Congrats to Nippon Sangoku for winning your patron vote for Spring 2026. In point of fact is was unanimous for a long while, and that certainly would have been a first, though in the last few days a number of votes for the other contenders came in. It’s not too surprising for me – this show is definitely one of the most interesting on the schedule. The series is also proving a pretty solid commercial success in Japan, which likewise doesn’t surprise me. As tends to happen under leadership such as the current one, those on either extreme are getting more vocal and more combative. For those in a certain camp the raison d’être of Nippon Sangoku is a very comfortable fit.

While that side of things is a bug and not a feature for me, it’s not a deal-breaker. Especially with episodes like this one which deal more with intrigue and deceit than social philosophy. News of events in Sei has filtered its way down to Osaka and Ryumon, who delivers the grim report to the puppet emperor. His cautious plan is to send troops to shore up the border, but Taira intervenes to put a stop to it. It’s at this point that another crucial figure enters the picture, Taira’s son Tonotsugu (played with considerable wit by anime’s go-to boya, Murase Ayumu).

What strikes me funny is when Denki tells Ryumon “he may not look it but Tonotsugu is still a child” when, in fact, he very much looks it. Tonotsugu, despite being maybe 12, is apparently the imperial archivist. He tells the Emperor that a Sei governor in Kaga has defected to Yamato, after having been brutally tortured (apparently a well-known ploy) to gain credibility in Sei. Denki immediately calls for Ryumon to lead a mass of troops there, into what’s almost certainly a trap. My read on this is that Taira either knows this is a trap and doesn’t care, or set the whole thing up himself. The sock puppet ruler orders Tonotsugu to take an army of 30,000 to Kaga and Ryumon to lead 5,000 of his own men to support him.

Well, this is clearly a mess, which Ryumon’s strategist Kaku makes no bones about. But Kaku is the brains behind the Borderland General and always has a plan. A meeting of the whole operation is called, where Ryumon briefs everyone on what’s going on and then says “hold the fort”.  This makes no sense of course (in addition to pissing Tsune-chan-san off), which Aoteru immediately notes. Then the chief clerk, Moriyama, speaks up to argue that perhaps they should ally themselves with Sei. Not only is Wajima a warrior for righteous causes but a hottie to boot. Surely that’s better than fighting and dying to enrich the Taira?

Kaku quickly eviscerates this notion, and – after asking Aoteru for his recommendation – Ryumon sentences Moriyama to three years exile. Something about this smells off right from the beginning, though if Aoteru’s theory is correct Moriyama is indeed a very good actor. He could have been a plant so smoke out those whose resolve was weak, so the General would know to keep an eye on them. Or the whole exile thing could be a ruse for Moriyama’s supposed guards to go off on a secret mission without Taira spies sussing it out – it indeed makes no sense for 200 soldiers to escort a chief clerk to exile.

“Lie upon firewood and persuade the heavens to proclaim victory” – a long-winded Japanese way to say “suck it up” – Kaku tells Aoteru on his way out of town, effectively confirming Aoteru’s intuition. This is all good fun, and Nippon Sangoku is indeed outrageous in a way that’s usually quite appealing. For me it is a flaw that the show seems to want us to treat it as more serious than it really is – which is not very. The less caught up it gets in presenting itself as some sort of grand allegory and the more it sticks to being an absurdist comedy, the better this series works.