Red River

Episodes 1-3

Before isekai was strictly a fantasy genre, it often masqueraded as historical fiction. Timeslip or time travel fiction has a storied history, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I've loved it ever since someone handed me a copy of Jack Finney's Time and Again when I was in middle school. Chie Shinohara's Red River is among my favorites in the genre, and it's hardly alone in classic shoujo manga – I dream (fruitlessly) of the day when someone will take a chance on Ouke no Monshou for English release. But even then, it stands out for the time to which heroine Yuri travels: the ancient Hittite Empire in the 14th century B.C.E.

And she doesn't just travel there; she ends up smack in the middle of history. Many of the characters in this story are real, historical figures, in these first three episodes notably Kail, Nakia, and Kikkuri. (That last is based on Kikkuli, author of one of the first horse care manuals.) Shinohara does fudge quite a few details – for example, “Hittite” is the biblical name for the people who called themselves the Hatti – but most of the events that are going to take place over the course of this show are grounded in recorded history. It's not a time or place many people know off the top of their head, and that makes this exciting from a whole different perspective.

But I wouldn't blame you if, as of this moment, you were wondering what the big deal is. While I can assure you that the opening theme isn't lying and Yuri really will become a powerful warrior, right now she's spending most of her time weeping and wailing. If you're not into following the manga's pacing quite so faithfully, it could be a lot to sit through, especially since the art and animation are not, shall we say, visual treats.

It does make sense if you stop to think about it. Yuri is a teenage girl who has gone from “dreamy first boyfriend” to “a madwoman wants to murder me for a spell so her son will become king.” That's a lot for anyone to cope with, even without being pulled backwards millennia in time and finding yourself at the mercy of a very handsy prince. In less time than it takes to walk three steps, she's been yanked out of her world and thrown into a much more dangerous one, where not only does she not initially speak the language (Kail's magic saliva fixes that in episode one), but it is also devoid of all social norms she's familiar with. Nakia may be powerful, but she's only powerful because of her relationship with a man, the king, and she's busy stealing what power she can get in a way that would feel much more understandable if she wasn't positioned as the villain. Yuri, as a random foreigner, has even less autonomy, and she's forced in episode three to realize that without Kail, she's a sitting duck. The only way he can protect her is to take her to war with him, and for a girl from 20th-century Japan (or possibly 21st), that's almost unfathomable. Add to that the fact that she just saw her first dead body, and it was the corpse of her first friend in Hattusa, and I think we can forgive her for being a wailing watering pot for an hour of our time. She's in an unbearable situation.

But we are starting to see her come into her own. It would have been easy for her to go back to Japan after Tito's death, to see her family and hopefully a good psychiatrist. But she doesn't, not because she's an idiot, but because she recognizes what Tito did for her. She feels she owes it to him to avenge his death even if the thought scares her. When Kail asks her to come with him to fight the Kashuga (historically the Kaska, a loose federation of Bronze Age tribes), she doesn't hesitate. Yes, she realizes that her chances of survival are better with him than with his steward Ilbani, who isn't too impressed with her, but she also decides to be proactive. Tito was killed by Kaskian people who work for Nakia; if she's going to avenge him, she needs to go where they are. She's beginning to realize that she can't just sit around and let Kail do all the saving.

I'm not sure how much space this series is going to give itself to develop Yuri's increasing bravery and intelligence. If there's anything that worries me about this adaptation, that would be it. But I'm willing to give this a chance.

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Red River is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.