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Romeo and Juliet, with ninjas and blood
To the one I love... prepare to die!
The year is 1614. The Shougun Tokugawa Ieyasu is old and sick yet not senile, and war is about to erupt between the numerous noble factions that want to see one of his grandsons, either Takechiyo (the eldest) or Kunichiyo (the youngest), as the heir. To settle this, each group will be represented by two very powerful Ninja sects, the Kouga Manjidani (chosen to support Kunichiyo) and the Iga Tsubagakure (chosen to fight for Takechiyo), who will "compete" ( yeah right) for their cause. However, there is a BIG problem.
The heirs of each group, Kouga Gennosuke and Iga-no-Oboro, are... engaged. Have actually been for at least ten years. Unlike other arranged couples, though, they're very much in love and were very willing to tie the knot. And this engagement was settled many years ago specifically to bring peace among their clans, who have been bitter enemies from years ala Romeo And Juliet. So, after the shaky truce is shattered, what will Oboro and Gennosuke do, as their warriors start fighting and killing each other with glee?
According to The Other Wiki, this is the plot of Basilisk (バジリスク甲賀忍法帖, Basilisk Kōga Ninpō Chō). This manga was authored by Masaki Segawa and published by Kodansha in Japan in 2003 and 2004, based on the semi-historical novel The Kouga Ninja Scrolls by Futaro Yamada, published in 1958. The anime, produced in 2005 by GONZO Studios, closely follows the manga aside from a handful of distinctions. The manga itself also won the 2004 Kodansha Manga Award for general manga.
Also, please check the Character Sheet!
This show provides examples of...
- Adaptation Distillation: The manga is very good and all, but since it gives more room for Character Development and expands the backstories of several characters, lots of people deem the anime as being even better.
- Anyone Can Die: And does.
- Big Brother Complex: When Okoi was tortured and killed by the Iga, her older brother Saemon threw himself fully and furiously into the Iga/Kouga feud. And even before this, the Kougas knew that doing something bad to Okoi was a Bad Idea.
- Bloody Murder: Akeginu of the Iga Tsubagakure group not only is extremely seductive as well as deadly with her trusty tanto dagger, but she can also control her own blood, secreting it out of her pores to blind or tag her opponents or create a sort-of mist as she mixes it with the air in her surroundings.
- Boobs of Steel: Okoi, Kagerou and Akeginu of course. Theirs are deadly boobs.
- Break the Cutie: My goodness... poor Oboro. And to some degree, poor Kagerou. And Hotarubi, for that matter.
- Break The Haughty: Tenzen's fifth and FINAL death
- Brother Sister Incest: The Saemon/Okoi ship has somewhat of a fan following, due to their mutual devotion.
- Character Exaggeration: Kagerou's jealousy was quite more accentuated in the anime. This Troper bets that, if this fandom were bigger, Kagerou would be a major target of Die For Our Ship...
- Clingy Jealous Girl: As mentioned, anime!Kagerou takes this to the biggest, more dangerous extremes, and that is the key to her downfall. It's not like she's doing it without any reason other than wanting Gennosuke for herself... too bad her sad backstory was only explained in the original novel.
- In the Iga group, there's Hotarubi. Even insinuate her fiancé Yashamaru might have another girl and she'll scare the shit outta you with just a Death Glare.
- Combat By Champion
- Crash Into Hello: In both anime and manga, Oboro brings some tea for Gennosuke during their first meeting as adults, but she's so nervous that she trips and dumps the tray and its contents on him.
- Crowning Moment Of Funny: From the same flashback above, Oboro gets so nervous about meeting Gennosuke that she develops the hiccups. After Akeginu tries to cure her (making her drink from a teacup with chopsticks across the top) and fails, Rousai and Nenki, arguably two of her most grotesque minions, do their part to help by leaping out and giving her the scare of her life. And it still doesn't work.
- Death By Sex: Kagerou's bitterness at the world comes from having powers that will inevitably kill every man she has sex with, so she will never be able to be with the man she's loved ever since she was a little girl. Later Tenzen captures and rapes Kagerou, so she has her revenge by poisoning him and snapping his neck... but he survives thanks to his own powers, to re-capture and savagely torture her)
- Deus Sex Machina: Subverted with poor Kagerou. Just read above.
- Disability Superpower: In addition to Juubei and Koshirou, mentioned above, when Gennosuke is also blinded (though temporarily, via Seven Days Ointment), he remains an effective fighter, able to trick and kill Tenzen for the third time and letting Oboro give him the coup de grace.
- Gennosuke is an effective fighter even when blind because he was specifically trained in case he came across an opponent that blinded him as a means to nullify the power of his eyes.
- Driven To Suicide: Oboro prefers to kill herself rather than killing Gennosuke and continue as a puppet of Ofuku. And after she dies, Gennosuke drives a whole squad to kill themselves, then stabs himself to death.
- Gennosuke's power is this trope, he can literally make anyone who goes up against him become so bat-shit terrified of him that they'll kill themselves rather than face him.
- Doomed Moral Victor: Oboro effectively wins - by killing herself.
- Evil Matriarch: Lady Ofuku. Not exactly Takechiyo's mother (she's his wet nurse and nanny), but her devotion to him and thirst for power are equally fierce, and she'll stop at nothing to see her adoptive son as the heir of the Tokugawa shogunate. In the anime, Takechiyo's birth mother Princess Oeyo also counts, having apparently arranged Takechiyo's death via Odd Poison to favor his brother Kunichiyo.
- Eyes Always Shut: In addition to Hyouma and Saemon, Gennosuke and Oboro both get the "Seven Days Ointment" on them.
- Fan Service: Akeginu fights topless whenever she can manage it, due to the nature of her powers. Okoi has a fight wearing nothing but a skimpy vest. Hotarubi is mostly covered, but manages to rip her kimono and expose her legs before one fight. Kagerou has her fair share of nudity, and Oboro has a little. Of all female ninja, only the crone Ogen remains (mercifully) clothed.
- Female Gaze: Once, as Oboro and Gennosuke walk through a very thin path in the mountains, we follow Oboro's gaze as she looks at Gennosuke's back.
- Femme Fatale: Kagerou and Akeginu. These ladies embody the traditional concept of kunoichis, as highly seductive women who use their feminine charms on men to get information and then kill them. Okoi uses this, but in her own terms: she's a rough tomboy who wears short hakama and low-cut tops, since her powers involve absorbing people's blood through skin contact.
- Fridge Logic: Jimushi Juubei smokes a pipe. No one knows how he stuffs and lights it, given that he has no arms...
- Good Eyes Evil Eyes: Somehow, you can immediately tell who's the Complete Monster...
- Gonk: Tokugawa Ieyasu and his deformed chin.
- Go Out With A Smile: Hotarubi was smiling as she fell down a cliff, after Saemon allowed her to die believing she'd be reunited with her dead husband. Oboro also smiled gently when she stabbed herself instead of killing the defenseless Gennosuke.
- Handicapped Badass: Hyouma, Koushirou, and Gennosuke when he's temporarily blinded
- Jubei also counts as he was the first in the anime to kill Tenzen with a knife concealed in his throat and wielded with his tongue and outrun the ten Iga ninja without arms or legs.
- High Pressure Blood: By the keg.
- Highly Visible Ninja: All of them have distinctly conspicuous appearance and dress, if not outright freakish.
- Hoist By His Own Petard: In the anime, Tenzen captures and savagely tortures Kagerou when she prefers to try murder Oboro in her sleep rather than running away to reunite with Gennosuke; if she had not stopped to kill Oboro, she would have been somewhat more likely to avoid him. Later, the very same princess whom Tenzen broke so much through the whole series is the key behind his (final) death.
- How Many Times Must I Kill You: Good lord, Tenzen. What is it going to take to kill you? Wait, you mean you had to kill him five times before it stuck?
- It Got Worse: It really did
- Ironic Hell: Ofuku, after the end.
- Kick The Dog: Hotarubi brutally stabbing Shougen in an Unstoppable Rage for not receiving the answer she needed about Yashamaru, Saemon's specially messy murder of Hotarubi herself, how Saemon and Kagerou manipulate the blinded Koushirou and kill him, Akeginu stabbing Hyouma's remains in grief for Koushirou's death, Saemon and Kagerou's murder of Akeginu, etc.
- Kill Em All: Literally.
- Kissing Cousins: Kagerou is Gennosuke's cousin and, if not for her powers, she would've been the one chosen to marry him.
- Last Kiss: Subverted: Kagerou didn't get to kiss Gennosuke and take him with her, thanks to Oboro's eyes being unsealed.
- Left For Dead: Happens quite a bit with many characters, even after precautions are made to prevent any unpleasant surprises later.
- Let Them Die Happy: Saemon is a very ruthless fighter, but not even he have the guts to deny Hotarubi a last flash of happiness and lets her believe he's Yashamaru so she can die without regrets.
- Love At First Sight: Oboro and Gennosuke.
- Love Makes You Crazy: Hotarubi is... not quite all there where Yashamaru is concerned.
- Mac Guffin: The scrolls, sorta.
- Male Gaze: Okoi is frequently shown from rather...strange...angles.
- Mama Bear: Ofuku, to Takechiyo. Evil Matriarch style, of course.
- Moral Event Horizon: As the local Complete Monster, Tenzen performs SEVERAL acts that go beyond that limit like trying to rape Oboro so he can impregnate her, using the flautists to trigger Gyoubu's Berserk Button and finish him off too, murdering Saemon in a specially bloody manner for daring to impersonate him, raping and torturing poor Kagerou into insanity, trying again to rape Oboro in front of Kagerou to see if that would trigger Kagerou's powers, and finally telling the truth about Gennosuke being still alive to his mooks during his death scene. Princess Oeyo and Lady Ofuku also perform some of these, like Oeyo trying to kill her eldest child so the younger becomes heir, and young Ofuku killing her husband's mistress and her baby to get back at him for bringing both of them home, humiliating her for being barren.
- Murder The Hypotenuse: Kagerou is dead set into killing Oboro so she can have Gennosuke. Much more in the anime than the manga, though. Tenzen also wants to kill Gennosuke so he can have Oboro as his puppet wife, which would grant him full control of the Iga Tsubagakure.
- My God What Have I Done: In the anime, Gyoubu is utterly shaken and horrified after Tenzen grabs a boy and throws him into the middle of their fight, causing Gyoubu to accidentally kill the kids's father when the old man tries to save his son. And that lets Tenzen kill him..
- Nana Mizuki: Provide's Oboro's voice and the ED theme, Wild Eyes.
- Nightmare Fuel: Several deaths are really anticlimactic.
- Ninja: Well, DUH.
- Parental Abandonment: Gennosuke was raised by his grandfather Danjo and his maternal uncle Hyouma since his parents died when he was a child. Oboro's parents are also dead, so she was raised by a nanny and then by Ogen. Out of the other Iga and Kouga, only Gyoubu's father Kasumi Renbu is mentioned, and he's dead.
- Parental Substitute: Muroga Hyouma, helping take care of his very young nephew Gennosuke when barely out of this teens.
- Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Oboro and Gennosuke were engaged at childhood, but as it's already been said, they fell in love of their own will.
- Pet the Dog: Koushirou's woodcarving skills and his relatioship with the flautist boy.
- Pigeonholed Voice Actor: Three guesses as to which character is played by Hayami Show! Yes, Tenzen, how did you guess?
- Playing Against Type: On the other hand, the murderous Hotarubi is played by Miyuki Sawashiro, who usually voices Genki Girls and Moe types.
- Rape As Drama: Tenzen attempts to rape Oboro twice.
- Rape of the Lock: In the manga, Yashamaru gets his long hair cut when ambushed by the Kouga. Subverted in the anime: He did it himself after Kazamachi nailed him with his spit.
- Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Tenzen looks like he's in his late 30's, but is over 200 years old. Apparently, being able to come back from death regularly also makes you age slower.
- Spanner In The Works: The only thing Tenzen couldn't plan for was Oboro's regaining her sight and using her power on him while he was vulnerable.
- That, and she also derailed Ofuku's gambit by commiting suicide rather than killing Gennosuke. Almost, since Gennosuke made sure the Igas would be pronounced victorious and then killed himself, but it still was a neat way to throw Ofuku's crap back at her. Still gave her a spectacular Villainous Breakdown.
- Star Crossed Lovers: Oboro and Gennosuke. And when young, Danjou and Ogen
- Tear Jerker: So, so many...
- Technical Pacifist: Gennosuke and Oboro.
- I'd say Gennosuke is more of a Martial Pacifist, since he will defend himself if under attack even if he's not willing to throw the first slash.
- The Un Favorite: Poor, poor little Takechiyo.
- Unlucky Childhood Friend: In the novel, Kagerou is said to be in love with Gennosuke since they were kids. Her poisonous powers (which are inherited in her side of the family; her Missing Mom also had them) developed when she was a teenager, though, and that's one of the reasons why she can't marry him.
- What Measure Is a
Non-Human Freakish-Looking Human: There is a clear tendency for the more grotesque ninja (Juubei, Shougen, Rousai...) to die first.
- Villainous Breakdown ( Ofuku, AND HOLY GODDAMNED HOW)
- Woman Scorned: Hotarubi ( after Yashamaru's death), to the maximum degree.
- Wouldnt Hit A Girl: Subversion: Saemon Kisaragi thinks it's not in him to harm a woman if he can help it, but even then, he kills Hotarubi very bloodily, since she had a part in the demise of his Dead Little Sister. Not to mention, lots of the Iga and Kouga warriors are females, and they all die very messily.
- Xanatos Gambit: Tenzen pulls some of these through the series. We later find out that the destruction of the truce is the result of a BIG Xanatos Gambit of his', bordering on Xanatos Roulette, that was this close to leave him as the pretty much last warrior standing in both clans, with Oboro as his puppet wife and as Man Behind The Man for the next shogun. People like Danjou, Ogen, Gennosuke and Hyouma are also capable of these.
- Your Head Asplode. Tenzen's final death.
- You Killed My Father: In the anime, Gyoubu Kasumi saw his father Renbu die at the hands of Iga ninjas
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