Filling in some time during the pandemic

The accursed year of 2020 was a lot of things to people and only a few of those things were good. I recall searching for something to occupy my time while trapped in the dungeon and going back to that Looper article, I thought about looking for a review for a certain anime I’d definitely not heard of prior to reading it: House of Five Leaves, known in Japanese as Sarai-ya Goyou. Created by Natsume Ono.

Set during the Edo period, it’s about a samurai warrior named Akitsu Masanosuke who very much has the skills of a seasoned warrior, but his timid demeanor loses him a client. The perfect samurai is meant to be intimidating, tough, and unflinching and this guy is shy, unassuming, and nervous. Sort of like Season 1 Mob.

Masanosuke doesn’t really meet the expectations or idea of a warrior even for the time period, which is the point of the series. It takes all the tropes associated with most samurai media and flips them on their head while also grounding the Edo period into reality. One could reasonably put two and two together based on what they know about the Tokugawa period and the Sakoku policy that a class of people defined by war in a time where there aren’t any wars anymore makes for a band of money-hungry and utterly reckless scoundrels… for the most part.

In reality, most samurai were just as diabolically malicious as the enemies they claimed to defeat in combat. Just like medieval knights, both of these warriors have a lot of stories real and mythical surrounding them.

This doesn’t reflect either class as a whole as lots of knights and samurai did have human decency and protect the weak as servants of the people, but being of nobility in Europe and Japan respectively, it meant that there was a lot of power shared by a diverse group of people of different thoughts and intentions. Focusing on Japan, some samurai were excellent and deserving of their position, others were fine with just the bare minimum of simply being there and the rest were heinously dangerous criminals abusing their positions for personal gain. Yeah, there’s no shortage of all three of these the world over; it’s the same old song no matter where you go. And I like that. It reminds you that there’s a difference between being something and being able to do something on a moral level.

So House of Five Leaves is generally about a nervous man who’s too gentle to throw the first punch, or in this case, swing the blade first. Plot wise, he finds himself in with the wrong crowd. Part of the downside of being gentle is not having the spine to put your foot down, which is how Masanosuke finds himself embedded with a group of criminals, functionally early inductees of what we now know as the Yakuza.

It’s hard to say when and how the Yakuza started, but based on my description of the Edo period making for restless ronin eager for battle some theories suggest that this is the most likely case for how the Yakuza morphed over centuries to become recognized as an organized crime group in Japan. For Masanosuke, these criminals specialize in theft and call themselves the Five Leaves. Their enigmatic leader, Yaichi, offers him the position of bodyguard which he reluctantly agrees to.

Again, he has the skills of a samurai, but doesn’t have the intimidation reflective of most other warriors in the Edo period. A worse person would jump at the offer and use whatever excuse there is to cut anyone in two. That said, there’s more to the series than just Masanosuke’s navigating this group of thieves and savages he just said yes to out of desperation.

Yaichi is one of the more interesting characters in the story. He keeps his personal history very close to his chest, playing things off as though he’s simply living life to the fullest. Other members of his gang or known associates who have some kind of connection to him or the gang share their own stories. An ex-thief named Matsukichi works as a beauty ornament manufacturer by day and a spymaster by night, contributing to the beauty of the women while also listening in on the Five Leaves’ potential targets. A tavern owner named Umezo who walked in the same sandals as the others but requested retirement from that lifestyle for safety’s sake, which was granted surprisingly enough. If you know a thing or two about organized crime groups, cults, secret societies, etc., they rarely let you go without a type of debt to pay…

…but in this case (slight spoiler), the loss of his skills weren’t gonna change how the gang operated. He also had a young family to put ahead of himself. Finally, there’s a geisha named Otake who was made to work off a large debt by way of entertainment (as was the standard practice/purpose of a geisha at the time) until Yaichi intervened financially.

Only a 1-cour anime series, it takes you into their eyes and what they go up against. The struggles, the nuances, the desires expressed; this was the anime that inspired my first accursed blog back in 2021… before it cha-cha slid off a cliff. I don’t want to link to that blog anymore; I’m trying to put it behind me, but it keeps coming back and I don’t even think it was a good showcase of my writing. But at least it inspired me to start this one which I’m more proud of.

Back to Five Leaf Clover Gang: my search for a review and recommendation on YouTube led to a playlist with all the episodes on it. People are really getting around YouTube’s copyright strike hammer to get some classics onto the platform like Azumanga Daioh and Lucky☆Star. There exists one spoiler free review on YouTube from over nine years ago following the trends that I’ve been going with so far with anime, awesome reception s[DIO wrryyyy]t sales.

Keep in mind that this isn’t an action-heavy series, at least the anime isn’t. Don’t go in expecting Masanosuke to swing a sword all the time, because he’s not that kind of guy. He wasn’t written to be that kind of guy and I think it’s an advantage the series has over its contemporaries and progenitors. I like to think of it as the kind of anime that explores the issues people face daily, even if it’s set in the Edo period and if you choose to give it a watch as well, you think so too. The link is up above. Happy watching!