Red River

Episode 4

There's nothing worse than a lost possibility, and as of this moment, that's what Red River's anime adaptation feels like. Even if you leave out the awkward CG battle scenes reused over and over again in this episode, this is something of a bare-bones version of Chie Shinohara's manga. The plot is the same, and even the plot progression is in line with early manga chapters, but what's lacking is the nuance. Without it, Yuri's sudden thought that she's in love with Kail just feels silly. Yes, instalove is a major component of many romance narratives, and physical reactions to danger can lead to the misattribution of arousal, AKA the suspension bridge effect – and Yuri's certainly had enough peril since arriving in Hattusa, with Kail as her only stable source of protection. So it's not the fact that she voices those feelings so much as it's the failure of the show to make them feel earned.

It's true that shoujo manga of days gone by (and particularly the 1990s) had a…less sound understanding of consent and that “but he loves her so much he can't help himself” got passed off as a measure of true love a lot. (See: 90% of Mayu Shinjo's work from the period.) There's some value in understanding how the march of time and increased knowledge changes the way popular culture portrays relationships. But Red River is barely making any efforts at all beyond “he kissed her forcefully, it must be love.” These are plot points that work in the context of the manga, but the anime, particularly episode four, is stripped of a lot of the emotions and nuance that Shinohara brought to the source material. Part of that is the clunky animation, part of that is the decision to make Yuri sound much more incompetent than I read her lines in my head in the books, and part of it is simply the need to get through these early parts of the story. It's not a great combination.

That said, we're starting to see Yuri earn her stripes as Ishtar, even if she does it basically by accident here when she jumps on a horse and rides into the midst of battle. She's just trying to get away from Zuwa, but the result is that she turns the tide, because no one is used to seeing people actually ride horses. Ishtar (or Innana) isn't typically associated with horses in the mythology – lions are her animal – but her aspects as the goddess of war and love/fertility are what's important here. Yuri rides into battle (war) and saves Shala (love), and her position as Kail's concubine brings the fertility aspect into play. This threefold manifestation of Ishtar's powers is tantamount to her acceptance in Hattusa, but also in convincing Hadi, Ryui, and Shala that Yuri is not the one who murdered Tito – but even if she did, that might be viewed as part of her goddess of war identity. More interestingly, Yuri's Sleeping Beauty moment, where Nakia's white water poisons her into a state of deathlike sleep, is an important piece of Ishtar's mythological lore: like Orpheus, she descends into the underworld and returns alive. Yuri's “miraculous” awakening and escape from Urhi and Zuwa, therefore, will likely only contribute to Kail's assertion that Yuri is Ishtar's avatar in Hattusa.

This sort of detail (and much as I love Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Shinohara outdoes Fujino Ōmori with Ishtar and is generally more accurate about her mythology) is what makes it so frustrating that this adaptation isn't better. The bones of the story are right there. The manga has been here since the late 90s. Surely the anime can do better than this?

It still might. Hadi and the twins do seem capable of admitting they were wrong, and Nakia's drive to kill Yuri isn't doing her any favors, especially as Kail's propaganda machine about Ishtar is working directly against her actions. Despite some name tweaking (the historic city is Arinna, not Alinna), the basic grounding of events in ancient Anatolia is solidly in line with the manga. But following the book faithfully isn't enough to make a good anime, and I hope that the pace picks up going forward. Yuri does need time to become comfortable in her new surroundings, but reading about that and watching it are two very different things.

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Red River is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.