English Dub Review: Kochoki “To the Capital”

 

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

1559. While Nobunaga and his forces conquer more lands to unite Owari, Maeda (a character I’m not sure I’ve had reason to bring up before) runs into the insolent Lord of Owari, Shiba Yoshikane and refuses him use of their horses. Tsuneoki arrives and agrees to have Maeda commit seppuku, but knows that Yoshikane doesn’t have to balls to chop someone’s head off, so the matter is resolved without death.

That night, their group celebrates their recent victories, but Nobunaga is still traumatized by the death of Nobukatsu. This weakness is exploited by Juuami, a monk of the Doboshu, who uses incense to knock Nobunaga out and attempts to kill him. But before he can, Maeda shows up and starts tackling the monk, accidentally killing him. In his rush, the incense is spilled over while the murder weapon is not a tool known for killing, so they have little evidence to defend Maeda’s actions, especially since the Doboshu could be a valuable ally. So, to stave off making more enemies, Maeda takes his leave, though this also means that Nobunaga has once again lost someone important him like Nobukatsu or Kichou.

The Doboshu’s activity is monitored, being led by Shiba Yoshikane to kill Nobunaga, which he quickly admits to once pushed a little. He is soon banished, making Nobunaga the sole ruler of Owari. This grabs the attention of the Shogunate, who are concerned about this massive shift in power. He and his people make their way to the capital, but Tsuneoki gets a strange but helpful tip to avoid assassins from a familiar looking inn employee. Said employee is actually Kichou, who saves Nobunaga’s group from a random gang of hired street thugs and now goes by the name Baba Reijiro. She’s let go of her desires aside from being by her master’s side.

April 1560. With the recent fight being revealed to be their enemy’s doing, Nobunaga rallies his men for their greatest challenge yet.

OUR TAKE

So this show is doing that thing again where it throws around a lot of names of Japanese historical figures and expects me to know who they are in order to keep up. Granted, this was probably made more for a Japanese audience who would be more familiar with this than I would, much like how I wouldn’t sit some native Japanese down to binge watch “John Adams” and expect them to know everything right off the bat. But I’m the one told to watch and write about this show and thus I will give my thoughts, part of them being that this needs too much homework to be properly enjoyed. The bright side of this is that we only have one episode left and I’ll be able to purge this from my mind soon after.

Though even with a lack of knowledge surrounding Japanese history, I THINK I was able to parse out what was going on here: Essentially, Nobunaga is still dealing with challengers and enemies to his power while he is still grieving the loss of his brother and worrying that more of his loved ones will be taken from him. However, the removal of the official ruler of Owari, who tried to have him killed, causes some uproar and leads to planned meeting with him and the Shogunate, or the official government. BUT that meeting was actually a trap, so maybe the government is out to get them? So now they have to fight the government. I think. Maybe. That’s the best I could come up with, although I’m still wary of how historically accurate this portrayal of these events is, especially since it seems to be writing Nobunaga unambiguously as the only good ruler while everyone else is a petty and jealous traitor. I can’t help but think it wasn’t that cut and dry.

There were things I enjoyed, though. Kichou returns with her new haircut and name, completing her character arc (which I’ve made clear has been one of my favorites throughout the series), where as Maeda gets to have some of the spotlight for once. The latter is a pleasant surprise to me because while he was a likable character, he hadn’t done a ton in the story that was really that worth mentioning. But for better or worse, things all come to a head next week for the final episode of Kochoki.