Gorgeous Butterfly: Young Nobunaga – Worth Watching?

Other names: Kochouki: Wakaki Nobunaga

View other animes from this season.

Young Nobunaga airs every Monday at 1:30 PM for 25 minutes.

Nobunaga seems to be quite a focus in recent animes, with Nobunaga Sensei airing last season (not recommended). This one takes a less ecchi spin on things, focusing instead of the life of Nobunaga when he was younger. If you don’t know who Nobunaga is, he is a pretty relevant figure in Japanese history – kind of like Henry VIII (their reigns overlapped in fact). The Wikipedia page here is a pretty interesting read, and can make the anime make more sense.

As previously mentioned, this anime focuses on the younger Nobunaga. I really like history, so this anime piqued my interests – the summary promoted is as a historical drama. Whilst the anime does have relevance in that Nobunaga did spend most of his times with youths, disregarding rank, and liked firearms, I feel that it does stretch it a bit too much. Besides the historical accuracy, I found the story pretty boring. Whilst there are moments of interest, they are quickly over – the anime was quite a struggle to get through.

The characters are somewhat developed – with a strong historical background, it’s quite easy for the authors not to have to give the characters background. I assume that Nobunaga is something taught in Japanese history classes, thus allowing the writers to not give personality, or background to the characters – after all, they were taught it in school. This may confuse Western viewers, which is why I linked to the interesting Wikipedia article above. We have Oda Nobunaga of course, and his father and older brother making an appearance. Oda Nobunaga is the most noticeable – he is portrayed as a nearly female looking man. His companions are street ruffians (just like they were in real life), and we don’t really learn about them.

Animation and art are good. I like the art in the anime, however the quality wasn’t consistent. Animation is decent – there are a few scenes with action.

To conclude, Nobunaga is hit or miss. I found the storyline somewhat boring, and it hasn’t left a lasting impact on me. I’m not looking forward to the coming episodes, but I’m not dreading them.