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Manly manliness and historical inaccuracy make for an awesome series.
Season 1, Episodes 1-13
Extras include trailers, textless opening and ending themes, and three extra videos of the adventures of Mini Chosokabe and Mini Mori.
The Sengoku Era of Japan is a popular time to romanticize. Whereas the movie I recently reviewed, Goemon, portrays Oda Nobunaga as a noble visionary the version of Nobunaga in this series is known as the “Devil King of the Sixth Heaven” who regularly kills people with a shotgun. I’m not quite sure how to explain what this series is about…the Sengoku era is a common subject for Japanese history and each of the main characters are based off of an actual historical character. To create an American analogy, this anime would be as if all of the major historical figures of the American Civil War were fighting one another with martial art techniques that explode entire platoons, with moving cities centered on a giant gun, and President Lincoln drives a jet engine powered coach and fights with a giant mecha.
Ya know what? I’d probably watch that series too.
While each of the individual lords of their respective provinces play an important role in this series the primary protagonists are Date Masamune the One Eyed Dragon, and Sanada Yukimura. Date Masamune has a distinctly Yakuza number of mannerisms such as riding his motorcycle horse with his arms crossed and his weapons of choice are six katanas known as the Dragon’s Claws. Sanada Yukimura on the other hand is a rather naïve and honorable warrior fighting with two longspears who serves as a general under Takeda Shingen (whose nickname is “The Tiger of Kai”) the ruler of Kai.
Drawing on a popular Asian myth of Tigers and Dragons being eternally at odds the two young warriors clash on the battlefield and become instant rivals. As with most rivalries in anime this also means that Date and Sanada have a great amount of respect for one another and when the shadow of Oda Nobunaga begins to spread across the Land of the Rising Sun multiple clans join together to destroy the Devil King and his vassals.
