[chad001]

Originally Posted by Mechatrill

Okay, I finally finished volume 3...

Spoiler:

It starts with the Oda forces on their march toward Kyoto. Of particular note is how Nagamasa is now fawning over Nobuna, calling her Onee-sama (I think that's what the Chinese part translate to mostly?), being extremely respectful and such.

Cue flashback to what I already spoiled earlier, how Nobuyuki and Nagamasa were revealed to each other as trap and reverse trap, making them a couple were a match made in heaven. The two really connected and genuinely fell in love, who knew...

On to Kyoto. They first had to take a castle on the way, but with the 50 cannons that Mitsuhide brought with her, they easily took it in a single day. When they entered Kyoto, Nobuna strictly enforced discipline and did not allow any looting or sacking whatsoever. Coupled with a nice parade, she pretty much won the hearts of most of the citizens of the city.

Some time in the middle, MC encounters a weird, mute little girl and plays with her. There's a bunch of stuff about legends, curses, and some religious stuff, but I'm really unclear about the whole thing...

On to stuffs. The various generals under Oda were given their assignments to garrison the various holdings and were separated. In particular though, Mitsuhide was given the post for guarding Kyoto, while Nobuna and MC stayed in the city to attend to stuff (I think there were some stuff about how they needed to gather 120,000 koku for some reason (I'm not entirely sure here, but I think it has something to do with establishing Imagawa as the Shogun?). Anyways, while everyone is going about their business, Nobuna and MC went out on a "Not a date" (tsundere alert, everyone take a shot). They spent some time touring around, the harbor in particular, where there's major influence from Portuguese traders on display (show and tell time with an elephant and camel, the MC gets to impress Nobuna with his basic knowledge, learned from trips to the zoo). Later on, they randomly meet up with Mitsuhide.

Mitsuhide wanted a moment alone with her Sempai (MC), but while alone, her true colors show: She wanted to be Nobuna's most trusted adviser, and she can be really ruthless about her strategies for it. For that to happen though, the MC has got to go. She ends with a threat: if the MC tells Nobuna about this conversation, she'll tell Nobuna that he pushed her down and forced himself on her.

Nobuna meets up with Mitsuhide and the MC again, and Mitsuhide's first move was to accuse the MC of "pushing me down and played with my chest", cue rage from Nobuna, but the MC barely survived by accusing Mitsuhide of lying and pointing out that there's no evidence to support Mitsuhide's accusations.

Nobuna agrees, and decides to select the guilty party using a competition: both of them will try to raise money (for the 120k koku thing earlier, I think?), the one to earn the most wins, and the looser will be sent back to Gifu as kitchen help (or manager? something like that though...).

Later on, the MC stumbles across a Christian church. In it, he meets a nun called Louise Francis (who happens to be really really stacked) and a little girl with an eye patch, Date Masamune. They talked about various things, and the MC, in his typical semi-perverted manner, helps them with several issues they had, such as Francis' complex about her figure (she thinks a well developed figure is unattractive for some reason) and Masamune's complex about her family situation (she's the result of an affair between her mother and a foreigner, thus resulting in her hair color and her one red eye which she hid behind her eye patch. There's also some stuff on how her father favors her little brother over her). Anyways, while comforting Masamune and trying to cheer her up, the MC did a bit too good a job, and at the end of it Masamune ran off back toward her home, saying that she'll definitely conquer the world and show everyone. The MC's reaction is basically: well, that's going to come back and bite me in the butt...

Cue interrupt from Mitsuhide. She's here with a bunch of people to sack the church (I think she was convinced to do so by a merchant acquaintance of hers? I forget his name though) for funds to win their competition. The MC uses diplomacy against her, and basically rolled a natural 20. He convinces her that it's a majorly bad idea and to disperse the mob with her without a fuss.

The next part gets a bit fuzzy again, but somehow, the competition to raise money turns to the venue to grill and sell octopus? I'm really confused on how exactly that came about, but there it is. Next is an octopus cooking and selling competition... There might have also been a bit on Mitsuhide's background and why she's so desperate to become Nobuna's closest adviser.

Mitsuhide managed to get all the best ingredients from her merchant associate guy (I'm just going to call him the sleazy merchant) and her preparations and cooking basically goes perfectly. MC, however, has problems. First the wood for the fire is wet, and when Goemon tries to overcome it with one of her bombs, it gets too much. Then the oil added is too much, the whole thing is a disaster. In the end though, the MC decides to salvage the situation another way. Instead of frying it as is traditional, he'll instead deep fry it and cover it with a certain sauce (I think he was trying for takoyaki? I'm not familiar enough with it to be sure though). In the end, although his products don't look all that great, everyone loved the taste. Mitsuhide, on the other hand, had some products that looked fairly nice, but tasted absolutely horrible.

Through some trickery on the part of Mr. Sleazy merchant, however, Mitsuhide actually won the competition in terms of revenue generated that was presented to Nobuna (I think he played some really unfair tricks for that, but Mitsuhide didn't actually know about his actions until after the fact). While Mitsuhide did win, Nobuna was really hesitant to send the MC away (partly due to the unfairness, partly because she doesn't want him to go). While she was hesitating though, the MC decided to be the bigger man and just admit his loss and go even if it was unfair. When Nobuna hears of this though, she immediately goes after him.

It's revealed, however, that the MC was intercepted and captured by an assassin/ninja who was paid to kill Nobuna. His plan is to use the MC to lure Nobuna close and then snipe her (he's apparently an accomplished marksman). While the MC was helplessly bound, Nobuna was getting closer to her imminent death. Cue scene skip.

Back in Kyoto, some new force invades, lead by someone called Matsumae. She invades and her forces poured into the city. Mitsuhide was trying desperately to defend, but she didn't have enough troops. Matsumae was also some kind of magic user (the tradition is western based rather than Omyoji, which is Japan based), and she and Hanbei had a match. There was also some exchanges between the two about why Hanbei follows Nobuna despite her reputation as anti-religion in there. In the end, I think Hanbei got overwhelmed, but I'm not sure about that... Matsumae fought Mitsuhide next, and revealed that she sent a ninja to intercept and kill Nobuna. Hearing this, Mitsuhide had a BSOD moment, and was about to die when...

Big damn hero time, MC to the rescue. He reveals that Inuchiyo followed Nobuna and rescued them from the assassination attempt and eventually knocks Mitsuhide out of her BSOD and pushes Matsumae. Nobuna herself was leading the troops to try to push Matsumae's forces out, but they were still outnumbered since there was no time to get reinforcements from Mino.

Big damn heroes moment, take two. This time it's Francis with a host of Christian converts. With that, they finally had the numbers to win the battle. Matsumae surrendered and revealed that the whole thing was to test whether Nobuna would make a worthy master for her. Matsumae lost wholeheartedly and pledged allegiance to Nobuna, who accepted. Nobuna also decided to waive the penalty of sending the MC to Gifu, using the excuse of his accomplishment in getting the Christians to side with her and saved all their asses.

Next, Nobuna meets with Francis. Francis basically declares that she loves the country of Japan, she doesn't plan on going back to Portugal, and her purpose here is to tell Nobuna (or anyone with power and is willing to listen really) that the European powers may one day try to do to Japan what they did to the Aztec and Incan Empires, and although Japan's people are smart and strong, Japan itself lack vital resources such as gunpowder. Nobuna acknowledged her and pretty much accepted the presence of Christianity in Japan. When Francis expressed surprise due to Nobuna's anti-religion reputation, Nobuna's response was that what she hated were the people who used religion for the sake of wielding political influence for their own wants, but Francis isn't like that. She ends with "If your church doesn't lead this country to ruin, if your church will help make this country a better place, then spread your word across the world as you like! If you don't have enough money, come look me up".

Next I think there's some politics bit where they had do appear in front of some head miko figure along with other guy (I'm going to call him corrupt official, and he's also apparently the one who enticed Matsumae to attack Kyoto and kill Nobuna) in order to get Imagawa officially made Shogun. The corrupt official was against it and was rather hostile to Nobuna taking power. The priestess spoke out though: "I don't know a thing about Nobuna, but that guy next to her (MC) is a good person". Turns out that the priestess has the power to see the thoughts of someone with a touch and she's actually that little girl way early that the MC played with (she touched him then). Imagawa ends up getting established as shogun and the 120k koku gather being split: 20k goes to Imagawa as salary and the rest to Nobuna for government use. The Miko ends the audience with this little message out loud: "But that guy is also really perverted, so be careful Oda".

That, I think, covers chapters 1-6. I'll do the last chapter in an hour or so when I get home.

Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait! So Akechi is Deredere in Vol.2 and arch-enemy (of the psycho underclassmen variety..) in Vol. 3? The hell happened there?