Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Red River
by Jason Thompson,
Episode LXXXII: Red River
“Adventure and good-looking boys fill this great first volume!”
—Back-cover text, Red River vol. 1
Like Ôke no Monshô (or And just like that, our heroine is in the 14th century BC, in a world of courtly intrigue, espionage and war. At first, Yuri just wants to get back home as soon as possible, but obstacles keep popping up which keep her from returning. First she needs to get back the clothes she was wearing when she was transported, which are still in Queen Nakia's clutches. Then she finds out that the spell can only be cast at certain times of the year, and if she misses the time window, she'll have to wait another year to have a chance at going back. Sure enough, Yuri misses the window and has to live—just for awhile, she thinks—in the Hittite Empire, despite the hostility of the Queen, who is always waiting for a chance to kill her. Kail is intrigued by the mysterious dark-haired girl and helps her learn the ways of the Hittite court, introducing her to Zannanza, his favorite brother (there are lots of princes in the family, some good, some not so good), and Ilbani, his faithful advisor. At first everyone just thinks Yuri is some weird foreign concubine of Kail's, and at a royal ball, all the elegant busty blonde Hittite ladies snub her for showing up in a miniskirt. They also think she's too skinny, which is historically accurate; after all, not far from Hattusa was Catal Huyuk, which is famous for making statues of women that look like Oh, do they want her. Red River was drawn in Anyway, this is one of the many Perils of Yuri, as she also narrowly escapes being strangled, decapitated, ravished, poisoned, stabbed, kidnapped, crucified (just by ropes, not nails), thrown to the lions, skinned by a knife-licking maniac, shot with arrows, infected with plague and left to die in a sandstorm. The main appeal of Red River is this roller-coaster of danger, the way Yuri constantly gets in trouble and escapes by luck and courage and cleverness and that “makes everyone her friend” shojo character trait. Sadly, some of the other sympathetic characters aren't so lucky, but the tragic and shocking moments make the story feel more realistic and serious and less Mary Sue-ish. Gradually, Yuri grows to love Kail's homeland, and goes from trying to go home to trying to help Prince Kail with his goal of taking over the entire Middle East so he can bring about world peace. (He's a very modern dictator.) In the end, the plot involves a vast war between Egypt, Ugarit, Mitanni, and the Hittites, with Yuri and Kail traveling back and forth across the world trying to keep the kingdom from collapsing. Will their love ever be consummated? Will she ever get back home? A lot of the fun of Red River is the adventure and bodice-ripping (if that's your thing), and a lot of the fun is in the use of the historical setting. The use of real historical names and places gives the series an added dimension, particularly if you're Wikipedia-addicted like I am. On the other hand, there are some perils in using such an obscure historical setting; for one thing, compared to, say, Ancient Egypt, there's simply not much visual reference available for how the Hittites looked and dressed. Shinohara ends up drawing lots and lots of plain-looking boxy brick buildings and simple robes…but maybe the Hittites actually decorated their buildings with elaborate fabrics and wooden decorations, but they decayed over the last 3,000 years, and it's just that archaeologists haven't found them? I'm reminded of a book by David Macaulay, Motel of the Mysteries, in which archaeologists from the future unearth a buried ruin from 1985 and try to piece together what's in the rubble, getting most of it wrong (i.e. toilet seat covers as ceremonial headgear). Shinohara's artwork is fairly simple, so when she draws some elaborate object that really stands out, like ONE Red River reached the top of the bestseller charts when it started in Japan in 1995, and it was caught up in the wave of the manga boom and entirely translated by Keiko Takemiya, and she's been drawing manga since 1981) it's definitely worth finding. I do have to it that I am crazy for Middle Eastern history and that's a major reason why I like it. In fact, why do ancient history manga always have to be about someone traveling back in time? The setting is vast enough that you could tell any kind of story you wanted to tell in it. What about a board game manga set in Ancient Egypt, Hikaru no Senet? What about a love comedy about Babylonian temple prostitutes? The first person to draw a manga like this and send me the link gets my eternal gratitude! Bonus points if it has sound effects in cuneiform!!
Jason Thompson is the author of Manga: The Complete Guide and King of RPGs, as well as manga editor for Otaku USA magazine.
Banner designed by Lanny Liu.
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