Nobunaga Concerto

Episodes 1-6

Having an anime about Nobunaga Oda, the powerful 16th century samurai, is like having an American show about George Washington. A hyped up version of a national hero still strong in people's minds, Nobunaga Concerto is a patriotic reminder that history still matters.

The only problem is, this idea has been done to death. Between Nobunaga the Fool, The Ambition of Oda Nobuna, Sengoku Otome: Momoiro Paradox and more, the last thing Japan needed was another retelling of Nobunaga. And for westerners like me, already twice removed from the samurai's story, this is not the pop-culture retelling his legacy deserves.

This time, we're bringing out Nobunaga's story like so much dead horse to beat for a time-travel story. Saburo is a high school student who looks exactly like Nobunaga, a fact we discover when he inexplicably falls off a fence outside of school and back into the warring states period—his fall broken by the real Nobunaga, who asks him to be his stand-in while he runs away to escape the pressures of his life as the head of a powerful family.

Much like Nobunaga's saga, the time travel story has been done to death. We all have an inkling of what we'd do if we ended up in the past. We could, like in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, use our knowledge from the future to gain ourselves a position of power. Or we could change events in the past in order to transform the present, as in Back To The Future. Disappointingly, Saburo does neither.

An inattentive student, Saburo has little knowledge of Nobunaga's life (though he did conveniently have his history book in his bag when he tumbled into the past). He knows only that Nobunaga ended up conquering Japan, and single-mindedly attempts to reach that goal.

Perhaps that is the most irritating part of the show: that Saburo has no problem adjusting to life in the warring states, even though he's a modern day high school student. There is no difference between him and the wily, unpredictable Nobunaga of the history books. Here, we could assume that the anime is gearing up for a twist—Saburo has been the real Nobunaga of history all along! But Saburo makes some blunders, like accidentally fighting the famous Battle of Okehazama at Dengakuhazama instead. And no, Saburo's history book doesn't change as history changes—that would be too clever of a development.

No, you're not having a seizure. That jerky, puppet-like animation is just how the show is made. People's heads appear to move seconds before the rest of their bodies follow along. Strangely, this is a stylistic choice—the show's powerhouse ending theme “Fukagyaku Replace,” and stunning courtyard backdrops evoking tapestries indicate that this was relatively high budget. My theory was that the animation attempts to mimic Japanese bunraku puppetry, but that wasn't invented until the 15th century. Either way, it's giving me a headache.

Let's go back to the backdrops for just a moment, because they are gorgeous and resemble Japanese screen art. In the first episode, cherry blossoms are everywhere, followed by irises evoking summer in the third episode, and maple leaves evoking fall in the fifth. So Saburo's only been there for less than a year, right? Wrong. In episode five, we find that the little boy Saburo unwisely gave a porno-mag from the future has become a grown up womanizer who now calls himself Ieyasu Tokugawa (yes, he of the Tokugawa shogunate).

I'm sure that aside from the womanizing, already a historical fact (dude had 19 wives and concubines!), there will be no repercussions to bringing relics of the future back to the past. After all, episode three introduced us to a former policeman who, like Saburo, was flung from modern times into the warring states period 30 years before and is now Nobunaga's father in law. Even if the past is crawling with unintentional time-travelers, not one has bothered to use their knowledge of the future to improve lives beyond their own—and their time traveling is yet to be explained.

If you made it with me to episode six (and I truly commiserate), we've just discovered the real Nobunaga, still sickly, wants to aid Saburo as a guard. At long last, the two are working in concerto (get it?) to change history and prevent Nobunaga's impending assassination.

Questions still to be answered: why has Saburo yet to realize that his most precious possession, his history book, was burned to a crisp an episode ago? Will it even matter since he doesn't use it to any great import anyway? Why are he and Nobunaga identical? Will there ever be a cost to changing history? I am frustrated with this anime for taking such reliable base material and a clearly high budget and making absolutely nothing of it.

Nobunaga Concerto is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Lauren writes about anime and journalism at Otaku Journalist.