Hey everybody, I recently read through Red River recently & I wanna talk about it. I’m not gonna really take an analytical approach to this series that I would normally try to take with a review, rather I just wanna share some thoughts on this series and hopefully you’ll be convinced to read it.

Red River is a shoujo classic, it’s about this girl in (at the time) modern day Japan named Yuri. She gets sucked through a water hole through some magic by the Queen Nakia in an attempt to have her blood used to put her son Prince Juda on the throne. It’s basically Fushigi Yugi/Inuyasha if the series turned into a war drama. The crux of the narrative is that Prince Kail is trying to lead the nation of Babylonian towards more peaceful times whilst trying to keep Yuri safe from Nakia’s misdeeds.

What really does it for me more than anything in this story is its characters. The overarching narrative of Red River is quite engaging for me, as you start learning more about this ancient african world, meet all these characters, and watch everything unfold. However Red River shines in its characterization, and character writing. Yuri is one of the most likable protagonists in a manga for me, She’s caring, she’s smart, she’s (mostly) just as capable as the others so it never feels like Yuri is useless, she’s a great all rounder. She does admittedly make a few dumb decisions at certain points in the story but her kindness and caring nature towards those around her made her a favorite character for me. Kail is someone who wants best for his people and his friends, although he does start off on a bad foot for me over something I’ll get to later on in this review. Queen Nakia is a bastard but I love her, she’s a cunning villain always 1 step ahead of our heroes. There truly is no such thing as a low Nakia won’t sink to and she feels extremely threatening at all times, more so than most manga villains I find. The way she fails in the end is extremely satisfying too. The other key players in this story are incredible too, everyone gets memorable moments. The one character in this series I can’t say I’m a fan of is usher Ramses. While I do somewhat commend what the story attempts to do later on, trying to redeem him somewhat, fleshing him out, giving us a taste of what’s below the surface, basically being the other side of the same coin as Kail. It doesn’t work for me entirely because of how awful he is towards Yuri throughout most of the story, I’ll touch upon some of my gripes later on. I love Red River’s characters, I think the story does a great job fleshing them all out, giving everybody moments to shine, and they’re thoroughly memorable throughout the story.

The artwork in this manga is phenomenal, anything less is underselling it. Red River has some of the most beautiful compositions of any manga I’ve ever seen. Its characters, stylish. The fashion, captures that time period so damn well, the landscapes, they’re gorgeous. Red River also has incredible paneling, I found this manga very easy to read and it just has a nice flow to it. I never found something difficult to make out, have to strain my eyes looking at panels to try and figure out what was happening. I just love how this manga is illustrated, Chie Shinohara is an incredible artist.

Now onto the achilles hill of this manga. It can be extremely uncomfortable for me at certain points during the story. Yuri starts the series at 15 and Kail is in his early 20s, that isn’t too egregious in and of itself, but where this rubs me the wrong way to put it nicely is that Kail forces himself on Yuri early on in the story despite Yuri very much not consenting to it or even enjoying it. He doesn’t necessarily violate her or SA’s her but it’s very uncomfortable. Even more uncomfortable is that Yuri enters a serious relationship with Kail before she’s 18 (but above 15 because Red River has a passage of time thing). It’s just really off-putting to me, like I get that Kail reminds her of her boyfriend back in Japan and that as Yuri spends more time with Kail she develops genuine feelings for him, coupled with the fact that this manga takes place in ancient egypt and during that time period stuff like this was common. However I still can’t help but feel kinda gross over this. That’s nothing compared to Ramses though, I just kinda hate Ramses, not even “I like him as a villain” I just hate Ramses. This is because once Ramses learns of Yuri as Ishtar and sees what she’s capable of, he always tries to steal her away from Kail and gets very close to, if not outright violating her. If I thought the stuff with Kail near the beginning of the narrative could be gross and off putting, the stuff with Ramses is worse than the stuff with Kail. That’s why when the story tries to reform Ramses and gives us more of his story, while I can commend attempting something like that, it just doesn’t really work for me in the way I think Chie Shinohara wanted it to work.

(RE:edit) In conclusion, despite some of my major gripes, Red River was a manga that ended up captivating me and getting me invested in a long time, check it out