The stuff that happens in Kochouki: Wakaki Nobunaga is so dramatic, you wish it could actually have happened that way sometimes. I suppose that’s as good a metric for historical fiction as any – if you get the sense that the fiction is as or more interesting than the fact (and the true Nobunaga story is no snoozefest), it’s mission accomplished. The icing on the cake is that the truth as stated in the history books is so unreliable that we hardly know just how fantastical much of this is.
That’s not to say I believe the true story of Nobunaga and Nobukatsu’s final split as depicted in Kochouki actually happened. But it plays like a really good Sengoku soap opera, and Nobunaga was such a larger-than-life figure that such a tone totally works where his life is concerned. Kochouki is getting the balance just right here, which is a true rarity in Nobunaga anime (even the ones that don’t gender or species-flip him or involve reincarnation or time travel).
There’s a lot to unpack here, to be sure. We have the introduction of Kitsuno of the Ikoma clan (Suzuki Minori). She would prove to be a vital figure in Nobunaga’s story, his most-loved concubine (and probably woman, period), mother of two of his children, and general soulmate. Her presence here plants seeds of doubt in Kichou’s mind just as things in Minoo are going off the rails – oldest son Yoshitatsu finally acts on his venal nature and murders his younger brothers before trapping The Viper at Inabayama Castle. This makes Kichou’s usefulness to Nobunaga highly dubious – as her old contacts from home are all too eager to remind her.
The key figure of this episode, though, is Nobunaga and Nobukatsu’s younger brother Hidetaka (Murase Ayumu). Another favorite of Gozen, he’s presented here as an innocent lad who loves bugs and nature, and the only one moving freely between the palaces of the brothers (he’s found a kindred spirit in Tsuneoki). That leads to him becoming an feckless go-between as tensions mount, thanks in no small part to Nobukatsu’s lover Kurando Tsuzuki (Satoshi Hino). Kurando has been fomenting discord since his arrival on the scene, but as he’s squirmed his way into his lord’s trust (among other things) he’s become bold enough to openly push for revolt.
It’s strongly implied here that it was Kurando who had Hidetaka murdered so he could pin the crime on Nobunaga, though history records that the boy was accidentally killed by Nobunaga and Nobukatsu’s uncle Nobutsugu when Hidetaka wandered onto the clan’s hunting grounds. Indeed, I’m not sure how Kurando could have known that the boy would do that (chasing fireflies) but perhaps he’d planned to have him shot right off his horse, if necessary. In any event Kurando leads the calls for retribution against Nobutsugu (and by extension, Nobunaga) by calling for his head to be taken in revenge, though the killing was accidental.
I think, taking everything into context (including what the characters know and what they don’t) Nobunaga is perfectly in the right here. Why kill his uncle over something that happened accidentally, as a result of his brother’s carelessness? But thanks to Kurando and Gozen’s urging, Nobukatsu takes his brother’s declining to join in his revenge as the final offense by Nobunaga, and the die is surely cast now. However events actually transpired to get to this point, this is assuredly the first great watershed of Nobunaga’s rise from regional lord to uniter of Japan, and it’ll be interesting to see how Kochouki portrays the manner in which it changes him.
