Story: 6/10
By all means the shows weakest part, but its actually not that bad at all. There are a lot of plot holes and alot of things are never explained so they can never be really understood. As the page tells you, its a quite unique mixture of action, historical, mecha and sci-fi. And it aslo magic, super power, fantasy and romance in that mix. A mix at least I never seen before in anime. As expexted it gets messy sometimes, but shore not lets you down in the entertainment aera. This is a story of two worlds (east star and west star) thats are connected by forces that are never really explained, but you can clearly see a influence of western historia (west star) and eastern historia (east star). On the west star we have Europen historical personas as Jeanne d´Arc, Di Vinci, King Arthur and Julius Ceasar to mention some. On the eastern star you can also clearly see historical Japanese influences, with samurai clans, tea cermonices and traditional clothing. But there the historical part ends. Because in both world wars are held with giant mecha suits, and the most powerful worries carries a"secret treasure" which amplifies their power in some elemental way (wind, fire, earth etc.). The basic storyline is that Jeanne d´Arc tries to find out if Nobunaga is the "Savior King" or not, and a power struggle first internally on the east star, and then later between the eatsern star and the western star. A red thread in the story is that in each episode Di Vinci lets someone (often Jeanne) to draw a tarotcard, and he explains the diffirent meanings of that card. The card is always directed to some of the characters (which is where you come in to guess whom its diredted to), and the character in question will for fill that during the epsiode. Without spoiling anything I can say that the end of the show suprised me alot and I did not see that coming, which was refreshing and made me like the show more.
Art: 9/10
If the story is "Nobunagas the fools" weakest part, the art and animation is it strongest part. As expected of studio Satelight, the animation and art is great. As usual it has its flaws, but character designs, colours and backgrounds are beautiful and colourful. Motions are fluid and smooth, and the CG mecha fights are pretty good as well.
Sound: 7/10
The music and sound are by no means outstanding, but its absolutly above average. The music is mostly intrumental towards the classical, which suits the mood and diffirent settings in the show good. I liked the first opening song quite a bit, but the second one never really got to me. I watched the dubbed version and the voice actors were not magical but they did there job well, and had manage to capture the nature of the characters good as well.
Characters: 7/10
Overall there where no major character developments, but at least you got to know the main and supporting cast well enough to give the story life and actions motivated.
First out we have one of our MC´s Nobunaga. He is the heir to the Oda clan, and is in no way espacially eager to take up on the responsabilites that comes with it. He can many times come out as a jerk but at least he is honest. Nobunaga is a very stong willed person, who always do things his way - no matter what. He can seem pretty care free and foolish, but do have deeper feelings and if his close ones needs him he will cross worlds to save them. As expected from a MC he has some character development, there he gets to terms with who he is and what his purpose is.
Jeanne d´Arc/Ramarou - Had more potentail then was exicuted in the show, but by no means a bad or boring character. She has visions of future events, ever since she was a child. In classical historical anda she was seen as demon who only brought unfurtiune to others. That made her to not trust herself, which she has deal with under many occasions during the show. Her strongest belives are that Nobunaga is the "Savior King", who will save both world from distruction - but even those belives are put to question.
Di Vinci - Can be seen as your guide in this malstream of generes and events. He is the observer - following the events with a kind of distached facination. He is the one with the tarotcards, with his actions and words pulling the story forward without being directly in the actual events.
And definitely worth mentioning is Himiko, Ichihime, Ceasar and Mitsuhide, who all are contributing to the story. They all have their own peronalities, wills and diseres that will contribute to that the plot is moving forward, sometimes in very drastic ways.
Enjoyment: 8/10
I actually really enjoyed myself watching this show. You never really know what next episode would go, which made it intresting to watch for me. Yes, sometimes I was pretty confused, and asked myself - what the hell did just happened and why? But it was never boring and managed to entertain me alot.
Overall: 7/10
It was most definitley worth my time. Yes, the plot wasnt that outstanding and sometime confusing (which normally goes against my standards of a good anime), but it never failed to entertain me. The great animation and art was clearly a huge plus. I would definitley recommend "Nobunaga the fool" to you who want to see something totally different and dont mind unique mixture of geners.
