Upcoming Nobu Comedy--

This new movie about Nobunaga was brought to my attention!
Three Nobunagas ("Sannin no Nobunaga"), directed by Kei Watanabe and starring TAKAHIRO of EXILE fame, is scheduled for release on September 20.

The plot is set right after the Battle of Kanagasaki, where Imagawa's vassals are looking for revenge, their goal is the capture of the man who destroyed their clan. They succeeded a bit too much, in fact, they came back to the camp with three Nobunagas!
Since two of them must be kagemusha, here starts a fun battle of wits between the two sides!

Looks like a fun comedy, and given the presence of TAKAHIRO, hopefully we'll get a prompt subbed version.

I'm talking about this also because the movie is going to be premiered this upcoming weekend in the West Coast at the Japanese Film Festival of Los Angeles; if you have a chance, make sure to attend!

"Kochōki 〜Wakaki Nobunaga〜" First Impressions

So, the first episode of that new anime about Nobunaga was just released a few days ago, and here's a first, light-hearted comment before a proper review once the series is over.
I must say I'm really sick of these series where Nobu is a vapid bishounen, I just can't take that character design seriously, but I made an effort to put this series on my watchlist, if just because of its brevity, and the obvious curiosity derived from any Nobu's adaptation.

Kyaaaa! Nobunaga figure by COOMODEL is finally here!

My friends! Yesterday I received the 1/6 figure of Nobu-sama by COOMODEL!

This time for this purchase I opted for a local proxy, TOYS HEROES, since the difference in price was not that huge and I realized that the guy lived close to me, so I could avoid further shipping fees.
So--! Let's start with our review!

About "Gorgeous Butterflies"

*updates blog nonchalantly*

I was checking out some pictures from the Animage of this month, and I happened to find about this new novel about Tsuneoki and Nobunaga!
The complete title is The Strange Story of the Gorgeous Butterfly 〜The Young Nobunaga〜 (胡蝶綺異聞 〜若き信長〜, Kochōki Ibun 〜Wakaki Nobunaga〜) and the author is Megumu Sasano, a popular scriptwriter who contributed to series like Hakuoki or Bakumatsu Rock. The story is centered around the youth of Nobunaga and his special relationship with Tsuneoki Ikeda, one of his most faithful vassals as a warlord, and pretty much a brother during his childhood.
The "Butterfly" of the title should refer to the Ikeda kamon; incidentally, also Nobunaga used to sport a Butterfly kamon, related to Taira's.

But that's not all! Exploring further hashtag I realized that the novel is not the main item, but a side-story of a new anime project centered around the youth of Nobunaga!
The title of the series is The Gorgeous Butterfly 〜The Young Nobunaga〜 (胡蝶綺 〜若き信長〜, Kochōki 〜Wakaki Nobunaga〜) and it's going to tell about the rivalry of Nobunaga and his younger brother Nobuyuki.

I hope that this new project will sport some hystorical accuracy, but given the precedents I highly doubt so...Oh well, I'll watch it anyway!
The anime is scheduled for Summer 2019, and you can find the official website here.
The pictures come from the Twitter account of the magazine and the Twitter account of the anime.

Nobunaga's Moving Castle

I'm following the anime Basilisk: Ouka Ninpouchou; it's a ninja story set in the early Edo period, the obvious sequel of Basilisk: Kouga Ninpouchou.

This new chapter in the misadventures of Iga and Kouga ninja focuses on an attempt to revive Nobunaga by a group of Tokugawa opponents, the Joujinshuu. As a "cradle" to host the rebirth of Nobunaga, they set up this disturbing moving castle heading for Edo, dubbed the Murakumo, which is, by far, a perfect copy of Azuchi castle!

"Kiyosu-jo Nobunaga Onikoroshi" commercial...

It's dated 2011 but I stumbled on it in the past days during a research for a movie...
It's a commercial for the "packed sake" released by Kiyosuzakura Brewery, Kiyosu-jo Nobunaga Onikoroshi-- With such a name obviously it caught my interest!
Besides the obvious relation of Nobunaga to Kiyosu city, that explain the name, apparently ""onikoroshi" generally means such strong & delicious sake that beat an ogre".

Even if I found a not-so-enthusiastic review, I'm definitely willing to try this once I'll be in Japan again-- If just to take a picture of a landscape with Onikoroshi--!

Honnouji Hotel (2017)

I was quite moved to find the subtitled version of this movie, so I proceed with its review!
Aaah, it's been a while since I last watched a Nobu-movie..!
Honnouji Hotel is a movie released last year which main focus was pimping Kyoto's tourism.
To do that they intertwined the choices in life of a dull girl with no dreams, Mayuko Kuramoto (Haruka Hayase), with one of the most important turning point of Japanese history, the Honnouji Incident.

The Nobunaga of Kiyoshi Kimata

So, recently I resumed my interest for Japanese children books, and I started to collect some old illustrated books dedicated to Nobunaga.

Among my first purchases was the 42nd volume of Hinotori Denki Bunko (火の鳥伝記文庫) series by Kodansha dated 1983, which is dedicated to Nobunaga.

The text, a novelization of Nobunaga's life, is composed by Shunpei Suzuki, while Kiyoshi Kimata took care of the illustrations inside the booklet.
A master of inking, his style is quite charming and I fell completely in love with his simple, elegant artworks.
I'm sharing some of them in this post, then!

Suddenly, a Nobunaga in C3 AFA in Hong Kong!

Let's stay in Hong Hong but this time let's move to the C3 AFA in Hong Kong event when, suddenly, I noticed that the booth of Manga Shop (pretty much a "sister shop" of the Japanese Animate in Hong Kong) was decorated by artworks signed by Hiroyuki Suwahara featuring our favourite warlord!



The reference is yet another figure, the Nobunaga by ACI Toys that I mentioned (and I preordered) years ago, by now... So I got closer to indagate.

New Nobunaga 1/6 figure by COOMODEL!

So, I was walking my otaku spots in Hong Kong when I spotted this:
And I got to learn that COOMODEL was accepting pre-orders on a new Nobunaga figure!