Less Sengoku Warriors Mystery Date and more Alice in Odaland!
Creative Staff
Story: Pink Aomata
Art: Pink Aomata
Translation/Adaptation: Unavailable
What They Say
It’s her high school debut, yet Tora Takei can’t seem to fit in. Then somehow, she ends up time-slipping into the Warring States period! In order to return to the present, she has no choice but to change history. Disguising herself as a man, Tora gets caught up with Mori Ranmaru, the handsomely beautiful, yet deadly guard of Oda Nobunaga. Slowly, she discovers the kind and honest nature of this strongest and most beautiful of warriors. Falling in love with Ranmaru, the story of Tora’s time-slip into the Warring States period begins!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Tora Takei is a first year high school student whose family dojo, teaching ancient Budo, and very conservative father (no cell phone!) have made her considered odd by her fellow students. All she wants is the life of a regular teen-ager. Downhearted at the prospect of making no friends in high school, Tora goes off to have lunch on a bench in a park adjacent to a hirayama style castle that is a local tourist attraction. While she eats her lunch in a desultory fashion, a figure behind her begins to chat about the castle and its history and Tora, wishing to escape from the lecture, turns around to find a man dressed in 16th century garb wearing a very large rabbit head. Assuming this to be a cosplay pervert, and who wouldn’t, she escapes into the bowels of the castle only to find herself in the midst of a hectic crowd of screaming people. She is immediately attacked and those Budo lessons, which she had to do instead of the ballet lessons she wanted, now stand her in good stead. For even though she is captured by the slavers, she is assumed to be male and assumed to be some noble’s boy-toy. While in the slaver’s prison, Mister Rabbit appears and chides Tora for not heeding his warning. She had taken the wrong path at the castle and has time-slipped into the Sengoku Warring States Era. A tearful Tora begs the rabbit to take her back but he says that he cannot. He will, however, tell her how she can get herself back. He gives her a Japanese history book and a “talisman” (looks like a stick-on tattoo) that she cannot lose lest she be lost in this alternative forever. In order to escape the time-slip and return to her correct era, she must make it that Oda Nobunaga doesn’t die at Honno-ji!!!
Pink Aomata is nothing if not audacious.
Tora is sold as a slave and, to her good fortune, it is to an anti-Nobunaga faction of the Saika Clan (yes, they have guns, cannons even), who plan to use Tora’s remarkable resemblance to Manmi Senchiyo, deceased page and former favorite of Nobunaga, to get close to Nobunaga to spy on him. She is given over to a married couple, Muni and Kisa, for training, but it soon becomes clear, even after her gender is exposed and she chooses to continue as male, that she will not be able to be placed as a page. She cannot read or write the language of the time, she cannot ride well and she cannot use a sword. There is no way she can pass as a member of the samurai class. Muni has managed to train Tora to be a decent shot with the arcquebus (primitive rifle) and to get Nobunaga to notice Tora he devises a strategy that plays on Nobunaga’s interest in the foreign and occult, something Nobunaga picked up from the Jesuits (the love and firepower guys). Muni makes Tora a fortune teller.
Pink Aomata approaches genius with this.
In Azuchi, Tora is a fantastic success as Miracle Tora, the fortune teller. Decked out in her school clothes and veiled, Tora provides fortunes that once told are put in a donation pouch. If the pouch is purchased, the fortune “will be as predicted”. And here’s where the close-to-genius genius comes in. The source of her fortunes is any number of those personality quizzes that are run in teen magazines, the Japanese versions of Tiger Beat. It cannot be stressed too much how funny this is. Of course, this scam does get the attention of the castle and a meeting with Nobunaga. More Tiger Beat quizzes and fifth grade history and science get Tora into the castle – as a page! She is placed in the care of Nobunaga’s current favorite, Mori Ranmaru, for training.
The sober and serious Ranmaru is none too pleased with this new charge, sensing that failure with this illiterate and vulgar young man could mean disaster for his family. He is even less pleased when Tora reveals her gender to get his help in avoiding meeting Nobunaga’s “needs”. She says this out of the desire to retain her virginity, but really she should be concerned with having her head on a pike if Nobunaga finds out she’s not male. Ranmaru helps her only because a problem for her is a problem for him. Not much of a romance yet, I’m afraid.
Tora manages to get out of the transitive-meaning-of-service-as-a-verb with respect to Nobunaga and it’s Nobunaga who manages to provide the reason (clever and unintentionally funny) for Tora’s reluctance. So, Tora still remains a page and an intact one at that. She now has the duty of protecting Nobunaga with her arcquebus skill and the job of training the other pages with the weapon. The volume closes with the arrival of man who shows those young ones the way around a gun – Akechi Mitsuhide, whose betrayal will force the deaths of Nobunaga and Ranmaru or should anyway. The major players are assembled. It’s now time for Tora to change history and get home!
There aren’t really any negatives here, just some silliness that I could have done without. I can’t quite figure out where the mangaka was going with all the menstrual references in the beginning of the book. When Tora is first taken as a captive, she is visited by the Mister Rabbit and, in the course of the conversation, wants to ask him to bring her back some things from a convenience store (underwear and sanitary items). She is too embarrassed to ask, but the rabbit reads minds, laughs and says he will. He doesn’t, at least not in this volume. But Tora is given piece of mind when Kisa, Muni’s wife, asks her if she has had her “moon cycle” (a bit more lyrical than “riding the cotton pony”, eh?) and offers to show Tora a way to hide it even when among men. Part of me wanted to know this, part of me didn’t, so I guess I’m not too disappointed that it wasn’t revealed. However, once this occurs, the subject is never brought up again. I guess Pink Aomata felt her teen readers could not involve themselves in this story if this impediment to successful male masquerade was not resolved.
Tenniel’s design for the White Rabbit in Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland is a global icon, familiar world-wide. The White Rabbit what came to mind when first coming upon Mister Rabbit and very much reinforced when the rabbit scares Tora into the castle. I think the reference is intentional on the mangaka’s part and the question is how far she wants to go with the allusion. She has given her heroine the task of changing history, one which cannot succeed or be allowed to succeed. Are we just to follow along only to find that for Tora, as for Alice, this has all been a dream? I will be very disappointed if this is just a nightmare as the result of some bad takoyaki for lunch. But I will reserve judgment for the times that the reader meets the rabbit are inciting and insightful. (Tora: “Are you telling me to change the course of history? Is it ok to do that?” MR: “Why not? You can’t go home otherwise.”). Why not?! This is one bad bun and I want to know who is under that rabbit head.
As a heroine, Tora is not helpless. The mangaka has given her a background that makes her survival plausible and for what Tora lacks in knowledge and sense, she makes up for in chutzpah and luck. Pink Aomata knows enough about the period to have fun with it and the anachronisms that she introduces are some of the funniest moments in the volume. The art is attractive and clean which serves the depiction with very handsome young men well. Although this is not action title, both page layout and pacing support the number and variety of events well. A lot goes on in this volume.
In Summary
This is a manga where the journey is more important that the destination. One knows how it has to end and has to wonder how the mangaka intends to resolve the issue into which she has plunged her heroine – that of changing the course of a very well-known piece of history. What rabbit will Pink Aomata pull out of the hat to resolve that? And on the subject of rabbits, who is under that rabbit head? What about Manmi Senchiyo, the beautiful page whom Tora resembles and everybody talks about? Talks about a lot. We have to wait. Tora is a worthy heroine and her predicament makes for an amusing and intriguing read.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade:B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: Teen Plus
Released By: JManga/SHINSHOKAN Publishing Co., Ltd./Wings
Release Date: 2012/2009
MSRP: 599 points (Subscription)
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