(12 episodes)
What’s it about ?
This season’s token visit to the Warring Kingdoms period, because the schedule just wouldn’t be complete without one. Adapted from a series of hack&slash videogames.
There was a OVA prologue of this that got broadcast 9 months ago and completely fell under my radar ; fortunately, Crunchyroll had the good sense of snagging the rights to it, so I’m probably watching it momentarily. This first episode does a good job of getting the viewer back to speed, anyway.
Characters
This show earns immediate brownie points for having everyone at about the right gender (and even some of the cast over 20 !), although the presence of a number of skimpily-clad warrior girls makes me doubt its strict historical accuracy.
Another good surprise : Oda –ing Nobunaga does NOT feature in this ; it’s set after his death, with Hideyoshi now running the show and on the verge of conquering all of Japan, with Kanto as the last holdover. This isn’t a time period usually covered by this subgenre, so my interest perks right up.
Our actual protagonist is Yukimura, hot-headed middle-ranked warrior. The type who runs to the sieged enemy fortress just before the all-out assault to ask for a duel with their top general, in a probable effort to avoid bloodshed. (He’s got a girl sidekick/future-wife in tow, mostly to square off with the general’s similarly-female top sidekicks.)
Nobuyuki, his brother, is obviously facepalming offscreen, but goes off after him to help him out (with his own girl sidekick in tow). After all, they do love each other.
And then they win. (With the help of the full force coming right after them, of course.) And we get the full “happy ending” course, including the sudden marriages. At episode 1 out of 12. This is obviously not going to stand.
Production Values
Okay enough. Everyone wears way too fancy armour to really feel historically-accurate (to say nothing of the somersaulting around), but at least everyone has distinctive enough character designs to help mitigate the massive number of character introductions.
Overall Impression
Fascinating. A Sengoku-era series that completely bypasses Oda Nobunaga and goes for the relatively unexplored territory of what happened next ? That’s quite refreshing, and enough to catch my interest a bit. But on the other hand, there are still some silly bits here that could grate on me very quickly if left unchecked. The characters have yet to win me over, and I’m still unsure how complex the politics at play here will turn out to be.
There’s a lot that can go wrong here, but it’s at least earned my checking out the OVA, and probably a second episode. I’m curious.
