Season of The Sakura, or Sakura no Kisetsu [ さくらの季節 ], was one of the first visual novels I played back in the later 1990s. It’s often spoken of in fond circles and equally critiqued as a product of it’s time; one of the very first visual novels – and honestly ‘Japanese’ as a whole – games to release in the United States. My segmented bit does warrant some critique when you consider SoTS’s original Japanese release date was in 1996. How, you’ll ask, does my assumption that “first” Japanese game to be released in the US possibly hold up? Well, it doesn’t, and rather a better statement may be SoTS was one of the first “otaku Japanese” games in North America that gave American gamers a real taste of the sort of games popular in Japan.