Sanada 10 - The End of the Beginning... Actually, Just "The End" (Ep10-12)

The final episodes of Sanada 10 bring the series to a close... sort of. In fact, there are so many loose ends that it's clear the creators were planning a second season. But it never happened, so the show just stops in media res. Perhaps that's why the show was never completely fansubbed: it was very dense, requiring a lot of research and effort, and it ended with kind of a damp squib.

This set of episode includes the required Trough of Despair™ for the protagonists. Tokugawa Ieyasu is named First Genji and then Shogun, achieving the pinnacle of power. Further, he marries his granddaughter to the Toyotomi heir, apparently co-opting the only remaining serious opposition. Yukimura is disheartened and stops plotting. Instead, he takes Princess Kiyo as his concubine. (He's 37, she's 16.) Only a timely visit from Kakei Juzo, bringing rumors of the long-lost treasure of the Takeda clan, resuscitates his resolve. (Sasuke speculates that bedding Kiyo was actually the decisive factor.) He sends Sasuke, Saizo, and Seikai out chasing clues to the treasure, starting with the former Sanada homeland around Ueda. After further adventures, and a last ninja battle, the series ends, but not before the tenth and last member of the Sanada 10 surfaces in the last 30 seconds.

The whole show only covers four years, starting with the Battle of Sekigahara. Would the second season have covered the next twelve, culminating in Yukimura's heroic death at the Siege of Osaka? Or would the show have focused on the treasure quest, allowing our heroes plenty of adventures without ending in tragedy? Japan Wikipedia says that the second season was to be called "Osaka Chapter." That's the only clue.

There aren't many new characters in these three episodes:

• Sugo Takayuki (Ideura Morikiyo, leader of the Sanada ninja under Sanada Nobuyuki) played Nagakura Shinpachi in Golden Kamuy, Wanyuudou in the Hell Girl franchise, Tohru's father in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, Sweyn in Vinland Saga, and Okita Juzou in the recent Yamato series.
• Ootsuka Houchu (Yuri Kamanovski, the tenth Sanada brave) played Lt. Tsurumi in Golden Kamuy, Abuto in Gintama, Murai in the Legend of the Galactic Heroes reboot, Yazan in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Talhand in Mushuko Tenshi, and the excitable announcer in Yawara!. He also appeared in Dallos, an Orphan release.

The casting of a well-known voice actor in a role that has two lines in the last thirty seconds of the show points again to the never-made second season. The concluding title is, "The legend of the Sanada Ten begins here." And it ends there too.

These three episodes were made possible by the efforts of a new translator, purpleparrotkin. He did a lot of research to elucidate the esoteric historical details that dot the episodes. Some translation notes:

• Shugendo is an important Kami-Buddha combinatory sect that blends pre-Buddhist mountain worship, Kannabi Shinko (the idea that mountains are the home of the dead and of agricultural spirits), shamanistic beliefs, animism, ascetic practices, Chinese Yin-Yang mysticism and Taoist magic, and the rituals and spells of Esoteric (Tantric) Buddhism in the hope of achieving magical skills, medical powers, and long life.
• Hakusan Gongen is the syncretic Shinto-Buddhist deity of Mount Haru, once a great Shugendo center. Hakusan Gongen is an avatar of the Eleven-Headed Kannon, and also a representation of the Shinto creator god Izanami.
• Ushiwakamaru is another name for Minamoto no Yoshitsune, the leader of the Genji in the Genpei War.
  

ninjacloud timed. I edited and typeset. Nemesis and Uchuu QCed. The raws were encoded from R2J ISOs by an anonymous friend on BakaBT. The complicated genealogy chart is episode 10 is not typeset; no one was willing to translate all the names. There's no point, really. The exercise purported to show that Tokugawa Ieyasu was a descendant of the Genji clan, but as Ieyasu himself commented, lineage didn't really matter; accomplishments did. Further, Ieyasu claimed that connection many years earlier, in 1567, and it was acknowledged by an Imperial order. I guess it was intended to reinforce Ieyasu's methodical and thorough approach to gaining power, but it just wastes running time.

There will be a batch torrent in a few days, to correct some issues in the early episodes. Meanwhile, you can get the concluding episodes from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.