Heike Monogatari’s TV finale contained just its second substantial portrayal of armed conflict, following episode 5’s Battle of Uji Bridge. One might think it a bit strange that a military epic would be so light on big battle scenes, but then, Heike Monogatari was never really about action or strategy. It was about family – a family doomed to extinction by its patriarch’s pride, but which still experienced closeness during its brief time on earth. It was about fate, and one girl’s journey to accept that although she could see it, she could not change it. It was about death, and the ways that humanity grapples with its inevitability: succession, spirituality, storytelling. It was a series with some structural problems, but which occasionally rose above those problems to deliver transcendent moments, with the greatest moment of all arriving during its final minutes.
It was a fine animated series – one of my favorites of the year. But before we discuss how fine or favorable it was, we’ve got to talk about how mightily it struggled to depict naval combat.
