There are generally two kinds of anime that are difficult to follow. The first is the likes of classics such as Texhnolyze or Serial experiments Lain, where the show was intentionally made convoluted by the authors in order to leave interpretation up to the viewer. These are shows that are purposefully made with the assumption that the viewer must decipher the plot for a philosophical reason.
The second type are shows that are convoluted not in order to convey anything special, but because the writers of the show have absolutely no idea what they are doing and couldn't write a good story to save their pathetic behinds.
This anime is unfortunately the second type. It's actually kinda sad, because when watching it you can really see that the POTENTIAL for a good show is there, but it just isn't well written enough in any respect to be enjoyable. I found myself watching it to the end, hoping it would eventually get its act together, but it just never did.
The problem here is this anime tried tossing far too many concepts into the story without paying attention to the quality of any of them. There is a hint of romance, but it is never well done enough to be interesting. There are many characters that seem engaging at first, but are never fleshed out enough or developed to grab your attention. More than half the characters motives for their involvement in the overall story are never even explained. The plot itself is a mess, going through far too many changes with never enough details for any of them to matter. There is no sense of wonder or suspense whatsoever. It throws in historical references, but all of them turned out to be excuses for poor writing and few of them were accurate. The action scenes are decent, but because it's hard to care about the overarching plot behind them they aren't interesting either.
Nobunaga the Fool is like the Action-52 of anime. Tons of genres, tons of ideas, but none of them well done.
