Wars 3, journalist Anoop Gantayat described it as "probably the greatest series of games to never make their way stateside", citing its unprecedented success when compared to other games on Sega hardware at the time. The series has been popular with both journalists and fans in Japan since the first game's release. At the inaugural CESA Awards, Sakura Wars won the Grand Award, as well as awards in the Best Director, Best Main Character and Best Supporting Character categories. Sakura Wars 2 won the Packaged Work Award at the 1998 Animation Kobe event. The soundtrack album of Sakura Wars 4 won in the "Animation – Album of the Year" category at the 2003 Japan Gold Disc Awards. Prior to release, Sakura Wars was the second most-wanted game in a Famitsu poll in 1996, coming in behind Final Fantasy VII. The first four games all appeared on a public Famitsu poll from 2006 of the 100 best games of all time. A second later poll ranked the Sakura Wars games as among the best on the Saturn and Dreamcast. Sakura Wars heroine Sakura Shinguji was rated in 2009 by Famitsu as the 17th best Japanese video game character. Related media Red Company and Sega have expanded the Sakura Wars series into various media. These include anime, manga, stage shows, several light novels, concerts and CD album releases of soundtracks. The latter have met with substantial commercial success. Despite a shared identity, Hiroi took care to keep each of these elements distinct and separate from each other. A dedicated themed cafe and merchandise store based in the Ikebukuro district of Tokyo, Sakura Wars Taisho Romando, opened in 1998. Taisho Romando remained open for ten years until it closed in March 2008. A prominent feature was an annual stage show dubbed Sakura Wars Kayou Show supervised by Hiroi, for which new musical numbers were created by Tanaka. The show featured the cast reprising their roles and performing stage shows drawn from the series. Each character had songs themed after their characters. The cast, which grew to include those of later games, remained for the entire run with the exception of actress Michie Tomizawa who retired from the series and her role as character Sumire Kanzaki in 2002. Tomizawa appeared as a guest in later revival concerts. The original stage shows ran regularly from 1997 to 2006. Since then, it has seen irregular revivals