Anime Review: Nobunaga Concerto

Anime: Nobunaga Concerto (anime)

Genres: Historical, Action, Adventure, Comedy

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

General Set-Up: Saburo is just a high school student who couldn’t care less about history--that is until he becomes part of history. Somehow he finds himself in the Warring States era of Japan and runs into none other than great Oda Nobunaga...who is running away from his castle? After nearly being trampled by Nobunaga’s house, he realizes that he looks just like Nobunaga. Because of this he is forced to become Nobunaga, with nothing more than his high school history book to guide him.

Characters: As you can guess, Saburo/Nobunaga is not your typical main character in an anime. He gets himself into many awkward situations, sometimes forgetting that just because something is in the 21st century does not mean it is in the Warring States era. He has a wife and many retainers that are under him. All of the characters are very well written with character development and many surprises. While there are too many other characters to describe them here, they play various functional roles, from being Nobunaga's personal assistant to being a tactician.  

Plot: While the plot is well written, I would not base your history paper on it. It follows the general timeline of Nobunaga’s rule, but adds some things to it (like time travel). If you don’t know Nobunaga united a third of Japan during the Warring States Era. When he died, the successors completed his dream of uniting all of Japan, thus ending the Warring States Era. Pretty important guy.  Despite being rather serious at times, the humor does not feel out of place.

Ending: Nobunaga Concerto ends rather abruptly with only 10 episodes. The plot does not

conclude. Things are not resolved. The reason for this is that it was supposed to be a short promotional anime for the live action version also called Nobunaga Concerto.

Sound:  The music is good, switching between more modern music and music from that time period. The ending song and the animation that goes along with it is awesome and one of the best endings I have seen yet.

    There is no dub for Nobunaga Concerto, but the sub is worth mentioning. The person who voices Nobunaga also voiced Light in the subbed version of the wildly popular Death Note series. For those who are not native Japanese speakers, or who are not very advanced in Japanese, the Japanese can be hard to follow. Some of the phrases and words used in the show have fallen out of common usage. However, the subtitles on Crunchyroll are well done.

Animation: The animation is CGI, which, personally, I don’t really care for. With CGI there tends to be really good CGI and really bad CGI, with not a lot of room in between. This is one of the few shows where the CGI is not bad, but it’s not good either. However, the colors used, especially yellows and oranges, are done REALLY well.

Things to watch out for: If you do not like blood, you will not like the battle scenes. Otherwise enjoy. If this aired on American TV I believe that it would be rated TV-14.

Other Media: Nobunaga Concerto has a manga of the same name as well as a live-action TV show that will have a movie conclusion coming out soon in mid 2016.

Where to watch it: Both the anime and the live-action series are available for legal streaming on  Crunchyroll (crunchyroll.com).