「Episode 01」

Well, Nobunaga-sensei no Osanazuma could never be accused of lacking creativity. It’s premise quickly defines the tone of the first episode as the real wife of legendary feudal lord Oda Nobunaga, Kichou (Uehara Akari) is accidentally brought into present-day Japan by a teacher who happens to be named Oda Nobunaga (Sakai Koudai). Because this is an ecchi series and the real Nobunaga married Kichou when she was 15, she has the full intention of having sex with Nobunaga as they celebrate their upcoming marriage. It’s a concept that is definitely meant to raise eyebrows and, to the anime’s credit, Nobunaga is immediately put off by the fact that she’s 15 and coming onto him, but your mileage may vary on whether it’d be easy to stomach some of the more erotic scenarios that feature Kichou.

One thing about the anime that I have to give it credit for is how it uses its time. Rather than overstaying its welcome for too long, the anime constitutes as a short with only seven and a half minutes to keep the viewers immersed into Nobunaga’s life as he avoids the advances of Kichou. On top of this, it manages to use its time well by actually giving us a gist of key plot points. The story might not be complex or rich, but it cuts to the chase and gives us enough information to go off of that is sorely missing from a lot of shows that you’d wish would sometimes just get to the point. The short length does help with that, but the staff did a great job this time around with underlining who the characters are and what the crux of the plot will be. The animation did look very cheap and sloppy at several times, but at the very least, the storyboarding was on-point.

It has to be said that Nobunaga is a strange protagonist considering how he straddles the line between being morally sound yet completely immature for a 28-year-old teacher. When he’s told that two of his students have been leaving early because they’re dating, he goes on a downward spiral as he is extremely jealous of two high school kids dating. I mean, he might be in the same camp as many of the female teachers in rom-coms that are treated as a joke cause they rant to class about not having a date for Christmas, but it’s still weird how he has to whine to one of his students about how he wishes he had a girlfriend and how touched he is that she offered to date him if he was still forever alone by the time she graduated. His desperation for a relationship leads him to be ecstatic about Kichou dropping in his lap until the harsh reality crept up on him that she was 15. He should be an interesting protagonist to follow with his contrasting personality between his desperation for a girlfriend and his efforts to stay away from Kichou’s attempts to get him arrested by the lolice.

But as funny as the premise seems, there are still quite a few hurdles to go over. For instance, the fact that, even after learning about Kichou’s age, we’re still going to be seeing quite a lot of nudity on Kichou’s end. There is the promising possibility of this being overshadowed by older, more mature women considering that there is a busty teacher character who will more than likely end up carrying the torch, but it’s still hard to swallow for viewers who will have her age at the back of their minds as we see her bare backside and her censored crotch. There are also fundamental problems with the fact that Nobunaga is a direct descendant of the Oda family, meaning that Kichou is Nobunaga’s great great great great great great+ grandmother. From a time-travel standpoint, this is going to create a huge time paradox if Kichou ends up staying in the future considering that, at the point in time she was sent from the past, she had yet to meet her real husband. Not only would it probably rewrite their family tree for Kichou not to end up with her time’s Nobunaga, but it could possibly rewrite a huge chunk of history if the real Nobunaga were to go about his rule without his wife. The real-life Kichou might not have been able to produce offspring so she couldn’t have the teacher Nobunaga be the father of his great great great great+grandfather, but imagine how different history would have gone if an entirely different woman who might’ve been able to produce children was in Kichou’s place.

One other factoid of note is how different language is between the 1500s and the present day. The present Nobunaga family might be well-versed in classical Japanese because they are invested in the feudal era side of their family as descendants of such a memorable figure in history, but Kichou only knows Japanese from her time period. She’d naturally have a difficult time understanding contemporary Japanese if she’s still going off of what she could understand from her time period, and most of the conversations she has with the present day Oda family should have more confused glances from her perspective. It might not be logical or ethical, but there is a sense of charm to Nobunaga-sensei no Osanazuma. Whether it’s your cup of tea or not might be subject to debate, but the pacing and ridiculousness behind the story does make it an interesting watch, and it certainly doesn’t help that it’s short enough to digest in smaller portions.

ED Sequence

ED: 「恋せよみんな, ハイ!」 (Koi Seyo Minna, High!) by Pyxis

9 Comments

    1. Show Spoiler ▼

      Choya
      1. Show Spoiler ▼

        Hebi!
  1. Glad something is bringing up the past’s cultural differences. I don’t need the titulation with it just recognition that morality was different in the past and some of it shown at least in passing. Actually, because this is a status marriage Kichou is a few years older than normal common relations. Prostitutes started at 11 and as this show reminds of a different way of counting age that might be 10. High-level marriages could be under ten years old even and up to around 20 but rare that old and even rarer older. High-level marriage was done when a good deal was worked out not on when the female hit puberty which was the normal age the commoners started. Why so young? When 50% to 75% of children don’t reach adulthood and people die very young combined with the military needs humans needed to start as soon as possible. That is the reason humans can start reproducing that young. The emotional damage starting that young is actually from humans taboo instinct, whatever society decides is taboo will cause emotional problems with those who violate the taboo. Examples, gays in raised conservative environments often carry life long emotional scars and never totally feel comfortable being gay. Emotional damage is not shown in primitive groups who start at puberty after all why to evolve or design something that starts reproducing at age but make it emotionally damaging. WARNING just because the emotional damage is caused by a cultural choice the taboo instinct is powerful and on an individual level you cannot overcome it trying sexual activity young almost certain to cause emotional damage along with the legal consequences.
    The rasing of the proper age for sex was done as the need for huge numbers of kids started to go down as a choice in the West for last two or so centuries as people desired to extend childhood and create retirement for the old. And it was not just sex it was the right age to start working that went up along with drinking age. Efforts to rewrite history so that marriage was always over 18 insult those who worked hard to raise the ages and are total lies. An over 18 age would have caused the human race to go extinct for most of history and don’t think it’s totally connected but fully modern societies are starting to go extinct with not enough babies. Waiting for 18 should work but waiting till over 30 and not having the 2.1 children on average does not work.

    Back to show I’m up in the air if worth watching. The taking off clothes though was true to history the sexual morality of Japan before contact with the West is like that not having it done would be a lie.

    RedRocket
    1. Very thoughtful comment, if not very controversial.

      One thing worth noting is that childbirth, back then, was a life-or-death event.
      Records from colonial times in the US show the greatest fear women had at the
      time was surviving childbirth. Also, the lifespan of peoples back then was
      somewhere between 25 and 40 years so waiting to your 20s as a woman to start
      a family wasn’t really practical. And infant mortality was very high as well.

      Efforts to rewrite history so that marriage was always over 18…

      Yeah, this rewriting of history extends well beyond the subject of marriage,
      and even goes back as far as biblical times. Ever wonder how old Joseph and
      Mary were when she gave birth to Jesus? It’s amazing (to me) how things that
      are urgently important in today’s society were completely ignored in the past,
      and thus no actual record was made of those facts. So we’re left guessing…

      When you start looking critically at any historical documents, it’s amazing how
      much of the past is misrepresented and rosily painted to suit some SJW view…

      Anyway, not going to take the series too seriously and just enjoy it for the
      (apparent) comedy that it’s meant to be.

      mac65
  2. A bit worse writing than I expected, but the girl is pretty cool. I’d paraphrase her attitude as “You’re screwing with me, there’s no way this is the future. Now let’s make babies. Don’t look down on me, THIS IS MY DUTY.”

    The only part that was a bit too dumb/lazily handled for me, was the sister and mother saying “You take care of her” right after getting on his case about them having a physical relationship.

    Player
  3. I also thought about the likely language issues but there’s historical and then there’s historical. I also found it amusing that she wanted to join him at his place of employment.

    As to what we would consider really early marriages today, from what I’ve read, there wouldn’t be expectations of anything until some level of maturity was reached (which we would still consider scandalous today). And depending upon circumstances, more delay could follow. For example, Louis the XVI of France and Marie Antoinette. They were married when she was 14 (he was 15) but did not consummate their marriage for some seven years. This situation was absurdly extended but it serves as an example.

    As an aside, there seems to be a lot of short shows this season.

    Mockman
  4. Still waiting for an acchi short that can hold a candle to Battle Programmer Shirase. Many have attempted. All have failed. Will this be any different? *Downloads*…

    Matti

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *