It must be said, every strategist’s dream must be to come up against an opponent as dumb as Seii. They pretty much fall for every gambit (I have no question they’ll walk right into the “false retreat” trap). As if that weren’t enough they execute the one guy that has with half a brain for crimes he didn’t commit, in order to preserve the authority of a ruler whose main claim to power is how cute everyone thinks she is. The whole Seii thing is funny in a way I don’t think it’s necessarily supposed to be.
Well, let’e be real here. This series is the product of a writer who thinks Sun Tzu is the epitome of wisdom, and that talking about him makes you smart (and more importantly, sound smart). And clearly the audience is lapping it up, going by the boffo jump in manga sales (and the overall direction in the country’s public policy makes this unsurprising). So this kind of military fanfic should be taken for what it is, just that – not a serious take on social disorder and warfare. As such these machinations are fun in their preposterous way.
Misumi figuring out Kaku’s master plan from the clues he was given is funny, and at the very least Tsune-chan-san acknowledges the absurdity of it. There was no reason for Kaku to be as cryptic as he was and every reason for him not to be (“You can’t convince the Emperor with someone else’s idea”, ROFL). Indeed if Misumi got it wrong Yamato is pretty much screwed, so the whole puzzle thing is pretty much just for narrative effect. The plan itself is perfectly fine – even Taira acknowledges that. I wouldn’t expect it to work against top-flight opposition but half-bright types like the Seii leadership? Sure, it’s good enough.
The irony here for me is that Misumi is indeed pretty smart, but smart in that way 18 year-olds are smart. He thinks he knows everything and that every cool thing he reads is high wisdom from the Heavens. Normally I’d say this was a clever commentary by the author. But in this case I think we’re supposed to take Misumi as just unironically as brilliant as he thinks he is, because he’s the kind of smart the writer thinks is genuine brilliance.
The real question is, what does Denki plan to do to turn this to his advantage? I think you just have to take it as read that the Emperor would have been persuaded to betray him so easily – absurd, but par for the course here. Denki’s already poisoned one emperor, apparently, and one more would seem to be no big deal. But Taira is a long game sort of guy, so I expect he’ll have concocted something interesting to make Ryuumon’s success a win for him.
