The Spring 2024 Manga Guide

Tengen Hero Wars

What's It About? 

After receiving a mysterious invitation to "come play in Heaven," Oda Nobunaga and his sister are transported to a mysterious new world where the mightiest warriors from history will meet to battle! Here, the pair will meet legendary figures such as Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Zhuge Liang, and plenty of others to see who will be crowned the greatest of all time!

Tengen Hero Wars is a manga with story by Yasu Hiromoto and art by Kubaru Sakanoichi. Motoko Tamamuro and Jonathan Clements translated this volume with lettering by Tom Williams. Published by ‎Titan Manga (March 12, 2024).

Is It Worth Reading?

Have you ever been playing/watching/reading Fate/stay night and thought to yourself, "You know, this is fine, but it would be even better if it were a boilerplate isekai with 99% fewer cute girls and lithe youths."? If so, then I have the manga for you. Tengen Hero Wars is pretty much precisely that: a story about a historical hero-obsessed high school boy saddled with the name Oda Nobunaga who ends up getting isekai'd when he tries to save his sister Ichiko from being sucked into one of those pesky portals that appear to pop up all over Japan. Ichiko is promptly kidnapped, and Nobu is saved from death when Kondo Isami of Shinsengumi fame appears and whisks him off to meet the original Oda Nobunaga, who is keenly watching a fight between Ivan the Terrible and Zhuge Liang Kongming. It's exactly as odd and fanfiction as it sounds.

There's something to be said for a story that's unapologetic about what it wants to be. This is like someone supercharged the concept of a history mashup and just ran with it, and I admire the kind of chutzpah it takes to just go for it. Nobu is your basic isekai protagonist, a schlub who can't figure out what to do with his life and whose encyclopedic knowledge of world history ends up making a place for him with Nobunaga's army as a master strategist, an interesting (and not entirely unappealing) combination of basic genre fare and self-awareness since he remarks that he knows that majoring in history in college isn't likely to land him a well-paying job. Oddly, the history isn't the focus here, with the creator being much more engaged in playing with their Japanese Warlord Boys dolls than using anything beyond the basics about them to drive the story, with Nobu as the one concession to the actual history. It works, but only just.

Both Oda Nobunaga and Shinsengumi stories are their subgenres of historical fiction at this point. Tengen Hero Wars takes them and toys with them just enough to fool you into thinking that this is anything but a battle royale isekai using real figures, which almost works. There's certainly fun to be had here, but you do need a high tolerance for intense manly posturing and at least a passing familiarity with the people involved. I'm a little curious as to whether or not Nobu will find his sister, who I doubt needs saving, but I'm not sure if that's enough to make me want to hunt down a second volume.

What if (throws dart) legendary Chinese general Lu Bu went head to head with (throws another dart) Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible? Tengen Hero Wars is a self-insert fantasy for military geeks in the most straightforward sense. It's easy to tell what's happening because this premise is exhaustively well-tread material. It's a giant game of Sid Meier's Civilization. It's Fate Stay/Night if the historical figures were slightly more manga-style versions of themselves rather than being reborn as anime babes with the same names.

The most threadbare possible circumstances have teleported these famed tactical geniuses into one parallel world to battle it out—along with plenty of hapless normies to serve as cannon fodder. Why not pool their resources to determine what's happening and get back to their timelines? "No thanks," they collectively said, "it's Battle Royale time!" If you're asking why iconic military figures thrust into a parallel world would cease all rational thinking and immediately start to fight each other, then you're still not getting the point of Tengen Hero Wars. It's time to fight because it's cool, and it looks cool! No more questions!!

Our story's hero (ha) is the unusually named modern Japanese high school boy Oda Nobunaga (haha), Nobu for short. Rather than cursing his parents for his weird name, Nobu has leaned into it, becoming a full-on military history geek. When he is suddenly teleported into his ultimate fantasy with no warning, he'd have zero cause to escape his situation if it weren't for the unfortunate fact that his sister got teleported along with him, and now she's being held captive! Armed with this extremely generic motive and his lifetime of tactical study, stuff happens, and he becomes Oda Nobunaga's real military advisor. Shh, stop worrying about how we get from Point A to Point B: it's all about creating a battle geek's dream scenario.

Aside from our standard Everyman main character, this manga's character designs are endearing, stylized versions of historical figures that add pizazz to their usual portrayals. For example, Nobunaga wears a sweet pair of shades, while Kongming has ditched the goatee and edged into twink territory. The level of precision and shading reminds me of Dr. Stone. My one beef with this highly detailed art is that everyone has way too many teeth.

The first volume ends with a cliffhanger: the two heroes on the cover, Nobunaga and Kongming, are preparing to face off in battle. Can our protagonist, some random guy, outwit one of China's greatest military strategists and catapult Nobunaga to victory? I'm guessing yes, but through some loophole. Here's the issue regarding this kind of battle fantasy: whoever is from the latest era will win. Nobunaga and Kongming may have been brilliant in their time, but this kid has studied centuries of battle tactics developed long after they were gone. Of course, he's going to come out on top.