Sio Ogura is a Japanese high school student, who is visiting Taiwan on a school trip when she is suddenly attacked by monsters. Agents known as "E-Gene Holders" from the government agency DOGOO also arrive, who wield weapons infused with the spirits of historical figures. Sio is revealed to also be an E-Gene Holder when the soul of Oda Nobunaga awakens after she tries to rescue a friend.
Nobunagun is a manga series written and illustrated by Masato Hisa, serialized in Earth Star Entertainment's magazine Comic Earth Star from May 2011 to August 2015 and has since been compiled into six volumes. A TV anime adaptation by studio Bridge was released in January 2014.
Contains examples of:
- Adaptational Heroism: Like the other show featuring Oda Nobunaga in the same season, our heroine has his soul. Also Jack the Ripper.
- Adaptation Expansion: The anime expands on several things from the manga, as well as giving Asao a slightly bigger role.
- Adaptive Ability: The Evolutionary Invasion Objects rapidly create new species based on their experiences from past battles. After Nobunagun shoots down a whole battalion of them, the next one they fight has tough armor that her bullets can't penetrate.
- Ax-Crazy: The main character is... kinda off.
- Badass Boast: Jack the Ripper gives a good one in the first episode while bleeding out.If I kill five of them at a time, how many strikes until they're all dead?
- Barrier Warrior: Gandhi (Mashesh)'s power. Just don't call it a barrier.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Florence Nightingale was the original Jack the Ripper. Florence Nightingale, of all people. Of course though, she was actually a secret intelligence agent protecting humanity from a man made bacteriological weapon that was injected into the organs of the women that she regretfully had to kill.
- Berserk Button: Don't call Galileo short.
- BFG: Sio wields a giant minigun that fires ammo bigger than her torso.
- BFS: Jack the Ripper's arm turns into one.
- Blood Knight: Both Nobunagun and Jack the Ripper relish fighting.
- Bolivian Army Ending: The flashback of Oda Nobunaga shows his final moment in Honnouji as Akechi Mitsuhide's forces are closing in. Strangely, we don't see him actually committing seppuku.
- Career-Ending Injury: Robert Capa suffered an unspecified one that forced him to give up field work and have to train new recruits instead. As of Episode 9, Galileo may also have suffered one.
- Car Fu: Saint-Germain rams an Invasion Object in episode 9, though that's not enough to do more than distract it for a few seconds. He also spends the entire encounter complaining about having to total a car when the DOGOO budget is so tight.
- Chiaroscuro: The manga makes heavy use of this.
- Complete Immortality: Saint-Germain is heavily implied to be this. In Episode 9 his car explodes with him in it, and he shows up later completely unharmed, while Episode 10 shows that he's over 1,000 years old.
- Creature-Hunter Organization: DOGOO is an organization formed to specifically fight against the Evolutionary Invasion Objects.
- Deadly Prank: In episode 6, some researchers at a remote lab in Alaska haze a new recruit by telling him he's eating meat from a dead alien. He goes nuts and kills them all. Even worse, he thinks eating the meat caused him to become an alien himself and he tries to side with them against humanity, calling them his real family. An alien kills him right after he frees it from containment.
- Design Student's Orgasm: The anime makes use of some unusual design choices, including Unmoving Plaid, chiaroscuro and odd coloring.
- Failure-to-Save Murder: Sio believes that she's responsible for the blowing-up of a significant part of Kaohsiung, due to her failure to shoot the EIO that triggered the explosion. Asao disagrees.
- Government Conspiracy: The whole Jack the Ripper thing was a massive coverup by the government for what really happened. The murders were actually committed by secret intelligence agent Florence Nightingale in order to contain a man-made bacteriological weapon infected to the organs of the women she regretfully killed from spreading throughout all of Europe.
- Gravity Master: Jess Beckman, the reincarnation of Isaac Newton, can increase the gravity of anything she stomps on, so anything she stomps on will be pinned down and eventually go squish.
- Gun Nut: Sio is one of these. Her Establishing Character Moment in the first episode has her loudly fantasising about firing an anti-tank gun while in public.
- The Gunslinger: Sio's power, with the twist that the guns are usually very, very large.
- Hidden Buxom: Possibly. When Sio was in training with Robert Capa, he made a number of mirror-image clones of Sio and tried to provoke her by unzipping one of the clone's track jackets, whereupon the clone was revealed to have a healthy D-cup. Later he uses the clones to do a fake photo shoot of Sio in a bikini for the soldiers and some helpful footnotes remark that the pictures were photoshopped, so it's unclear as to whether Capa was sincerely just screwing with her or if she's really hiding something underneath her usual attire. Downplayed, as it's revealed in episode 8 through a dream sequence that Sio does have an appreciable bust hidden underneath her usual wardrobe. It's just not as full as her clones (or Asao, for that matter).
- I Was Quite a Looker: The elderly Commander of Dogoo used to be a very cute girl. In a heartwarming moment, the immortal and ageless St. Germain, who constantly hit on her when she was young, says he still sees her as that cute girl when he ran into her again after she had become old.
- Historical Domain Character: Besides the titular character, it includes, but it not limited to, Jack the Ripper, Galileo Galilei, Mahatma Gandhi, Nostradamus, Isaac Newton, just to name a few.
- Historical Domain Crossover: The E-Genes, the essence of famous figures ranging from Jack the Ripper to Oda Nobunaga to Mahatma Gandhi extracted at the point of death. Certain people in the present day have inherited these E-Genes and are able to draw out powers based on them (guns for Nobunaga, an axe for Geronimo, gravity control for Isaac Newton, etc.), while also communing with their spirit from time to time.
- Historical Domain Superperson: The manga's premise is based around E-Gene Holders who use weapons infused with the spirits of historical figures. The protagonist, Ogura Sio, is an E-Gene Holder who wields a BFG containing Oda Nobunaga.
- Late for School: In the first episode, we see Sio running to school with toast in her mouth.
- Law of Inverse Recoil: Averted, during Nobunagun's first battle, the recoil from her overly large weapon caused her to miss quite a few of her shots.
- Living Ship: The Evolutionary Invasion Objects create one of these out of the sunken husk of the warship Musashi, which is subsequently codenamed the "Musashi Wonder".
- Long Game: DOGOO have been collecting the E-genes in preparation for the E.I.O.s' arrival for nearly 2,000 years. Note that the E.I.O.s themselves aren't known to have appeared on Earth until the Victorian era.
- Loveable Sex Maniac: A large portion of E-Gene holders seem to hold this trait. Bonus points to Newton, whose first act off the battlefield is to kiss Jack and Nobunaga on the mouth. With tongue.
- More Dakka: The heart and soul of the show, not to mention the protagonist's. In fact, there's a specific quote from Nobunaga in regard to this, which is accompanied by Sio pulling out more and more guns to shoot the enemy."Even if you have a rifle squad, a single line will be broken while they reload.""What you must do is simple.""If one line isn't enough... two!""If two lines isn't enough... three!"
- Only a Flesh Wound: Jack the Ripper don't feel like quitting the fight, even though he has been gutted in the stomach.
- Otaku: Sio is one for weapons. Her room is covered in model tanks and airplanes, and she has a camo-pattern filter, versus other girls' flower patterns, in some of the artsier shots. She's also capable of identifying various military weapons.
- Playful Cat Smile: Galileo has a perpetual one plastered on her face, to go along with her cutesy personality.
- Power Perversion Potential: Robert Capa (Anush's) powers include the ability to create copies of people. Not only was he able to "motivate" Sio into aiming better during a training exercise by threatening to take a peek at "her" breasts, he was also able to make her copies pose for some swimsuit photos, to her understandable displeasure.
- Quaking with Fear: In the very first episode, Sio experiences a life-threating situation that causes her knees to knock together in fear. She tries to stop them from knocking by holding them, but it doesn't work.
- Really 700 Years Old: Both the DOGOO Commander and Saint-Germain. The Commander, while she does look elderly, is well over 1700 years old, thanks to numerous long periods of stasis during the collection of the E-genes, while Saint-Germain is around 1000 years old and heavily implied to be immortal.
- Recoil Boost: In episode 4, Jack asks Nobunagun to use the recoil of her guns to propel them after falling invader eggs. Three guns would give them some ability to steer.
- Red Filter of Doom: Whenever an E.I.O. attacks.
- Reincarnation: Explicitly stated to be the case for why the characters have their powers. Sio is also evidence that the powers are not the only thing that may be passed on, as she shares Oda Nobunaga's love for military machinery (guns in particular).
- Refusal of the Call: Initially, Sio is not so sure about jumping into the hero lifestyle. Asao eventually convinces her to join DOGOO.
- Rule of Cool: Sio's explanation for why it's "Nobunagun" instead of "Nobunaga": it sounds cooler.
- Shouting Shooter: Nobunagun on occasions.
- Shout-Out:
- In the second episode, when people on the street are asked by a news show what they'd do if they were E-gene holders one man replies "There's a saying, you know: 'With great power comes great responsibility'."
- The conversation between Sio and Asao also refers directly to Gamera.
- Jack The Ripper has been compared to a another Jack The Ripper. The spiky silver hair, lower jaw plate on his face and his fondness for blades help a bit.
- Episode 6, with a remote science lab that's gone crazy during a blizzard, brings to mind The Thing (1982).
- Notice Dogoo's ships names - Alex Logan, Clayton Forrester, Ellen Ripley and Johnny Rico - definitely geared toward fighting aliens.
- The trend continues with Episode 12 and the Steven Hiller.
- Shown Their Work: In the final episode the true identity of the original Jack The Ripper is revealed and it's mentioned that the name came from a letter written by a journalist rather than Jack themselves.
- The creators definitely did their research into historical figures as shown by how the e-genes influence the behavior of their reincarnations, as a lot of the quirks are based on relatively-unknown facts, rumors, or stories about the historical figures. For example, Gandhi was known to love having sex before becoming the person he was known as, so his reincarnation is a playboy. Issac Newton was rumored to live a life of chastity, so it makes sense that his reincarnation is taking every opportunity he denied himself.
This also explains why Jack the Ripper comes off as the most normal of the group early in the series. He doesn't show the quirky behavior that every other e-gene holder shows because the real Jack the Ripper was never found; no one knows what quirks the original Jack had, so current-day Jack ends off relatively normal.
- The creators definitely did their research into historical figures as shown by how the e-genes influence the behavior of their reincarnations, as a lot of the quirks are based on relatively-unknown facts, rumors, or stories about the historical figures. For example, Gandhi was known to love having sex before becoming the person he was known as, so his reincarnation is a playboy. Issac Newton was rumored to live a life of chastity, so it makes sense that his reincarnation is taking every opportunity he denied himself.
- Small Girl, Big Gun: Sio. The cartridges alone are bigger than her torso.
- Spell My Name With An S: Sio vs. Shio, a case of which romanization system you use. The official materials use Sio.
- Super Team: DOGOO, formed to fight aliens and monsters.
- Swiss-Army Weapon: Jack's (Adam's) blade can split apart into a claw with a variety of blades at the end.
- Take Up My Sword: In spirit, with Sio taking up Adam's AU Ball. Though he does get another one.
- Training from Hell: For Sio in episode 3, courtesy of Anush/Robert Capa.
- Token Evil Teammate: It's mentioned that DOGOO often sends in Jack the Ripper alone because the other E-Gene holders are scared of him. It turns out be an Informed Attribute since everyone treats him rather cordially.
- Unmoving Plaid: Used during non-action scenes in the anime, often in place of shadows or to indicate a scene's mood (such as flower patterns when Sio is talking to Asao).
- With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: A random bystander on the news quotes this.
- Wreathed in Flames: Nobunaga's spirit is usually depicted like this.
