Posted in Ôoku, Culture, Gender, Manga, Media, tagged よしながふみ, 男女逆転大奥, Edo period, female shogun, Gender, genderswap, Kasuga, Madenokouji Arikoto, manga, Ohoku, Ooku: The Inner Chambers, Oooku, Shogun, The Lady Shogun and Her Men, Tokugawa Iemitsu, Yoshinaga Fumi on 2011/02/07|
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Manga Review: 『大奥』(Ōoku:The Inner Chambers), Vol. 2

Image from Amazon.co.jp
Read the review of Vol. 1 here. Ôoku masterpost here.
Sad to leave Yoshimune and Mizuno of vol. 1 behind for the next story arc, I reluctantly started vol. 2 of Ôoku, but I quickly left my regrets behind as I got absorbed in the story. Readers, this manga is a tour de force. It’s not just the art or the writing– this volume put me through an emotional wringer in a way that only the endings of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and The Rose of Versailles have.
As Yoshimune reads the records of the ōoku, we travel back in time to the 1630s. The manga starts with an explanation: The first two Tokugawa shoguns, Ieyasu and Hidetada, were men. However, the third shogun, Iemitsu, fell victim to the Red Pox. Little by little, we piece together the (disturbing) story of how the female Tokugawa line started.
Spoilers, of course, follow.
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