Nobunaga Concerto

Episode 10

I did not expect Nobunaga Concerto to be so short. With all of Nobunaga Oda's life as material, it was an ambitious plotline for a twelve-episode series, much less ten. I couldn't imagine how they'd wrap up such a complex story, and the short answer is they didn't.

My impressions of this episode were much more favorable before I realized it was the season finale. As usual, the music is the best part of the show. A lot of the time when I watch anime, background music is just that—noise that fades into the background. But in Nobunaga Concerto, music sets the mood and the tone. More than the characters' expressions, the music tells me whether something will be funny, uplifting, or dramatic.

What made this episode better than most was that it focused less on providing a careful recount of history and more on characters' relationships with one another. Saburo welcomed another time-slipper, a dark-skinned baseball player who was mistaken for a demon by his court. The real Nobunaga (now called Mitsuhide Akechi) had a heart-to-heart with his former wife, Kichou. Mori Yoshinari's eldest son vowed to avenge his father, whom I've already opined to be one of the most compelling character sketches of the series. Gratitude, forgiveness, revenge—you don't need to know much about history to relate to these miniature dramas that make up all our lives.

As a final episode, however, ten was a disappointment. It'd be impossible to neatly address every dispute of the Sengoku Era, but I certainly had a wish list. I wanted to know what Saburo's reaction would be to the fate of his missing history book, which he once called his most prized possession. I wanted to know about Hideyoshi, who burned that same history book while plotting to destroy Saburo. He soon became one of Nobunaga's most trusted generals, but with his constant plotting and shifty expressions, I was never fully convinced that trust was not misplaced.

Also, why do people keep falling back in time, and why is everyone so content with their new lives? At one point, Kichou's father, "Dousan the Viper,” asks Saburo to find a way to deliver his possessions to the family he left behind in present day Japan. I mistook that for well-done foreshadowing instead of the neglected plot thread it turned out to be. Time travel was a convenient plot device, and the show producers are just going to leave it at that.

And of course, whither Nobunaga's assassination? All season, fans have been theorizing about how Nobunaga Concerto would portray it. I thought perhaps the beheading would send Saburo back to present day, where he'd ace that Japanese history test he was about to take. Others have suspected that the real Nobunaga, now called Mitsuhide, would die accidentally in the plot he himself is said to have historically conspired, and still others guessed Saburo and Nobunaga/Mitsuhide would be killed, restoring the historical balance. Confusing, I know. All the characters involved in the incident have been presented on the proverbial stage. By neglecting to mention the assassination that everyone knows culminates Nobunaga's life, the final episode of Nobunaga Concerto is little more than a non-ending.

Here's what wasn't on my wish list, but I received anyway: Nobunaga has learned that Saburo comes from hundreds of years in the future. I was surprised he didn't suspect that Saburo was extraordinary already, given his funny clothes and habit of falling out of the sky. Nobunaga's realization leads him to vow to serve Saburo, something I thought he had already done back in episode 6 when Saburo gave him the name Mitsuhide. Instead, this epiphany is treated as the ultimate conclusion of the show.

Ending the show here was a risky choice, and I don't think the decision paid off. We're departing from Nobunaga Oda's epic life in much the same way we found it: in media res.

Rating: D

Nobunaga Concerto is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Lauren writes about anime and journalism at Otaku Journalist.