What They Say:
The sons of Saitou Dousan have turned against him and he is forced to fight a losing war. At the same time Asai Nagamasa visits Nobuna with a proposal that could save many.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the relationship between Kinoshita and Nobuna a little more fleshed out at this point now that she’s realized that he’s taking her seriously with some of her ideas that have not gone over well with others, they still have their spats and problems since she tends to be pretty emotional. The lands continue to be in a huge state of turmoil as it poens with the Saitou Dousan family head that has now had his sons turn against him in their own quest for power, which causes a big ripple effect on other lords and rulers around the surrounding lands. For Nobuna, it’s something that she has to take seriously because it can affect her directly in a more immediate sense but also because it affects her long term goals of trying to solidify things before the horde of foreign invaders come to their shores and are able to sweep through them with ease.
While this bit plays out with Mitsuhide and Dousan, the show plays a different angle back with Nobuna as she’s approached by Asai Nagamasa who is proposing a marriage in order to solidify things and stop more particular wars from starting. Not thta it would end war entirely, but it would ease some of the tensions between two camps and then throw both of them together into whatever matches come from there. But it’s also an angle where it can take Nobuna out of the picture entirely because of the marriage as she’d be forced into a more traditional rol einstead by Asai. He’s intent on using her in a lot of ways, something that he reveals to Kinoshita in order to draw him out in violence and as a way to get rid of him.
There’s an interesting approach things take when Mitsuhide arrives at Nobuna’s camp with Dousan’s daughter in tow as a place to provide her some relative safety. For Nobuna, it’ a conflicting issue because she’s taken out of the equation for a bit as they can’t let her get directly involved, but Kinoshita steps in to work with Dousan to help him achieve his goal while Nobuna is sidelined. It’s the main part of the action we really get for the episode but it works very well and I rather liked seeing how Kinoshita handles things here, especially in standing up to and with Dousan and the actual fight itself down the river. Of course, Kinoshita’s view of things as a game in a way is fun to watch in general, but he never takes it to a point where it’s distracting or over the top, making for a good description of things and nothing more.
In Summary:
As the series goes on, it’s certainly bringing in a lot of familiar things to the time period that I’ve seen often over the years, though it’s changing it up a bit and not making it a cookie cutter of other Oda series that seem to come up every other season. With this episode, we get a lot of things going on and some very interesting moments, but it’s hard to say that it’s all coming together well. I like Kinoshita a lot and his approach to things and I like Nobuna as she makes her plans and her reasons for things, but it feels like the narrative itself isn’t coming together yet or all that clear with what it wants to do. I want to like this series more than I am, but it may also be one that suffers a bit in weekly form and may work better in marathon form.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
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