Eh, this episode is not particularly interesting to me either.
Episode summary: Even though Nobunaga now has three war armors at his disposal, Caesar is just ripping through his territories with ease. Eventually, Caesar and his army has Owari surrounded. Hoping to win it all in one final battle, Nobunaga and company hatch a plan to take down Caesar once and for all. But on the brink of defeat, a dragon(?) comes out of nowhere and lends its strength to Caesar. Caesar is thus able to turn the tides of battle, leaving our heroes broken and defeated. But soon, even Caesar starts to lose control of his newfound powers, and this results in the death of Nobunaga’s people. Still, Caesar doesn’t finish Nobunaga and Jeanne off because… because Jeanne is a woman.
Notes:
• Uh oh:
Caesar: “I am leaving my territory in your care, Brutus.”
Brutus: “My liege. Are you certain you do not need me by your side?”
Caesar: “You are the only one I can trust.”
All we need now are Marc Anthony and Cleopatra romping around like idiots. But could you imagine what this anime’s portrayal of Cleopatra would be like? Yeesh, better yet, let’s just not touch the subject.
• Some more dry exposition at the start of the episode. To make it even better, it’s done over a scrolling map, ’cause maps are always fun to look at.
• Nobunaga speculates that Caesar will strike soon because Caesar wouldn’t want Oda to gain invaluable experience should this war drag on. It’s not even a particularly astute observation; it sounds like something you might find out of Sun Tzu’s Art of Common Sense War. But despite this, everyone around Nobunaga gasps as though our hero’s a military genius. As they say, in the land of the blind…
• Nobunaga stutters as he tries to pronounce the word ‘overheat.’ Is there no Japanese equivalent? I’m pretty sure there is, so I have no clue why da Vinci would use a foreign word instead. Not only that, he used an English word…
• Well, that was quick: the two disloyal subjects in Nobunaga’s War Council have died in battle as Caesar and his forces rampage across Oda territory. Mitsuhide even says, “They died with honor as warriors.” Yes, they died with honor despite the fact that they were cowards and constantly schemed against Nobunaga. But hey, as long as you die in a manly way on the battlefield, all crimes are apparently forgiven.
• Eventually, Caesar and his army begin to lay siege upon Owari itself. But hey, three Regalia-enhanced war armors are equivalent to 3,000 regular war armors, right? So after all this standing around and staring at colorful maps, Nobunaga’s complex strategy is to just charge into battle with Ranmaru and Monkey behind him.
• Have we ever discussed how Jeanne has gone from living in some quaint village on the Star of the West to suddenly putting her life on the line in order to protect a foreign country to which she has no ethnic, emotional, or familial ties to? No? Oh well, I’m sure it’s no big deal. She is the Japanese Foreign Legion!
• More military planning, more maps, blah blah blah… obviously, charging headfirst into battle isn’t working. As da Vinci had predicted, the war armors are overheating. So what to do, what to do…?
• Mitsuhide’s plan is to basically draw out Caesar’s Spear of Light since, like every powerful attack ever, he can’t use the skill often. With Jeanne’s invulnerability shield, Nobunaga will be safe, and both he and Monkey can thus launch a counterattack. Somehow, the plan works because Caesar has completely forgotten about the fact that Jeanne exists. I mean, it’s not like he hasn’t been defeated before by her shielding capabilities, so I’m not even sure why a military genius like himself would fall to such a simple strategy.
• But naturally, you haven’t seen Caesar’s final form yet! So like every villain ever, Caesar saves himself from the brink of defeat by transforming his mecha in the middle of a battle. Basically, he gets a bigger gun, and instead of shooting out white beams, he now shoots out purplish-black beams. Truly innovative. Unfortunately, Caesar’s classic quote, “Veni, vidi, vici,” doesn’t sound very cool in a Japanese accent.
• Jeanne tries to shield Caesar’s newest attack, but it causes her mind to, uh, break? It then becomes Nobunaga’s turn to shield her by using is own body instead. Oh ho ho, how the tables have turned. But why didn’t his war armor just blow up or something if it was such a powerful attack?
• Dead children and skeletons everywhere.
• Snicker:
• With victory apparently ensured, Caesar demands that Nobunaga submits to him. In response, the latter invites Caesar to a tea party. And that’s it. The episode is over. It looks like in next week’s episode, Nobunaga will make his manly return to the waterfall, but he’ll be joined by a second party. Oh boy!
• Anyway, as this episode was mostly action and light on the dialogue, I didn’t really have much to say. The battle scenes were just standard mecha fare. As such, nothing particularly notable.
Moe Sucks 
“But hey, as long as you die in a manly way on the battlefield, all crimes are apparently forgiven.”
This MUST be an actual thing in Japan (socially not legally) with how frequently it’s been used over… Wow, actually, well into the 80’s have animes and J-Dramas carried this ridiculous and often hypocritical perspective. Even my beloved Fist of the North Star has this crap in it.
_”Yeah, he tried to rape my not-daughter, turned a whole continent against his own brother, wanted to conquer the world under his tyrannical rule and led to immense suffering globally, but he died like a man by a volcano’s lava. He was a truly admirable man in the end.”
_No, no he wasn’t. He was anime Hitler. STOP idolizing the dead just because they died “like a man/warrior”.
“It looks like in next week’s episode, Nobunaga will make his manly return to the waterfall, but he’ll be joined by a second party. Oh boy!”
If he’s not half-naked and scream crying again I don’t care.
Haha It’s a shame this episode didn’t have more going for it for fodder. Still, at least of the shows you’ve been keeping up with we’ve found our laugh-cow in Wizard Barristers. I doubt there’s anything this show can do to rival Lucyo and the hastily deflating budget.
Maybe if the show had more of those glimpses of good I keep mentioning and you seem to enjoy mocking too, those moments of raw “man” stupidity (tearing your shirt off during a rousing speech, etc.)… But who knows? Maybe the final episodes will blow our minds.
Oh, and I see that ellipses, E Minor:
“Not only that, he used an English word…”
Are those powers of anime precognition kicking in? haha Because personally this makes me think ol’ Exposition Man might secretly be a spy for King Arthur keeping track of Nobunaga this whole time. Maybe he’s actually Merlin who took on the guise of Da Vinci!
…But maybe not. I might just be jumping the gun because of how dull things are without the good kind of stupid to boost this crap.
I don’t know, I just think the show’s getting more and more boring as the weeks go by. It was at least bad enough to mock in the early episodes. Now it’s just a bunch of dull, run-of-the-mill war scenes.
Ah! And on the note of Cleopatra: I’m sure she’d end up looking like an even sluttier version of that woman from VLR
“as long as you die in a manly way on the battlefield, all crimes are apparently forgiven.”
there’s no forgiving to do in the first place since nobody told the Oda clan about their assassination plot. I think only Himiko and her ninja crew knew. And it’s not really about dying in a manly way on the battlefield that gives them honor. It’s about them dying in battle to protect their homeland from invaders.
” Jeanne tries to shield Caesar’s newest attack, but it causes her mind to, uh, break?”
I don’t think the attack caused a mind break on her. It was a big energy stream that was heading directly to Nobunaga and Hideyoshi. But when Jeanne blocked it, and because the shield was effective to some extent, the energy scattered all over the battlefield, killing soldiers from both sides as well as civilians, And as a result Jeanne thinks she performed exactly what the card “Death” predicted. and that caused the mind break part.
hmmm… tea party, huh? always nice to have time to relax….. Whaaaaaaaaaaat? We’re in the part of the war where one claims the head of the other and we’re having a tea party?!?!?
I don’t blame the guy making pathetic excuses when he’s about to die, but the guy who accepts such excuse….. I’d probably put poison in his tea, have soldiers in every room next to the tea party room, ninjas on the ceiling, blah blah blah…
Mitsuhide had his suspicions — hell, he was ready to assassinate them at one point — and he’s the one who nevertheless praised them. I highly doubt dying in battle makes up for treason.
In the post, I am referring to an earlier point in the scene when shielding the attack alone made her scream wildly. This is before the attack deflected off to harm the civilians.
So Mitsu, the other weasel in the house, had suspicions. not sure if the rules of our society works on theirs too, but suspicions are not evidence enough. Besides, everything has to look comfy for Nobu, the guy who doesn’t know anything about the issue.
I watched the scene again before my 1st comment to check out the mind break drama. Here was the order of the things that happened:
1. Caesar shoots
2. Jeanne blocks
3. the beam scatters (view from the sky)
4. the beam hits some soldiers
5. Jeanne goes to mind break mode
6. everything else after that, including dying civilians
So I really think it’s about the “Death” card and her fulfilling the prediction.
That’s why I’m criticizing it. I see A, I disagree with A, I say why I disagree with A. The anime can be whatever it likes to be, and I’ll criticize whatever I like to criticize.
Well, I’m not going to redownload the show just to settle such a minor topic. So I’ll just leave it at this: I simply take jot my notes down as they come to my mind during the course of watching the episode.
uhhh, it’s not like I’m stopping you from criticizing anything… I’m just a guy making comments on a website that allows people to post comments, and correcting what I think needs corrections.
I’m not saying you are. I’m merely pointing out that it doesn’t matter to me if the rules of my society may not necessarily apply to the world of Nobunaga the Fool.
Almost forgot. You can watch anime online on goodanime.net if you want to review something quick or just want to laugh on some scenes repeatedly.You don’t have to load the whole episode too, you can just click on the part you want to check so it starts loading there instead of the start. They have a long list of anime series and movies. Not complete but still a long list.
damn, what an elitist author, get off your high horse dude….
Nah, it’s pretty nice up here.