To me, Hanzo and Enju’s story is not a romance.
And I’ll be upfront. I didn’t start enjoying Hanzo and Enju’s relationship until I realized it was essentially a mentor/mentee type of story.
You know the trope:
Yoda & Luke Skywalker
Mr. Miyagi & Daniel
Mickey Goldmill & Rocky
Herb Brooks & the entire 1980 U.S. Men’s Olympic Hockey Team
Philoctetes & Hercules
Hanzo & Enju
You get the picture.
And once I realized this, I was actually invested in this story…until Chapter 11.
Damn you, Chapter 11.
That is when the narrative and Enju’s character arc fell apart.
And why, do you ask?
Let’s discuss!
As always, character and plot analysis and spoilers after the cut!
I can sum up in thirty-three words why Hanzo and Enju’s relationship isn’t a romance:
Enju had to earn Hanzo’s respect by being and becoming more like him before he would bother lowering himself to acknowledge that she was worth this time to see as a human being.
There. That’s it.
This dynamic is extremely one-sided and negates Enju’s growth as an individual person. Romance can’t flourish when someone isn’t being valued for who they are, and for the majority of this route, the whole narrative focused on how Enju had to become more like a shinobi (i.e., Hanzo) for him to notice her and fall in love with her.
And, to me, this was the dynamic between Enju and Hanzo up until Chapter 12…the last chapter of the route.
There was minor character development for Hanzo, where he comes to feel like he doesn’t want to murder for Enju’s sake.
And boy, did those feelings nearly screw him and Enju over in Chapters 11 and 12.
I never believed this “character development” because we spent very little time in Hanzo’s internal perspective. And our man is so silent, stoic, and serious with Enju, she (and by extension the reader) never sees his romantic feelings towards her grow and change.
I mean, yes:
- Hanzo (VA: Kenjiro Tsuda) tells his mentee to strip off her wet layers (they are both in their underwear) so she doesn’t get hypothermia and die. He then holds her close so she can warm up and doesn’t die.
- Hanzo has a smidgen of recognition of Enju’s interests and wants to show her a garden because he discovers that she likes flowers.
- It’s not until Enju is playfully abducted by Goemon that we see that Hanzo has really any sense of emotional attachment to Enju (Chapter 10). He decides to go after them and “save” Enju from Goemon.
But like, aren’t all these examples part of his shinobi job? I mean, it’s his job to keep her alive and protected from abductions.
So, how do we know he actually romantically loves her, when going after her is mostly motivated by his sense of career responsibility? And,I mean, what good mentor wouldn’t be concerned about his mentee’s well-being?
None of these “romantic” gestures made an impact on me because these are all things a mentor with common decency and a smidgen of emotional attachment towards his mentee would do. It’s like Nightshade’s writers are equating learning to treat someone with basic human decency and consideration as the same as developing romantic feelings.
Um. No.
I see this as Hanzo learning to treat someone with basic human decency and consideration. This is the basis of human interaction, something he should be learning to do with everyone he interacts with. Once Hanzo has learned to treat everyone with basic human decency, then he can start learning what it means to have those special feelings for one particular person.
To me, this type of platonic relationship dynamic is the foundation of the mentor/mentee story trope.
The mentor (in this case, Hanzo) has to guide and teach the mentee (in this case, Enju) the skills, lessons, and how to survive to become successful in what the mentee wants to accomplish.
Enju, the mentee, wants to stay alive by using her own shinobi abilities and not having to rely on others to protect her all the time. Unfortunately, for her, her shinobi abilities are underdeveloped and not up to par to successfully defend herself from the shinobi groups coming after her.
Enju also has the internal conflict of whether or not she can kill someone to protect her own life. This mindset is a problem, considering a shinobi’s job is to kill anyone or anything that their master orders them to kill. So, can she even be a successful shinobi?
Enter our mentor: Hanzo. Our stoic, sexy shinobi has serious work-life balance issues. He is the consummate shinobi. Stubborn, taciturn, and serious to a fault, being a shinobi is his life’s work. It’s all he focuses on, and he has no problem killing at will. So, while he’s kind of a bore, he is very, very, very good at his job.
This is basically a business arrangement:
“Hey, (Jedi Master), (Karate Master), (Boxing Trainer), (Hockey Coach), (Hero Maker), (Veteran Shinobi), could you please teach me your skills and knowledge, so I can become more like you and accomplish what I want?”
“Well, (Young Padawan), (Young Kid), (Wandering Boxer), (Entitled Hockey Boys), (Gangly Teenager), (Rookie Shinobi), you are weak and have much to learn. But if you listen and follow my guidance, you will reach great heights.”
And, hey, this dynamic works great in sports, action, or adventure movies! The main relationship dynamic between the mentor and mentee characters is the older, wiser, usually more grizzled mentor helping the mentee become a better version of themselves in one particular way.
In many ways, the relationship between the mentor and mentee is rather narrowly defined. Yes, the mentor may help the younger mentee mature in other areas of their lives, but their main focus is helping the mentee prepare in whatever way the mentee needs to overcome their obstacle.
This is how the trope works…and it’s a timeless classic for a reason.
Nightshade’s writers tried to combine this very narrowly defined mentor/mentee relationship with a romantic relationship, which I think was a stretch to begin with.
But, to me, the real problem is that the writers did not commit to how the mentee’s story arc has to end to give the reader a satisfying ending.
And, to me, nothing encapsulates my thoughts better than Chapter 11.
Damn you, Chapter 11.
So, in the common route, Enju gets framed for the murder of the emperor. In a bid for control and influence over the deceased emperor’s son, powerful men, called the Five Elders, all send out their shinobi groups to kill the “murderer of the emperor.”
Enju is stuck in a really tough spot.
One of the elders, Tokugawa, knows this is a setup and sends his top shinobi, Hanzo, to protect Enju. And Hanzo, being the shinobi puppet that he is, immediately follows his master’s orders.
Chapters 5 through 10 deal with Enju coming to terms with her situation and getting to the point where she admits that she wants to live, while still debating whether she could actually kill her friends to survive. Yet, this whole time, she’s also constantly bemoaning how she is useless to Hanzo in the fight for her survival.
So, Enju, on her own, begins training to become stronger. Hanzo, recognizing the spark of survival in Enju’s eyes, gives her advice and trains her on how to become a stronger shinobi. Through grit, determination, and the fact that she could die if she fails, Enju becomes a faster and more efficient shinobi. But she still doesn’t know if she could use her developing skills to kill to “live” when the time comes.
If it sounds like Enju is suffering from cognitive dissonance…it’s because she is.
And this creates an unsolvable tension in Enju’s character arc.
All this training she’s putting herself through, all this growth, will she be able to do what it actually takes to survive…like murder her friends in cold blood?
No.
No, she cannot.
In Chapter 11, it is discovered that Enju’s friends, the Koga shinobi, have been hired to kill her. Kuroyuki and Gekkamaru show up and say they are going to fight the Koga shinobi for Enju.
Because she still can’t do it.
Well, afterwards, the Koga shinobi show up to kill Enju.
We later learn (Chapter 12) that Gekkamaru and Kuroyuki didn’t die. They just disappeared for a while…which is suspiciously convenient for the story. Like, how would Gekkamaru and Kuroyuki allow the Koga shinobi go after Enju while they were still alive? Hmmm?
Enju proceeds to use all her new abilities to continually run away and evade the Koga, while Hanzo takes on Chojiro. Hanzo is now at a complete disadvantage because he doesn’t want to kill for Enju’s sake.
And what happens…?
BECAUSE ENJU REFUSES TO GO FOR THE KILL ON HER FRIENDS, SHE HAS TO ONCE AGAIN RELY ON HANZO TO SAVE HER! HANZO TAKES OUT THREE OF THE FOUR SHINOBI AND IS WOUNDED IN THE PROCESS!
No Koga shinobi were murdered in the process of this action sequence. So, once they regain consciousness, they will just continue to hunt down Enju and Hanzo until they are successful at their mission.
So, that’s the plan? Enju and Hanzo are going to just keep having the same vicious fights until the Koga are successful in murdering Enju, or they die on their own accord?
But don’t worry. There is a twist! Guess who shows up? Enju’s rat bastard father.
After some chatting and emotional blackmail, her father admits that he is going to finish her off. Only the one shinobi that Enju made unconscious wakes up! OH NO! And in defending Enju from the NOT DEAD shinobi, Hanzo is wounded, this time severely, in the back.
Huh. Maybe not killing the brainwashed shinobi murderers out to murder you, wasn’t a good idea? Please, make this narrative trainwreck end!
Anyways, we get the traditional villain monologue that catalogs her father’s many horrible and malicious deeds.
Which gets Enju angry enough at her rat bastard father that she decides to run forward and stab her rat bastard father in the most anticlimactic and pedestrian way possible.
Enju needed to constantly train with Hanzo to do this? Run straight ahead and stab someone? What kind of ineffectual shinobi training was Chojiro giving Enju for all these years that this is Enju’s big character defining moment? I mean, I feel like Enju should have been capable of running straight ahead and stabbing someone without all this extra training she put herself through.
And her father immediately falls dead. Like a bag of rotten potatoes.
Okay.
If this resolution feels like a cop out…it’s because it is.
Enju is training the entire damn time so she can “live.” Yet, when she has to put that training to use, she still can’t do it. She decides she wants to live, yet she can’t do the thing that will allow her to do so.
The Koga shinobi are brainwashed, radicalized murderers. They are not going to stop pursuing Enju. Yet, Enju can’t kill them, so she and Hanzo can live.
If the whole point of the narrative is Enju deciding she wants to live using her shinobi skills, then this ending doesn’t make any sense…and why?
The writers tried to have two things happen at once:
- They wanted Hanzo to train Enju to become better at her shinobi skills, so she could use them to “live.”
- They also wanted Hanzo and Enju to hold to this principle of not murdering, yet still surviving.
THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE GIVEN THE PARAMETERS OF THIS STORY!
The writers needed to pick a character arc: either Enju becomes a badass shinobi, who is willing to murder to live, or she holds on to her value of human life.
SHE CAN’T DO BOTH.
This is why Enju’s Chapter 11 confrontation with the Koga is so underwhelming. The writers had to betray the natural character arc resolution they had been building towards the entire route.
In Chapter 11, Gekkamaru and Kuroyuki presumably died to protect her, and Hanzo was badly injured protecting her.
In this late chapter, Enju is still in the same place she was at in the beginning of Hanzo’s route! Even after all her training and growth, Enju was still relying on others to do the shinobi “dirty” work of fighting to the death.
The readers spent chapters and hours of our lives watching Enju bemoan her uselessness and then train, yet in this final confrontation that matters for her character arc, she was still essentially useless.
SO, WHAT WAS THE POINT?
It’s not until Hanzo gets himself injured, because Enju still can’t kill her friends, and her horrible father shows up, that Enju finally kills someone.
Yet, to phrase it like a Jedi, Enju had to use the dark side to commit the murder. She had to give in to her anger and her hatred toward her father to finally give herself permission to end her father’s life. She had to allow herself to believe that her father “did not have a human heart.” She had to dehumanize him before she allowed herself to believe that he deserved to die by her hand.
Enju did not kill like a shinobi. She killed because of how much she hated her father, not because she was protecting her life the way a calm, collected, detached shinobi would.
Enju’s journey to live by using her shinobi skills went absolutely nowhere because ultimately, she was incapable of doing the thing that shinobis are required to do to survive: use their shinobi skills to kill at will, friend or foe, in a composed, complacent, detached manner.
This is how a shinobi survives, y’all, when fighting another shinobi! They have to be effective at good old-fashioned composed, complacent, detached murder!
Sigh.
This whole route felt like an exercise in futility.
Instead of focusing on, well, I don’t know, romance, the reader has to sit through chapters of Enju using her uselessness to motivate her to train to become a young woman who, ultimately, learns that it’s anger and hatred that make it okay to murder.
To make this narrative pay off at the end, the writers needed to have Enju use her newly developed skills to murder her friends, so she could live, or have her dad whip out some crazy shinobi skills so she could use her new skills to defeat him, so she could live.
But that didn’t happen.
And, to me, this ending happened because the writers felt like they had to protect Enju’s character. In the end, the writers weren’t willing to make their heroine a cold-blooded murderer who could kill her friends to protect herself and live.
So, in other words, this entire route was a red herring.
Enju was never going to become a true shinobi who learned how to use her skills to protect her life and survive.
Haha. Joke’s on me.
-Final Thoughts-
Hanzo’s a really hard character for me to grade. As a romantic lead, he didn’t work for me. I’m pretty sure Hanzo doesn’t even know what being in a romantic relationship really means (though the man does enjoy kissing). But as a mentor-type character, I enjoyed him tremendously! If I were ever to be in Enju’s situation and I had to learn shinobi skills, this would be the man I’d want instructing me! So, while I enjoyed his character, this is supposed to be an otome game. He’s supposed to be the romantic hero in his route, which, for me, he failed at. So, he’s going to balance out to average.
This route was so annoying! I mean, I was into it until Chapter 11! And then everything that could have possibly gone wrong narratively did. The writers chose to have scant romance for Enju to train as a shinobi, but then they didn’t actually commit to where the ending should have gone.
I didn’t feel the romance between Enju and Hanzo. I didn’t see Enju survive using her newly developed shinobi skills.
So, what the hell was the point?
Otomes as Novels 