blames the outsider woman he married for destroying said plans.

* OverlyLongName: Sandal's real name, Alexandre Cena Davis Celibidache, is hard to say so it's abbreviated to Sandal.

* Chupacabra: Manoyama's tourism mascot, the Chupakabura, literally the Turnip (Kabu) Sucker.

''Sakura Quest'' is a 25-episode anime original SliceOfLife WorkCom created by Creator/PAWorks for the Spring2017Anime season. ''Sakura Quest'' is something of a spiritual successor to fellow PA Works series ''Anime/{{Hanasaku Iroha}}'' and ''Anime/{{Shirobako}}''. Through the protagonists' attempts to rsevitalize the town themes that are examined as a side effect includes the culture clash between City and Rural living, tradition vs adaptation, and the desires of what the young adults protagonists want out of their lives.

''Sakura Quest'' is a 25-episode anime original SliceOfLife WorkCom created by Creator/PAWorks for the Spring2017Anime season. ''Sakura Quest'' is something of a spiritual successor to fellow PA Works series ''Anime/{{Hanasaku Iroha}}'' and ''Anime/{{Shirobako}}''. Through the protagonists' attempts to revitalize the town themes that are examined as a side effect includes the culture clash between City and Rural living, tradition vs adaptation, and the desires of what the young adults protagonists want out of their lives.

* InsaneTrollLogic: Sandal's reason for eating shaved ice in the middle of winter. "If you eat all the snow, spring will come sooner."

* GratuitousEnglish: Sandal slips in English words during the episode or during the previews, which he narrates.

* HeroicBSOD: Yoshino suffers a pretty big one at the end of episode 13 after the Founder's Festival, [[spoiler:when she finds out that the festival had overall little impact on their town's tourism, combined with the girls being shown in a mostly negative light by the television documentary done on them.]]

* MysteriousBacker: At the end of episode 20, the broken drum from an old festival the girls recovered in an earlier episode gets carted off by a repair company, despite the Tourism board not having any funds to get it fixed. However, the two moving men says that someone's already paid for the repairs and takes it with them to get it fixed. They wonder who the secret santa was, and although it's not specifically mentioned, the camera cuts to Maki's father, and it's heavily implied that he secretly paid for the repairs, after seeing how happy she was while acting in the Santa play at the school closing ceremony despite not getting the acting job in Tokyo.

* OldShame: An In-Universe example with Kadota. When the manmade lake starts to lower during an annual draining, he notices something sticking out of it, and immediately jumps into the water to try and hide it. Unfortunately his old age works against him, and he nearly drowns. He then escapes the hospital a few hours later, and tries to return to the lake, but fails again. It's later revealed that when he was younger, he caused an incident with a festival that caused a parade float to sink into said lake, and he was trying really hard to hide it. And he ends up causing a StreisandEffect because it makes the townspeople more curious about it. Fortunately Yoshino and the others manage to salvage the situation and attracts a lot of visitors there, much to Kadota's embarrassment.

* OurCryptidsAreMoreMysterious: Ririko is an expert on Unidentified Mysterious Animals, as well as the myths and legends around them.

* SilkHidingSteel: Shiori, who has the sweetest personality of the tourism department, is able to coerce Kadota into apologizing to Chitose, his twenty year rival. She's also completely unphased by insects.

* StockholmSyndrome: The senior citizens living in the nearby Warabiya village takes Yoshino "hostage" and declare their intention to leave the kingdom of Manoyama due to a planned cut to a bus route to their village. As this was the only lifeline to the outside world for many residents, Yoshino plays along with the seniors. They eventually reach a compromise where a smaller bus would arrive on demand, so as not to waste the city's resources on a bus that wouldn't get many passengers.

* ADayInTheLimelight: Each of the main heroines gets a couple of episodes that places large emphasis on them, such as Maki's past acting dreams when a film crew arrives to shoot a zombie movie in their town, or when some Spanish tourists visit because they're intrigued by the town's Chupacabra theme, and Ririko makes a friend while explaining the town's use of said theme.

* WoundedGazelleGambit: Shiori attempts this when Yoshino tries to leave Manoyama during her first night by pretending to be assaulted by a Chupakabura. Yoshino was meant to pull out a plastic sword Shiori had placed conveniently nearby, but she attacks the Chupakabura with her bag instead, causing some injuries to Kadota, who then uses this as an excuse to have her stay longer.