Anastasia Palma



Anastasia Palma is a supporting protagonist in Sakura Wars (2019).

Appearance
Anastasia is a tall, curvacious woman with mid length silver hair and blue eyes. She wears a multilayered dress that is split into a red lower dress section with pockets and a scarf like trim at the bottom and a white shirt section that exposes her arms and back, topped off with a loose blue tie. She wears 3/4 length blue dress pants and a pair of blue high heels that are decorated like tea cups, having a handle at the back of the heel. She wears golden braclets on her right wrist, and a white cufflink on her left.

History
After a string of failed performances, Sumire Kanzaki hires Anastasia Palma, a rising starlet in the acting world to join the Imperial Combat Revue. Professional, mysterious and beautiful, Anastasia's mere presence begins to increase audience numbers, allowing the Flower Division to get some much needed funds. Whilst hesitant at first to help train the other girls, Sakura Amamiya manages to eventually persuade Anastasia to let her become her understudy so she can better support her in acting. Whilst aloof, and initially begrudgingly doing this, she soon begins to help not only Sakura but slowly help Hatsuho, Claris and Azami raise their acting prowress too. Anastasia remains somewhat mysterious, although she teases Seijuro Kamiyama about her potentially being a spy. She declares that the Christmas showing will be her last stage performance with the Flower Division, and puts Sakura forth as lead actress instead of herself, encouraging Sakura to show how far she's come.

After the Christmas performance, Anastasia disappears, but not before shooting Reiji, stealing her mugen and Sakura's sword. With the last Combat Revue game about to take place, the Flower Division must choose between chasing down Anastasia to find out why she's betraying them or attending the finals. They choose the former, and corner Anastasia who reveals that she's genuinely been a spy this entire time for the demons, having been raised since a child by President G, the runner of the Combat Revue World Games. President G in turn is revealed to actually be Sotetsu Genan, a demon who wishes to release the seal on Shadow Tokyo and bring back the Archdemon who was sealed during the Great Demon War.

Anastasia attacks her former team alongside Yasha. She presents Sakura's sword to Yasha, revealing it to be the Imperial Key used to unlock the seal on Shadow Tokyo in exchange for the promise of reuniting her with her family. Whilst it's implied that Anastasia belives Yasha will bring her family back from the dead, Yasha instead mortally wounds Anastasia with Sakura's blade, claiming once she's dead she'll be reunited with them, and they will all be raised from the dead to act as the demon's pawns together.

Seijuro rushes in blocking Yasha's killing blow, and the arrival of the others forces Yasha to retreat, taunting Anastasia as being a poor thing for not even being able to join her family in death. Anastasia is rushed back to the theatre where she is placed in a healing tank. She regains conciousness inside the tank, apologising for her betrayal, although still very weak. She begins to flatline, but Reiji manages to force the healing tank to overdrive saving her from death.

Later the others are discussing what to do about Shadow Tokyo. Yasha managed to break all their mugens and whilst Reiji has been able to fix Seijuro's, he is still injured from the gunshot and unable to fix all of them at his usual speed. Seijuro offers to go solo to stop the seal from being broken down, but the others reject it saying it's suicide. Anastasia shows up, still struggling to walk, but requests she goes with Seijuro as her mugen is not damaged and she wishes to atone for her betrayal. Seeing the determination in her eyes, Seijuro hesitantly agrees that he and Anastasia will go together first and the others will catch up as soon as their Mugens are fixed.

During the mission against Yasha, Anastasia is the first to be targeted and killed, with Yasha mocking her for being a traitor. If chosen as the deputy Captain, Anastasia will be the second controlled character during this mission, and Sakura Amamiya will take over from her once the story kills her off. Anastasia is later brought back to life through Sakura Shinguji's cherry blossom spirit energy and joins the others.

After defeating Yasha and Sotetsu Genan, if Anastasia is whom Seijuro has the most points with, she will take him on a date to watch a meteor shower together. She points at the heavens, before turning to Seijuro, blushing and embarrased looks away. The two then cuddle under the meteor shower skies.

Trivia

 * Anastasia just like the rest of the Imperial Combat Revue team was designed by Tite Kubo, the mangaka behind Bleach.
 * Anastasia's biggest dream was finding a place she belonged.
 * If Seijuro Kamiyama stands Anastasia up on a date, she will appear at his door pointing a gun at him. Whilst the gun isn't loaded, she tells him to take this as a warning not to cross her again.