[personal profile] waterscroll
I see [personal profile] alias_sqbr is starting this route and will likely post one of their excellent and detailed reviews soon, so only a few notes from me.


The main problem that I had with it is that Kyoichiro doesn't really have a character arc, or at least not a very interesting or pleasant one. When we meet him he's a dastardly gentleman thief, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, while making lots of money from his day job selling European wares to nobles. At the end he's still doing exactly that, except also working for Nobunaga robbing rich monks and giving their ill-gotten goods to the poor and in the process making them look ridiculous.

Which I didn't love. I am Team Monks in every version of this universe, even when they are terrible, and am not inclined to cheer for them being shown up. Kyoichiro also had no particular internal conflict about it, so it didn't mean anything to his character development that he decided to do it.

MC, on the other hand, had a pretty decent character arc. She learns how to be a merchant and to negotiate from a position of strength, and she also has a chance to try robbing and redistributing. There's a fun scene where she tries to bluff Hideyoshi by saying that she is the thief Goemon, it doesn't work but it is fun to watch.

Mostly the story was worth it for MC/Hideyoshi. They keep trying to manipulate and use each other and end up in a fairly mutually satisfactory arrangement where he is helping her sell her medicines to the Oda forces. Along the way he manipulates her into robbing him and she uses him (and his armies) to help Kyoichiro get out of trouble with Saizo and Iga.

So it was pretty fun but I didn't end up that invested in Kyoichiro or the romance,

Not sure which I'll do next. Maybe Koujiro? Shigezane? Nobuyuki? Ieyasu? Or maybe I'll replay Nobunaga's act 3 to see the other ending?

Meanwhile in other fannishness I stayed up all night last night reading the Guardian webnovel, and damn. It definitely met my needs in terms of worldbuilding, lots of religion and myth and supernatural and epic world-transforming love. I can't imagine writing fic for it because the worldbuilding might be too intricate for me to really get a full handle on it through the translation, the tv show simplifies things enough to be more manageable. It's also more of an ensemble story, so more points of entry for fic. But I might not need to write fic, this show is so remarkably labor-saving in the way that it shows onscreen the emotional beats that I want to see, plus the fandom already has so many great stories in it.
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