As if to prove my point, this week saw the announcement of yet another new series depicting Oda Nobunaga through a ridiculous conceit – in this case “Oda Cinnamon Nobunaga”, an adaptation of a manga which has him reincarnated as a shiba inu.  I sort of get the fascination with Nobunaga as a subject, but the endless arms rise to “reimagine” him in more and more inane and ridiculous situations is genuinely depressing.  It just makes me appreciate Kochouki: Wakaki Nobunaga that much more for its humble charms.

Certain things I knew before this series ever aired, one of them being that it would be roundly ignored – and it has.  Certain things I suspected, among them that this might be pretty decent and as close as Summer 2019 got to a genuine sleeper – and that too seems to be the case.  If anything this series is even more grounded than I expected – there’s some light DEEN manservice and shounen ai, but for the most part this take on Nobunaga’s adolescence – fanciful though some of the details themselves might be – is playing it pretty straight.

This week’s episode deals primarily with the death of Nobunaga’s father Nobuhide in 1551.  Nobunaga would have been about 17 at this time, and it’s no stretch to say he was viewed as an erratic and hare-brained eccentric by his father’s uneasy retainers, most of whom would have preferred that his younger brother Nobukatsu assume the role of family head when Nobuhide passed.  Nobunaga’s strained relationship with his father is quite effectively depicted here with admirable restraint – the two were not close and Nobunaga has been unable to bring himself to visit his ailing father, but this wounds him deeply.

As this is playing out, other events are transpiring.  A boy named Inuchiyo (Terashima Takuma) arrives and begs to be of service to Nobunaga.  This would be Maeda Toshiie at about age 12 or 13, and Inuchiyo would go on to be one of Nobunaga’s most trusted retainers.  In real life Maeda was a childhood friend of Hideyoshi, and indeed they were known as “Dog” and “Monkey” as boys.  As depicted here Nobunaga sees something of his own mold-breaking eccentricity in Inuchiyo, and is persuaded to take him on as a page (which will prove fortuitous later in the episode).

The other major thread unspooling here is the presence of spies within Nobuhide’s inner circle, which causes an estrangement between Nobunaga and Tsuneoki when Nobunaga refuses to believe the truth.  Apparently Kichou is still very much working as a ninja, and she’s the one who brings the full reveal to her husband, who immediately rushes off to help Tsuneoki apprehend the spy – who’s stolen the vital Certificate of Protectorship for Owari province.  While the two are successful (with Kichou – and Inuchiyo’s – help) this causes Nobunaga to miss his father’s funeral (quite a departure from history, where Nobunaga’s erratic behavior at said funeral caused a major scandal and prompted one of his father’s closest retainers to commit seppuku in order to try and remind Nobunaga of his duties).

This season is definitely heavy on bubble series, as once you get past Vinland Saga there’s not that much separating the rest of the pack (even if Kanata no Astra and Given are clearly the class of that pack), and Kochouki: Wakaki Nobunaga is solidly part of that group.  I like a lot of things about it – its restraint, the refreshing lack of anything magical or supernatural, and the way it manages to hint at the man Nobunaga will become while still showing us a completely different person than the history texts describe.  This show is no masterpiece but it’s solid in all the right ways, and it’s definitely making a case to be part of the equation this meager anime season.