RJ Writing Ink Looks at Red River

So I was scrolling through YouTube a few days ago during a lull in my day job, when I saw this clip Crunchyroll posted for this anime that came out in July, Red River. It’s an adaptation of a 1990s shojo manga that was apparently pretty popular back in the day, if the Internet is to be believed. Intrigued, I wound up researching it over the next few days, and I have to admit, I can see why the comments on YouTube are upset with Crunchyroll for not promoting this. I can also see that the anime is lowering the bar for what is, for all intents and purposes, the shojo counterpart of Inuyasha.

What is Red River?

Released from 1995 to 2002, Red River is a time-traveling Isekai about Yuri Suzuki, an ordinary girl from modern-day Japan who’s just about to enter High School (college in the anime). Right as she and her boyfriend are walking home together, these tendrils of water shoot out of a puddle, and before she can even cry for help, she gets sucked in. When she awakens, she’s no longer in the land that she knew, or even the time she knew.

To her misfortune, Yuri has been dragged three thousand years into the past, to the heart of the Hittite Empire that ruled what is now modern-day central Turkey. The reason is that this evil Queen, Nakia, wants to use her as a blood sacrifice to kill all her stepsons so that her actual son can become the next king of the empire. Luckily for Yuri, she managed to run into one of those princes, Kail, before getting captured, and he realizes his evil stepmom’s up to something. So he saves her by lying that she’s his new concubine, taking her under his protection until they can find a way to get her home. And when Yuri blows her first chance to go home to avenge a servant boy she befriended, she’s stuck in the past for a whole year with Kail. And with Nakia still after her, she has to keep up the ruse of being Kail’s lover while learning how to be a warrior in a world that’s harsher than the one she knows.

To top it all off, Kail tells everyone that Yuri is the incarnation of Ishtar, this goddess of love and war. So, no big deal.

This has SO MUCH IN COMMON with Inuyasha!

I wasn’t joking when I called this series the shojo manga equivalent of Inuyasha. Besides the two of them releasing around the same time in the mid-90s, they share a lot of similarities in terms of premise and the main characters. And that is both to their benefit and their detriment.

Firstly, we have the lead heroines, Yuri Suzuki and Kagome Higurashi. Both of them are young, compassionate, and spirited Japanese schoolgirls around the same age, though Yuri gets aged up to 18 in the anime. Thanks to forces outside their control, they are transported into a distant past they are not prepared for and become the target of evil forces. Kagome is hunted by Demons who want her dead or the shards of the Shikon Jewel she’s searching for, while Nakia wants Yuri dead so she can take over the Hittite Empire. So to survive, they both come under the protection of the lead heroes and other allies as they learn how to get stronger. And in doing so, they become powerful and respected badasses: Kagome becomes a skilled archer and priestess, while Yuri masters swordsmanship and the art of war.

The only real differences between Kagome and Yuri come down to their circumstances. Kagome’s the reincarnation of the well-regarded priestess Kikyo and can go back to her time whenever she wants. Yuri, on the other hand, is not actually the incarnation of a goddess and doesn’t have the respite Kagome does. So she’s got it harder.

At Least the Male Leads are Different

Then we have the lead heros, Inuyasha and Kail. Honestly, there’s very little similarities between them. Inuyasha is a half-Demon with the powers that go with it, and is brash, crude, and aggressive by nature. In contrast, Kail is handsome, refined, and known as a playboy who refuses to be tied down. The only real similarity between them is how their relationship with the female lead starts out: Kagome and Yuri can’t stand them at first. But like it or not, they are forced to work together to accomplish their goals, and it goes from there.

Plus, there’s also the fact that the more time each pair spends with each other, their relationship grows. They go from dislike to respect and friendship, and eventually, maybe even love.

Which brings me to something about Red River that I think people should be warned about: the mature aspects.

Trigger Warning: DEPICTIONS OF SA TO FOLLOW

I never read the manga, but one thing I remember happening a lot in Inuyasha the anime is how often Kagome was captured or targeted by the bad guys. Often it was because she could locate Jewel Shards or for her immense spiritual power, but there were also instances where people did it because of her beauty; sometimes both!

And Yuri? Imagine the same thing, but worse.

It should be important to note that, while Kagome and Yuri are already considered attractive by modern standrards, that doesn’t initially translate over when Yuri’s stuck 3,000 years in the past. Due to her small size, slim figure, and preference for more masculine clothing (some even mistake her for a boy), Yuri is initially not seen as beautiful by the Hittites. That’s already changing in the anime as she makes up for these perceived shortcomings with her fiery spirit and growing skill as a warrior, making more and people see her as beautiful. Which isn’t a good thing, as it leads to several men starting to want her for themselves, with Kail the biggest culprit.

The first thing Kail does when he meets Yuri is kiss her. Granted, it was so he could hide her from Nakia’s cronies, but still. Then he saves her life by lying about sleeping with her, which she is forced to go along with, which is embarrassing. And to keep up the ruse of being his concubine, the two of them have to share a bed together. And, being a young man, it doesn’t take until the second episode for Kail to try and make that fake-concubine thing the real deal. He stops when she says she has a boyfriend back home, but that doesn’t stop him from repeatedly kissing her.

That’s also not even getting into the other guys end up falling for Yuri, most of whom are even less willing to restrain themselves.

The bottom line, due to this being a product of the 90s, and that Yuri is stuck in a time when morals aren’t as high as they are now, parts of Red River haven’t aged gracefully and will likely upset people.

Oh great, it’s like TBATE All Over Again

But enough about that. How is the anime itself? Given how its fans have waited thirty years for it to get adapted, it has to be amaz-it’s mid.

I’m the kind of person who focuses more on the story itself rather than the animation, but ever since the disaster that was The Beginning After the End, I’ve become more aware of bad animation. While this series is nowhere near as bad as TBATE was, it’s not as amazing as it could be. When we get our first large-scale battle, it relies on bad CGI to animate the soldiers, which is a bit of a turn-off. Or when Yuri defeats one of Nakia’s minions that was hunting him and everyone is proclaiming her to be Ishtar, it’s just a handful of soldiers in the anime instead of the large crowd in the manga. It may not seem like much, but if you have read the manga, then you’ll know why older fans are turned off by it.

There is one other thing about the anime that I’m not a fan of, and that’s the censorship, but not for the reason you think. I understand that many of the mature scenes and depictions of dubious consent and assault aren’t going to fly today. I can also understand why the studio would want to tone down things like nudity. The problem is that the show only goes halfway. It should either keep everything to satisfy the fans, or go all the way with the censoring. Compromise can be good, but there are times where doing so will upset everyone.

There are about 7-8 episodes of the anime out by the time this goes up, and it has 28 volumes of manga to cover. That’s not enough time for a 12-episode anime to cover everything, meaning it would need to come back for more season. Those seasons, though, won’t happen if the show doesn’t do well, and so far, that seems to be the case. Even I’m not that overly interested in it, with most of it being due to me liking tomboys like Yuri.

The manga, on the other hand…

After learning about the anime and what it’s about, I wound up going online to find the manga it’s based on. I then proceeded to binge-read the majority of it in the span of a few days, and I have to say…wow. What a story.

Firstly, the artwork is absolutely gorgeous. Far, far superior to what the anime has given us so far. I can totally understand why the older fans are upset with the low quality of the anime, even if it does capture Yuri’s cuteness well enough. And the story! It’s a geopolitical story in the vein of things like Game of Thrones that spans the ancient Near East, and one that Yuri has to carefully navigate her way through to survive. And she doesn’t make it through without suffering plenty of loss and hardship. Plus, the relationship between her and Kail does become genuinely sweet to watch. I have a soft spot for good love stories, you know.

There are Still Some Issues, but Nothing’s Perfect

The main criticisms that I have about the manga, though, besides the adult stuff, center around the plot holes. For example, around the halfway point in the story, Yuri hardly thinks about her family and boyfriend back home in favor of the life she’s built in ancient Anatolia. She doesn’t even get the chance to say goodbye, let them know she’s alright, or give them some form of closure. And then there’s Nakia’s plot, to begin with. Why does she need Yuri specifically? For that matter, why did she need to kidnap someone from 3,500 years in the future when she could have gotten someone from her time? And she just keeps persisting in her attempts to kill Yuri when a more pragmatic person might cut their losses and send her back. She’s not that interesting as a villain.

And there’s also the setting itself. I’m not sure if Yuri knows this, but by the time she gets sucked into the past, the Hittite Empire’s days are numbered. Around 150 years later, it and most of the societies in the region will enter the Bronze Age Collapse that will take centuries to recover from. So, it makes the ending very bittersweet in nature.

Despite all of this, though, and all the faults I found, I couldn’t help but like Red River. It was such a page-turner that I couldn’t stop reading it, even if it gets repetitive after a certain point. It really did remind me a lot of Inuyasha, and I’m grateful for that. Plus, it did give me some ideas for when/if I ever decide to try my hand at my own historical isekai. So, go watch the anime if you’re up for it, but I think that the manga is a much better use of your time.