The first episode begins with a modern-day high schooler named Yoshiharu Sagara being in the middle of a battlefield in the Warring States Period. At first, he thinks he's in the middle of a dream about the period because he's such a big fan of the game, Lord Oda Nobunaga's Ambition. A man near him is shot, and from talking to the man before his death, Yoshiharu realizes that he's talking to Kinoshita Tokichiro, the man responsible for helping to unite Japan.
Suddenly, a young woman appears on the battlefield, and it turns out she is Oda Nobuna, a cute girl version of Oda Nobunaga. Yoshiharu quickly discovers that he is an alternate history, where the first-born of the family, regardless of gender, is the heir. So the warlords that he is familiar with from our world are female in this alternate history.
Yoshiharu takes on the identity of Kinoshita Tokichiro, the man who died on the battlefield. Nobuna gives him the nickname of Monkey, which is the nickname given to Tokichiro. With his knowledge of Oda Nobunaga and his exploits, Yoshiharu is able to help guide Nobuna to make the right decisions.
When I first heard about the concept for this series, it made me think of Sengoku Collection, an anime that premiered during the Spring 2012 season, since both cast the Warring States Period hero Oda Nobunaga as female instead of male. While both of these series employ "fanservice" elements, I think that, overall, The Ambition of Oda Nobuna has a stronger story and doesn't rely on the "fanservice" quite as heavily as Sengoku Collection did.
However for me, the biggest flaw of The Ambition of Oda Nobuna is the fact that it's never explained in the first episode how Yoshiharu ended up in the alternate timeline to begin with. The episode begins with him already being in the alternate Warring States Period, and you're given a brief mention of the Lord Oda Nobunaga's Ambition game. I was left wondering throughout the episode how Yoshiharu ended up here, and I felt as if the creators of the anime simply expected the audience to accept what was going on. Hopefully a future episode will provide an explanation.
The Ambition of Oda Nobuna doesn't seem to truly bring anything new to the table, and it's easy to write off as "just another alternatime timeline story featuring cute girls" series. It's obviously being aimed at a particular demographic, and I am not part of that audience. While this series may not appeal to me personally, I think anime viewers who enjoy series featuring a lot of cute young female characters will like this series.
With the "fanservice" elements that are included in this series, I would recommend The Ambition of Oda Nobuna to anime viewers who are 15 or 16 years of age and older.
| The Ambition of Oda Nobuna | 12 | 2012 | Yuji Kumazawa | Studio Gokumi/Madhouse | N/A |
