WTF as a Historical Stance, "Ikusa no Ko"

--In these past few days I managed to retrieve the missing volumes of the local release of The Legend of Oda Saburo Nobunaga (いくさの子 ~織田三郎信長伝~, Ikusa no Ko ~Oda Saburo Nobunaga den~) by Tetsuo Hara and while reading the absurdities in there I thought of the recently reviewed Yasuke. Why did I feel so outraged by the work of Lesean, and why am I so patronizing towards Hara-sensei? I wouldn't say because of the contents of the two works, they imply the same exact quantity of fantasy elements, but my tolerance surged by the different "approach", that probably made Ikusa no Ko more tollerable.

First of all, scriptwriter Seibou Kitahara, aka Nobihiko Horie, knows his deal. This story deals with Nobunaga starting from his younger days as the unreliable young lord of Owari and it's supposed to end with the Battle of Okehazama. Long story short, it deals with that part of Nobunaga's life that nobody knew about, and due to this, it abuses of this lack of knowledge to throw Nobunaga into the worst adventures ever (always following the same pattern, with Nobu being kidnapped for some reason and the little shit managing to escape thanks to his charismatic skillz).
Not sure if Hara and Kitahara are supported by a historian, but the historical approach of this manga is quite legit.
You can tell that there are some obvious fabrications, but you do feel a solid foundation in the narrative, too.

For example, the manga takes it good time to tell us about the situation of Owari, to introduce the powers in action or the relationships between the various branches of the families. The festival of Tsushima, for example, becomes a vital element to explain us the strong relationship between Nobunaga and his father, but also many aspects of Nobunaga's personality tied to his childhood.

The relationship between Nobunaga and Nobuhide is adorable, and it definitely lacks the harshness of the historical chronicles. Kitahara explains how he decided to change that to favour the dramatic element, for this same purpose he showed us Nobuhide dancing "Atsumori" before dying in front of Nobunaga's eyes and even dared to come with an outrageous kagemusha theory--

If Nobuhide was all honeyed up, the same didn't go for the rest of the Oda family: Lady Dota is always doting on her younger son and viceversa, as the list of hostile uncles and cousins is pretty much neverending.

The guys Nobunaga could truly count on are those included in his "inner circle". Besides his teacher, the massive Takugen Souon, and Masahide Hirate, he can count on Ikeda Tsuneoki: --The devotion of Tsuneoki looks pretty much one-sided ahah, but it's mentioned how, his mother being Nobunaga's wet nurse, the two are pretty much like brothers... The power of breast milk!

His frail yet determined wife, Kochou (胡蝶): Yes, she's Nouhime. The origin of this version of her real name derives from the collection of military tales Bukoyawa (武功夜話).

And above everyone else, all the brats and slaves that he managed to bring into his ranks, including "Saru" and "Inu": --No relationship to Hideyoshi and Toshiie, though!

An original character introduced in this manga, the Spanish ex-soldier Francisco, was a slave too: captured during a travel from China to Japan, he was kidnapped and destined to be sold as a slave due to his blonde hair and blue eyes, which made him peculiarly precious.

Speaking of the historical context and the like, I liked how in this work there's a lot of talking about slavery. This is usually considered a mere "western issue", but slaves were pretty much used and traded everywhere in the world.
"Slaves" as a social class would later merge into the hinin status of Edo times.

Also Toshiie would be among those potential slaves being saved by Nobunaga and that would lately get into his ranks. Of course Toshiie was not of a slave "status", but it was common for pirates and traders to kidnap kids to sell at slaves markets all around Asia-- It's not like they cared about samurai and the like, back then, and this is a characteristic of this very weird retelling of Nobunaga's younger days: you can feel the "instability" of Sengoku era, without the need to insert aliens or evil ESPs here as the cause.

Among Nobu's allies, there are also Ikoma Ienaga and his sis, Rui (類): Rui here is the famed Kitsuno. In this version she's older than Nobu and back in the days acted as his baby-sitter. Nobunaga felt weird around her, expecially because her family is "somehow related" to that of Lady Dota, and he felt like she may share the same mindset of his mother--Yeah, of course he's in love with her.

A recurring theme in this manga is that of "water". Nobunaga used to travel through Kiso river to reach Tsushima for the festival or the other Oda castles, he came up with the idea of becoming pirates so to train secretely far from his family's eyes and so on. As merchants, also the Ikoma family is related to trading by sea. Kitahara mentioned that this idea came from the fact that Nobunaga was a good swimmer in his youth. Fantasy could run wild, for real--!

Rui is extremely important because she knew about Nobu's secret-- Besides being far from an idiot, he also owns a peculiar power, that allowed him "to see" the true nature of people. Takugen mentions how this is pretty much "a divine attribute that made Nobu close to a Buddha" (LOL!) and someone who's apt to lead men and invoke epochal changes in history.

Yeah, you got the mood of this story by now.
Still, another fun historical mention involved the making of guns. Ginta here mentions about how he got Nobu's guns made in Kunitomo rather than in Sakai. As Sakai was pretty much focused as selling guns as expensive toys, the guys of Kunitomo made actual guns to use in actual wars.

I was amused by an alternative interpretation of the Eiraku coin. In this scene where Nobu faced Kuki Yasutaka, the infamous pirate offered him a coin to pay for the crossing of Sanzu river.
Now, to cross Sanzu river you needed 6 mon, which was why from then on this was arranged on the nobori of Nobu armies as in a "memento mori" fashion-- I'm pretty sure this explanation belonged to the crest of the Sanada clan, but after the kagemusha thing taken from the Takeda clan I'm not surprised anymore. To bring this review to a conclusion, a quick overview of Nobunaga's "enemies".
First and foremost, Imagawa Yoshimoto. He's represented as a beautiful, elegant and strong man. That's quite the novelty!

Saito Dousan and his trusted Akechi Mitsuhide here:
This cool guy here is a young Takeda Shingen, instead:
Long story short, this manga as an historical source is quite useless but it points out an important detail, just like Yasuke did, even if that series approached it more passively: there's nothing certain in history. If it's not documented, it doesn't mean that it didn't happen and if it's documented-- Well, it doesn't mean that it wasn't forged!
--So let's not be picky and entertain ourselves? Mmmh. Not sure this attitude suits me∼