Check and mate. The weight of history hangs heavily over every major arc in Kingdom.  It’s the story of young men trying to secure their place in it, and old men watching their place in it slip into the past.  There’s really a sad sort of vicious cycle that hangs […] Read more

The end is surely in sight now, and maybe in more ways than one. We’ve reached the endgame stage of the Qin-Wei war now, and whichever side is going to emerge victorious is going to do so in very short order.  There are lots of interesting storylines emerging here (just […] Read more

When it comes to war epics, it’s probably a good idea never to get too attached to anyone… I knew this moment was coming – it’s been obvious for a couple of months, in fact – so it was really just a question of when the axe would fall, and […] Read more

Magnificent bastards don’t just grow on trees. You probably saw my pictures from Jump Festa, where Kingdom had a large booth complete with cosplayers.  This manga is a pretty big deal – it’s obvious that Shueisha cares about it at least somewhat, and it continues to be a strong seller.  […] Read more

What a marvelous dichotomy this episode of Kingdom presented. To be clear, Kingdom the manga/anime isn’t history – it’s historical fiction.  Who knows how things really played out on these battlefields – but in the end it doesn’t matter, because all we’ll ever know about those moments is what’s trickled […] Read more

As crucibles go, war is about as merciless as they come. Kingdom is all about the measure of a man – and woman – it seems to me.  Generals, kings, merchants and thieves take the measure of each other, and battle takes the measure of all of them.  The ultimate, […] Read more

As Harry Caray used to say, the big possums walk late… The motif for this episode was definitely chess.  It’s not coincidental that military strategists have historically been good chess players, or that the game itself draws so heavily on the phraseology and indeed mindset of war (and the reverse […] Read more