[DeepL Translation - needs review] Volume 1 Introduction: The time is Sengoku (Warring States Period). The time was the Warring States period, and there was a group of pirates who made their name known in the turbulent times. The Murakami pirates. Takeyoshi Murakami, the head of the Murakami Pirates, was a strong and powerful man with his roots in the islands of the Seto Inland Sea. His daughter, Kyo, inherited his bravery and roughness. She was an ugly woman who spent her days working as a ...
I liked the historical plot, I liked the titular character (and the others as well), so it should be an easy win, right? Wrong.
The pacing is hell.
For the first half, anything that happens is interrupted for the author to give some sources as for why it happened and why it probably happened that way. Picture this: two characters, A and B, are talking. A says “hey, B”. The author immediately interrupts to give some background on A, including some notes from the diary of character C, and then goes on to explain that C would be familiar with A due to meeting him, as written in character D’s history of C’s family or something. Back to A and B, B is not happy about meeting A. Cut to an explanation of the dynamics between their respective families and why B would be annoyed. And it just goes on. Overall, it feels like the author is trying to show us that it’s all super realistic, the best approximation of event he can come up with.
Then, we get the titular 村上海賊の娘, vinyl scratch, the author admits that “well, as far as we know she didn’t exist, there’s just that one family tree that mentions a daughter, contradicting other sources, and I’m going to extrapolate wildly based on that one untrustworthy source”. Basically, from there on, any historical character still gets the “and here’s why he would use those words in that order” treatment, breaking flow, while she gets “source: I made it the eff up”. Not only does it pad the book like crazy (not much happens in that one book, in the end), it doesn’t even help with the suspension of disbelief. I did learn some history about 織田信長, the 毛利 family, 顕如 and others, so that’s nice, though.
Note: when the author quotes a source, he leaves it in its original version. It's a good opportunity to practice some Classical Japanese.