Writing fictionalized history is a fascinating exercise.  As long as you get your story to certain checkpoints along the way – the ones everyone recongizes and accepts as true – you can take pretty much whatever route you like to get there.  There’s a great freedom in that which Hyouge Mono exercises in stunning fashion, in the process delivering up an account that’s both entertaining and authentic.  And a part of the experience of watching is knowing what those checkpoints down the road are, even as the characters on-screen are unaware of what lies in store for them.

Date Masamune is a fascinating example of creative license.  In reality, as the events of the fated meeting at Odawara Castle approached the One-Eyed Dragon was a 23 year-old upstart less than a year removed from stunning military triumphs in Tohoku.  Here he’s portrayed as a balding middle-aged kabuki persona, arguably the oddest in a cast full of odd characters.  Date was an eccentric by reputation, but why Yamda-sensei (or the anime) chose this angle for him I have no idea.  It’s certainly memorable.

Another of those checkpoints in the road is the final reckoning between Hideyoshi and Sen no Rikyu.  We have no idea, really, why their relationship ended as it did – just as we don’t know if what the history books say about Mitsuhide Akechi, Hideyoshi, and Oda Nobunaga is what really happened.  But the souring of their relationship is beautifully portrayed, and the events of this episode are quite chilling.  Rikyu seems to have gone round the bend, keeping Souji’s head in a box and refusing to speak to the Chief Advisor as they provide incredibly awkward tea ceremonies for the other.  There’s only one way this can end, and even if he is going insane Rikyu surely knows what that is.

As for Masamune, as in real life he angered Hideyoshi by repeatedly delaying his audience at Odawara to bow his head.  Here his army has a chance run-in with Sasuke and his men, nearly leading to bloodshed (Sasuke’s) before the timely arrival of Takayama Ukon.  The real Date was supposedly certain he’d be executed when he met with Hideyoshi, but the one we see here is quite anxious that this not happen.  Sasuke provides him some advice – wear white (the color worn when committing seppuku) during the audience to prove his sincerity to the Monkey.  But the outfit he chooses is rather different than the one Sasuke did.

For Sasuke to make an enemy of a man like Date is an odd and daring – perhaps stupid – move.  Having been made the fool himself during the aforementioned audience and smarting from his humiliation at Date’s hands, Sasuke is anxious that Date share a taste of it.  And who knows, perhaps he too expected Hideyoshi to remove the Dragon’s head.  But Hideyoshi was no fool.  He was trying to control a wider expanse of Japan than any ruler before him, and Date was justifiably hailed as a superb warrior and strategist and much-revered in the North.  Hideyoshi is also no fool in realizing that Date doesn’t feel any true loyalty to him, but he’s undeniably useful alive at this stage – and alive, though, chastened, is how the Monkey leaves the Dragon.