Red River

Episode 5

I know that shoujo is no stranger to the melodramatic, but this week's episode of Red River made me feel like I was watching an 1820s melodrama. The sheer overselling of Kail's and Yuri's conversation towards the end, where he offers to build her her own palace, and she opts to stay with him, is so fraught, so ridiculous, that it absolutely took me out of what was clearly meant to be a touching moment. It's not the voice actors' fault, but the air practically turned purple from all that overheated prose.

It's symbolic of one of the issues plaguing this adaptation. The bones of the story are still good – and if nothing else, I dearly hope the anime won't scare you away from the manga, which I promise is good – but rather than fleshing them out, the anime is just sort of slapping some flesh-colored paint on. Yuri starts to come into her own this week, which is excellent, but the moment gets short shrift. She's right; she's going to be in Hattusa for at least another year, so she'd better start getting used to it and figuring out how she wants to spend her time. And since she (perhaps rightly) feels guilty about Tito's death, learning to fight and leaning into the Ishtar myth is a pretty good use of her energy. Her fight against Zuwa isn't thrilling, but it shows that she's trying and adapting, and yeah, if I just had a short sword and no training, I'd probably run at the guy with it pointed straight at him, too. Her actions aren't wrong or misguided.

Instead, the issue comes from her interpersonal relationships. Hadi, Ryui, and Shala haven't had much time to become full-fledged characters, but Yuri treats them like background figures for the most part, and Kikkuri only exists to explain stuff to the audience. Nakia's there to be the mustache-twirling villain, and Kail…well, part of the problem is that there's not a whole lot to him right now, either. He kisses Yuri and picks her up and talks about what he wants to do without actually doing all that much. From a political standpoint, there's perhaps not much he can do; he's third in line for the throne, and his father's Tawananna aims to keep it that way. But I feel like we hear a lot more about him than we actually see, and that's a problem. Being big, hot, and blonde and frequently off-model isn't enough to make a good character.

About the only place where this is consistently achieving is in bringing up the history. Like Kikkuri, Kail, and Nakia, Zanannza is a real historic figure (though if you want to avoid spoilers, I wouldn't recommend looking him up yet; Chie Shinohara follows the history with him very faithfully). He and his brother were close, and there were repeated clashes with the Mitanni during his lifetime, specifically against King Shattiwaza. There's some debate about the Hittites and iron weaponry, but at the time Shinohara was doing her research, what she put down was considered fairly accurate, apart from the fact that the Hittites were the Hatti.

I'm glad that the Yuri onscreen is starting to line up with the Yuri in the manga a little bit more. She's still got a long way to go, but she's getting acclimated to her admittedly upsetting situation. I so badly want to like this show that I know I'm grasping at straws, but with how remarkably bad these last two episodes have looked and the overly dramatic treatment of the love story, I'm losing hope. At this point, I'd honestly suggest dropping this and reading the manga instead.

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Red River is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.