Sakura Wars is a Japanese steampunk media franchise created by Oji Hiroi and owned by Sega. It is focused around a series of cross-genre video games. The first game in the series was released in 1996, with five sequels and numerous spin-off titles being released since then. The series—set during a fictionalized version of the Taishō period—depicts groups of women with magical abilities using steam-powered mecha to combat demonic threats.
The Sakura Wars series met with considerable success, spawning a multimedia franchise and having its own themed cafe between 1998 and 2008.
Image: Sakura Wars V LIPS gameplay
Image: Sakura Wars 3 gameplay 2
Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retrofuturistic technology and aesthetics inspired by, but not limited to, 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian era or the American "Wild West", where steam power remains in mainstream use, or in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power.
Original illustration of Jules Verne's Nautilus engine room
"Maison tournante aérienne" (aerial rotating house) by Albert Robida for his book Le Vingtième Siècle, a 19th-century conception of life in the 20th century
Print (c. 1902) by Albert Robida showing a futuristic view of air travel over Paris in the year 2000 as people leave the opera
Truth Coffee, a steampunk café in Cape Town
