Even before I knew (though I was pretty much resigned to it after the trailer) that this adaptation of Heike Monogatari wouldn’t be too interested in the original work, I feared the Genji would get shafted pretty hard by it.  The temptation in any modern retelling of the Heike would be to marginalize and possibly demonize the Minamoto side.  This is “Heike” Monogatari after all – that clan’s members are the most prominent figures in this story.  If one was going to punt on preserving the moral ambiguity of the original, it’s much easier to make the Minamoto non-people than the Taira.

Well, that’s certainly proved to be the case, though ironically the funhouse mirror aspect of this adaptation has kind of marginalized the Heike too.  A few of them are prominent in the story (not as much as they are in the book) but they’re 2-D versions of themselves, dramatic devices.  When a series blitzkriegs through material this quickly (three years in less than a full episode in this case, the most critical three of the Genpei War) that kind of thing is inevitable.  As much as I want to blame the writer and director (and I do blame them quite a lot, frankly), to an extent this was pre-ordained when a runtime of eleven episodes was decided on.  It was really just a question of choosing your poison.

In yet another battle “depicted” with no animation in about two minutes, the single most critical skirmish of the conflict is in the rear-view (there was also a massive nationwide famine for two years, which doesn’t even merit a mention).  The Battle of Kurikara Pass in Etchuu (now Toyama) was the turning point of the war.  Kiso no Yoshinaka, commanding a small army dwarfed in size by Taira no Koremori’s forces, routed his enemy in a sneak attack under cover of darkness.  This was actually the results of a series of stratagems that would take a while to explain, but since the anime considered them not worth bothering with I lack the will to do so here.  Suffice to say he outsmarted the Heike and routed them (though 70,000 falling into the valley is strictly an anime fancy).

It seems almost unbelievable even to me that the anime has chosen to totally omit the crucial and complicated backstory between Yoshinaka and his cousin, Minamoto to Yoritomo.  I mean, this was central to everything that happened in the entire Genpei War – and after it, too.  Yoritomo is passed off as a Niles Crane-like popinjay with little skill or intelligence, and Yoshinaka as a gross and unrefined monkey with a bit of street smarts – but these were two brilliant and difficult men whose relationship was tangled to say the least.  Which is more than the anime has chosen to say about it.

The gist of it is that in effect, Yoshinaka and Yoritomo were fighting each other as much as the Taira, each with an eye on what would happen to the country if and when they prevailed in the war.  It was Yoshinaka who prevailed upon Yoritomo to put aside their differences and unite against the Heike, although he’s been forced to send his son to Yoritomo as a hostage (common practice at the time) to ensure his loyalty.  Yoritomo was the head of the Minamoto clan but Yoshinaka reasoned that if he marched on the capital first, he could ride a wave of momentum and depose him.

Someone I thought might fare better with this adaptation because of her gender is Tomoe Gozen, the legendary onna-musha, but even she’s reduced to a don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it blur.  “Legendary” is the right word for Tomoe because not all historians believe she actually existed, but she is in the Heike Monogatari and was purported to play a significant role in the Battle of Kurikara.  As for the Taira, they can see the writing on the wall after Koremori’s rout at Kurikara, and lack the forces to prevent Yoshinaka from marching on the capital.  Especially since the monks of Enryakuji have made it clear that they’ll side with the Genji.

At this point there’s nothing left for the Taira but to flee to the West (torching Kyoto behind them) and hope to regroup, taking the child emperor Antoku with them.  The first stop is Fukuhara (Kobe), where Kiyomori’s estate has already fallen into disrepair.  The plan is to sail for Dazaifu in Kyuushu and gather loyal forces, but their spirit is already battered and broken as they spend a final night in Kansai.  There’s some stuff with Biwa looking for her mother too, but it feels so out of place with the rest of these events that it’s almost as if it were part of a different series.