Sakura Minamoto

Sakura Minamoto (源 さくら) is the main protagonist of Zombieland Saga. Before becoming a zombie she was an ordinary girl who faced various misfortunes. She died in 2008 getting hit by a pickup truck on her way to an idol audition. She's also a member and the center of the idol group Franchouchou and is known as Number 1 (1号).

Appearance
Sakura has straight, dark rose-pink hair with a section of it brought up with a blue and pink bow and some hanging over her shoulders, her bangs are brushed to the left side, and blue eyes. Like the other zombies, she has grayish-blue skin, red eyes and a large scar across her face.

In her casual human form, Sakura still sports what would have been her school uniform: a navy-blue and white dress, white socks, and brown school-shoes. As an Idol, she wears a pale pink top with "1" written on it, along with two hearts. Sakura also wears a hot pink skirt with white frills.

Personality
Sakura is shown to be an energetic girl when she was still alive. However, that spirit seemed to turn into confusion, worry, and slight fear after she regains her consciousness as a zombie. However, she becomes very passionate whenever she is singing as an Idol.

When she regains her memories of her life but loses her memories of her Zombification, Sakura becomes very defeatist and detached due to the failures she kept facing in life no matter how hard she tried. After she regained all of her memories and with the encouragement from her friends she regains her confidence and love of performing.

Early Life
Sakura lived a complicated life in her childhood. Initially, she was an energetic and ambitious girl who strived to work hard for the many important roles she gained. Though she worked most of her life to train herself, they all came down on the day of opportunity through a series of unfortunate events. She either ended up injured, forced to help people, or unable to make the cut. These strings of unlucky coincidences continued throughout her school life and even interfered with her personal life and hobbies.

The bad luck and misfortunes she endured throughout her life caused Sakura to develop a pessimistic personality. She stopped trying and lost her self-esteem under the fear of another tragic or embarrassing failure. While still in high school, she saw an idol interview with Iron Frill leader, Ai Mizuno. In her interview, she entailed her success story from her beginnings, learning from her mistakes, and tackling obstacles to become a successful idol. Filled with curiosity, Sakura attended one of Ai's concert to see her in action. From her spirited performance, Sakura was filled with inspiration after seeing her on stage.

With her spirit renewed, she set off to try one last time by participating in an idol audition. But shortly after heading out, her new ambition took an unexpected turn when a truck crashed into her, taking away her life and died.

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Episode 1
After getting hit by a pickup truck and dying, Sakura wakes up 10 years later in a mysterious mansion. While exploring a little bit she is attacked by a zombie. When she flees into another room, several other zombies surround her. But she eventually escapes the mansion. While outside in the pouring rain, she finds out that she is in Saga, and soon comes into contact with a policeman. When he inspects her, the policeman reels back in shock and points a gun at Sakura. Confused, she turns around and sees herself in the traffic mirror, and discovers that she's a zombie.

The policeman shoots her through the chest and Sakura collapses. She then sees the policeman knocked out with a shovel and Sakura passes out. When she comes to, Kōtarō Tatsumi approaches to comfort her and introduces himself in an eccentric manner. He wants Sakura to become an idol to save Saga Prefecture, along with the other six zombie girls. He then immediately takes Sakura and the girls to their first performance at a metal concert club, to try and give the girls 'stimulation' to wake them up.

During their first performance, Sakura has her doubts about Kōtarō's choice of venue and as she is the only sane zombie as of the time, and has no idol training. Despite this, the performance was a success with only headbanging and screaming. During said performance, Sakura regained bits of her memories.

The next day most of the other girls have regained their sanity, Sakura proceeds to greet all of them with a good morning.

Episode 2
Sakura still remains proactive helping with Kōtarō Tatsumi's goal, but she notices that the rest of the girls -- most who've regained their senses -- do nothing. She then has to settle coping with their various personalities, including obliviousness, rebelliousness, and reluctance. But one personal goal that Sakura had in mind, is to recover the memories that she lost after she had died.

Sakura and the girls eventually get a real performance opportunity at Saga castle. During said performance, Tae Yamada instinctively goes after a dried squid in the audience, but Sakura tries to stop her. She accidentally knocks off Tae's head and almost compromised the girls' human disguises. As Sakura tries to maintain their façade, Saki Nikaidō repeatedly pushes Sakura aside and plays around with Tae's head in front of the audience. Sakura then loses her cool and slaps Tae's head away from Saki, then verbally fights with Saki in a rap battle manner where she ultimately triumphs. Her hip-hop in-fighting with Saki impresses the audience and Saki respects Sakura for having the guts to stand up against her.

Episode 4
Taken to a hot springs where Kōtarō Tatsumi will be negotiating for additional budget, Sakura decided to follow instructions to maintain their disguises despite having the opportunity to visit a proper public bath. The girls then go sightseeing around the city where they take the opportunity to know more about each other.

After their sponsored performance, Sakura ends up being invited by Saki Nikaidō to sneak into the public bath against Kōtarō's instructions, to her worry. Junko Konno ends up hearing their conversation and she expresses interested to join them, to Sakura's dismay. So after they take the time to renew in warm bathwater, the girls encounter their sponsored executive, where Sakura loses her head in front of her and the girls end up being discovered in their zombie identities, leaving the executive terrified.

Sakura is left mortally embarrassed having to see their incident reported on the news, believing it to be their fault.

Episode 6
Sakura tries to help Junko Konno make up with Ai Mizuno by comforting her at the beach

Episode 7
Sakura is seen trying to practice with everyone but expressed worry on how Junko isn't participating. Before they were about to leave for their first concert performance, Sakura mention a sense of deja vu when Kotaro accidentally hits Junko with his car after Junko suddenly attempts to stop them so she can join them. Sakura immediately express her joy when Junko decides to join them. During their concert where it started to rain, she showed concern when Ai started to quiver over the sound of thunder. After Junko starts supporting Ai, Sakura along with everyone else started to do a better performance. Even when lighting struck them, they came out unharmed and were able to end their performance brilliantly. Their marvelous result brought Sakura tears of joy as Junko and Ai comfort her.

Episode 10
After Franchouchou became scheduled to hold a concert at local performance venue Arpino, Sakura came to believe it might help her to regain her memories. However, this causes her to overwork herself and messes up her rhythm with her teammates. Noticing this, Kōtarō Tatsumi sends them on survival training in the mountains to improve their teamwork, but it instead only caused Sakura to become irritated as her teammates put survival over the performance (even though the former was clearly the more pressing issue).

Upon returning from the mountains, Sakura's rhythm with her teammates was even worse, which she believed to be because the others were not trying hard enough. However, after observing the others pull off the performance flawlessly without her, she realizes she was the one at fault and apologizes.

With just a week left before the concert, Sakura goes out jogging when she is suddenly hit by a truck again. This causes her to finally regain her memories from when she was alive, while in turn losing her memories of being a zombie.

Episode 11
After getting hit by a truck again, Sakura is taken inside where she wakes up late at night and panics when Tae jumps at her. Similar to the first episode, she becomes scared and runs around the building where she soon runs into other zombie idols who were sleeping and accidentally wakes them up. Upon their awakening, Sakura attempts to defend herself, but then collapses and becomes depressed, saying how everything she does is pointless and loses consciousness when Tae pounces on her.

When the others realize that Sakura has her old memories back but lost her memories as a zombie, Sakura is left alone with Ai who then explains everything to Sakura when she wakes up. While shocked at these revelations, and being told of their upcoming performances at Arpino, Sakura insists that they practice and perform without her. Sakura would then lock herself up in a separate room from everyone else. Worried about her, the zombies girls individually start attempt to cheer her up. After Saki, Junko, and Lily failed to cheer her up, Sakura ends up running away before Yugiri attempts to cheer her up.

As Sakura walks aimlessly away, she looks back at all the various misfortunes that constantly happen to her where no matter what or how hard she tries, it always ends terribly. Her past then reveals that she started to change after seeing Ai Mizuno saying on TV that failures can help someone become their best selves. Sakura's flashback ends where she meets the Policeman A again at the park as she sits on a swing. Despite Policeman A once again panicking over Sakura's zombie appearance, Sakura didn't show any resistance. Kotaro saves her again, saying that this isn't where she belongs.

Kotaro takes her to a viewing place where they discuss her issues and she reveals more of her past to him. Sakura reveals how she became a fan of Ai Mizuno and attended one of her concerts in Arpino where the moment inspired her to become strong and decided to give herself one more chance at trying to do something. This leads to the events at the beginning of the first episode where Sakura decided to attend an idol audition but is then killed after getting hit by the truck. Sakura continues her conversation with Kotaro on how upon learning her tragedy made her believe that she's truly hopeless. Sakura questions him why she is brought back as a zombie to become an idol to save Saga despite her horrible luck and declares how everyone should continue without her. Just when Sakura thought Kotaro gave up on her, he immediately rebuffs all her problems, claiming that he will never give up on her which baffles her.

Episode 12
After Kotaro shout at how he never intends to give up on her, Sakura returns to the other zombies. However, she continues to isolate herself from others as they continue to practice for the upcoming Arpino event. Tae attempts to reach out to Sakura by imitating the Drive In Tori commericial she did with everyone but Sakura brushes it off. As Sakura watch the other zombies practice, she begins realize her familiarity with them. When doing a handshaking event, Sakura ponders and ridicules herself on what she was thinking before regaining her original memories. She was taken back when two fangirls complimented her and looked forward to her performance in Arpino. Despite all the supports, Sakura continues to be cynical as she recalls how every time she had her hopes up, misfortune would then fall on her.

The next day, Tae once again tries to interact with Sakura by showing her news of them doing the Saga Rock event together but Sakura swats away the news magazine while crying she didn't know or care about it. Later at night, Sakura locks herself up while Tae once again tries to contact her. Sakura is then dragged to the practice room by Tae who snapped after being ignored by Sakura many times. Sakura questions Tae's actions until everyone else comes into the room and realizes Tae is trying to show what Sakura meant to her and everyone else. Despite this, she simply replies how idiotic it was for them to be so worked up on something she doesn't even remember and planned to excuse herself. Yugiri slaps Sakura on how she should stop running away and that she has a responsibility to be with through the end. It was from there that everyone's words started to reach Sakura as and when Sakura warned them how their performance will most likely end terribly, they replied they stay with her no matter the results. Sakura finally complied and decided to practiced with everyone again.

During practice, despite Sakura continuing to doubt herself everyone still persist and went as pushing their own luck, surprising her. -->

Trivia

 * The name Sakura means "cherry blossom" (さくら).
 * Sakura's surname Minamoto  (源) means "source, origin".
 * Sakura's surname (Minamoto) is also one of the three most prominent clans in Japanese history. It is listed in the Shinsen shojiroku.
 * According to Sakura's horoscope, she is an Aries.
 * Sakura's forehead scar was caused by her apparent cause of death, a head concussion.
 * This is also the reason why she had an amnesia of her past memories.
 * Sakura is the only member of Franchouchou to not have a "Legendary" title.
 * Sakura died five days after her seventeenth birthday.