So...I read about this on TVTropes and decided to read it on a whim. Not gonna lie if youre expecting a sweet fluffy shoujo romp full of warm feels and heartwarming moments youre in the wrong place because this manga is dark as all hell. Considering Yuu Watase the mangaka behind manga such as Fushigi Yuugi and Ceres: Celestial Legend made this its honestly quite a shock. Normally Im not a fan of yaoi or shounenai namely because many of the ones Ive encountered were either too melodramatic too silly have weird views on romantic relationships or pretty much have no plot and nothing else except sex. Thankfully Sakura Gari avoids that one last pitfall being a strong gripping complex story with many layers and mysteries behind its beautiful facade. To put it simply in a more vulgar manner: Its fucking insane. Sakura Gari takes place in the Taisho era the years 19121926 and a young high school boy Masataka Tagami the eldest son of a librarian from a small village goes to Tokyo to try and find his place in life. While trying to find a job to support himself as he prepares for his university entrance exams he finds employment when he meets a man named Souma Saiki who lets him stay at his house on the condition that he work as a house servant. At first Masataka is happy to be able to make some good money and support himself through school. As time goes by however he starts to learn and then become unwittingly involved in the Saiki houses many dark disturbing secrets and things get even worse when Soumas dark secrets come to light. Now Yuu Watase is known for her bright cheery shoujostyle artwork giving her female characters sparkly eyes youthful expressions and comedic superdeformed chibis. Fushigi Yuugi her most famous work has all of these. But seriously if you look at the art style for Fushigi Yuugihttps://images.grassets.com/books/1389735838l/568566.jpg and then compare it to Sakura Garihttps://cdn.myanimelist.net/images/manga/2/14457l.jpg the differences are like night and day. Sakura Gari has very clean linework softer shading impeccably detailed backgrounds that fit well with the mangas time period and setting and the characters are drawn much more realistically with very little exaggerated features and its less...cartoony. Seriously Watase has come a long way as an artist. If anything can be described as beautiful Sakura Gari definitely fits the bill no question. Some say this is her best artwork yet and Im inclined to agree. On the other hand its characters are kind of a mixed bag. Let me say one thing first: I LOVE complex characters who have more to them than meets the eye who have equal amounts of good qualities and bad that make them fully human. However if a characters bad qualities outweigh the good it can be difficult to sympathize with them in any way especially if they do genuinely bad things. Souma the one with the ponytail is one of those characters. The thing with Souma is that he starts off seeming like a genuinely good person who cares for Masataka in his own way...but when Masataka learns his dark secrets and tries to run Souma goes way too far in trying to make him stay and does some pretty horrible things to him. If youre familiar with standard yaoi tropes then youll know that Soumas one of those rapist semes who sexually and mentally abuses poor Masataka and it cant be denied that raping someone is a horrible thing to do even if you do have your reasons for it. Watase loves giving her villains or troubled abusers sympathetic backstories to explain their behavior and while sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt Nakago anyone? namely when it tries to use said backstory as a way to handwave or justify the bad things he does. You can make your villains sympathetic but there are ways to do it without coming off as justifying or handwaving their bad behavior. Dilandau Albatou from Vision of Escaflowne and Claude Frollo from Disneys version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame are perfect examples of this. But...to be fair the manga actually acknowledges this. Souma KNOWS hes done horrible things to Masataka and how serious it all is and not only does he feel genuinely remorseful especially when you learn his backstory he actually does make an effort to make amends with Masataka even if he doesnt go about it in healthy ways. The manga doesnt deny that Soumas done some pretty awful things in an attempt to keep Masataka with him and while Watase does go out of their way to explain why he does what he does showing that hes the product of a very VERY toxic environment from which there was basically no escape they also acknowledges that the people around him are just as guilty for the bad things theyve done to him and unwittingly contributing to his behavior in the first place. Granted the ending may still leave a slightly bad taste in ones mouth considering what inevitably happens and your liking of the ending will depend on whether you actually want Masataka and Souma to get together or not...and considering Souma actually rapes Masataka several times...yeah. Wow that sure was a long paragraph on just one character. Now onto the others Everyone else is just as complex intriguing and fascinating as Souma is. Everyone involved with the Saikis has their own story to tell from the doctor who helps Soumas father and Souma himself from an unnamed maid who only appears for a few short pages and never again. Even characters who are completely unambiguously evil and downright monstrous have reasons for doing what they do and while some of them dont always get developed or fleshed out the complex twisty nature of the series really made me want to know just what these characters are going to do next even if they seem like theyre just thrown in there just for the sake of angst and losing their sanity. Plus if any of you are concerned that Masataka is just going to be another Miaka or just a simplistic uke stereotype fear not for hes not a helpless useless kid whose sole purpose is to be cute and spineless and be Soumas toy. He can be nice and kind when he wants to be but he has his limits and wont hesitate to call someone out on their crap if pushed hard enough. He has flaws. He doesnt always have the best relationships with his family members. Hes insecure and can be a little resentful. He gets angry he gets sad he actually does make an effort to escape his situation though it fails and while bad things do happen to him he isnt such a spineless wimp that he cant make an effort to help those he loves and fight to survive. Most importantly he fights back. That in and of itself really makes him stand out and above every yaoi uke stereotype in existence. The story is where some people might get divided and I can understand why people might have grievances with it especially in regards to its content. This manga is pretty much a gigantic soap opera: Sensitive issues such as rape murder child abuse and sexual exploitation are constantly used as plot devices like theyre going out of style so liberally that it really lays it on thick. Almost none of the characters are genuinely good or human save for Masataka and theres little if any reprieve from all the craziness like comedy scenes or chapters where youre allowed to just breathe or take a break from Sakura Garis insane twisted messed up world. Some people say this is the mangas strong point: Theres always something going on theres very little filler or rut and the story is always moving forward. It helps that the manga is short too only nine chapters long in three volumes so its a short read. A very very hard short read. On the other hand many others are bound to take issue with Sakura Garis content and how it handles a lot of sensitive issues and thats understandable. Even I thought some parts were way too over the top even in context and some parts could have been handled much better than they were. Not only that theres a LOT of graphic detailed nudity but it never goes out of its way to show any genitalia surprisingly. Half the time I was reading it I kept feeling like Watase wanted to go farther than they did in showing the sex scenes but didnt to the point where I was like Come on Watase Just go fullon porn We know you want to I have to wonder if it was because of executive mandate or because they wanted to be kind of coy about it and maybe feel like they trusted their readers to figure out what was going on without going all out. Who knows? But honestly? Ill read this over Fushigi Yuugi any day of the week. Bottom line if you want a deep complex genuinely intriguing yaoi thats also utterly bonkers give this a shot...but its not for the faint of heart. Seriously.