In the late 200s, some time after the Jin took control, writer & historian Chen Shou would collect the history of the prior era of civil war into what is now known as Records of the Three Kingdoms, part of what's now called the Twenty-Four Histories of China. Then, sometime in the 14th century, writer & playwright Luo Guanzhong (or, at least, he's the one attributed) took Chen Shou's Records & retold the story of the "Three Kingdoms" in a more dramatic & romanticized fashion, resulting in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the first of what would be considered the six "Great Classical Chinese Novels". Starting at the Yellow Turban Rebellion, Romance focuses primarily on the three warlords who would come to form the titular Three Kingdoms of China: Liu Bei of the Shu Han, Cao Cao of the Cao Wei, & Sun Quan of Eastern Wu. Each of these three warlords had (somewhat) legitimate claims as to why they should be the one to rule over all of China, as Liu Bei was seemingly a blood descendant of Emperor Jin (who ruled from 188-141 BC), & all Liu Bei wanted was to continue the legacy of the Han. Meanwhile, Cao Cao never truly staked a claim over rulership, as he made sure the current Han dynasty was still intact during his conquests & was technically acting on behalf of Emperor Xian, mainly for political reasons. It would be Cao Cao's son, Cao Pi, who actually ended the Han dynasty & established Wei as a kingdom, following his father's death. Finally, Sun Family patriarch Sun Jian had managed to come across the Imperial seal after it was hidden away, which would technically give him power to make official decrees, but through a series of circumstances the seal would eventually wind up with Cao Pi, who used it to legitimize Wei's stance as the "true" successor to the Han. Sun Quan, one of Sun Jian's sons, would initially agree to serve as a vassal of Wei, but eventually broke free after Cao Pi ordered that Quan send his son Sun Deng to the capital as a hostage. Essentially, Liu Bei had the royal lineage, Cao Cao had the Imperial capital (& the Emperor himself), & the Sun Family had the Imperial seal (for a time, at least).
Romance is notable for fictionalizing many aspects of the historical figures & events seen within, like having Liu Bei make an oath of brotherhood with Guan Yu & Zhang Fei in a peach garden (while the three were known to think of each other as brothers in actual history, the peach garden oath in generally agreed to be pure fiction), as well as softening some of the less honorable aspects of the various generals & warlords seen throughout, i.e. romanticization. Romance of the Three Kingdoms remains an all-time classic of an epic novel (around 800,000 words across 120 chapters), and its reach across the world is immeasurable... especially in Japan.
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| Pictured Above: Tenchi wo Kurau, Lord, Ryurouden, Koihime Musou, Ikki Tousen, Yawaraka Sangokushi Tsukisase!! Ryofuko-chan, SD Gundam Sangokuden: Brave Battle Warriors, & Ya Boy Koingming! |
Yeah, despite its immensely Chinese provenance Japan absolutely loves & adores Romance (known there as Sangokushi Engi, i.e. "Popularized" or "Simplified" Records of the Three Kingdoms, though it's generally just referred to there as simply "Sangokushi", superseding Records itself), much like it does with two of its fellow "Greats", Journey to the West/Saiyuki & Water Margin/Suikoden. Because of that there have been numerous interpretations of Romance across anime, manga, & video games, some of which are more straight adaptations (Koei has become especially successful with that), others being more reinterpretations starring some sort of original character (and, yes, that does include isekai-style time travel stories), and others more simply taking specific characters and doing all sorts of wild stuff with them... like turning all of the characters into women (this is one actually rather popular), reincarnating them into modern times (sometimes as women... again, this is rather popular), turning all of the characters into super-deformed Gundams (twice, at that!), or simply just turning some of the characters into villains in otherwise unrelated works. Hell, I recently just reviewed Ya Boy Kongming! for Anime Secret Santa in 2024, which saw Zhuge Liang of Shu reincarnated in modern day Shibuya to become a singer's manager!
However, for 2025 I want to focus specifically on anime, and in particular anime that aim to be (for the most part) straight/"direct" adaptations of the events of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, (mostly) without any sort of wild alterations or reinterpretations, because there actually aren't that many of those out there. In particular, there are five that I plan on covering here throughout the year, and I decided that it'd probably be best to start with a basic introduction, both to simply give the basic set up of the era itself as well as describe which ones I'll be covering & why. I'll be listing them in their order of release here, but I may not necessarily be doing the same when it comes to the order I write about them, over the course of this year. Therefore, we start off with (not really) an anime adaptation of a manga adaptation of the romanticized novel adaptation of the historical records of what really happened... and it's NOT the one you may possibly be thinking of!
From what I can tell, the first "direct" anime adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms was a pair of made-for-TV movies, sometimes also listed as TV specials, that were done by Shin-Ei Animation (of Doraemon & Crayon Shin-chan fame) & produced by Nippon Television/NTV. The first film, simply titled Sangokushi, aired on March 20, 1985 on NTV's Wednesday Road Show, which would usually air notable movies & the like, including Jaws & Star Wars, so there's no doubt that this anime was considered a big deal at the time. Sangokushi would get re-aired in March of 1986 on Friday Road Show, which replaced WRS the prior October & is still running to this day on NTV, in order to get people ready for the second film, Sangokushi II: Soaring Manly Heroes (the kanji "eiyuu/hero" is used, but with furigana for "otoko/man"), which aired on August 22, 1986 on FRS. Though both of these movies credit themselves as being based on Mitsuteru Yokoyama's epic manga adaptation of Romance, which was still running when these first aired (& because of that Hikari Production technically owns some copyright over them), they really aren't from both a visual standpoint & even as an actual adaptation. In terms of what these movies cover, Sangokshi focuses on a small timeframe, specifically the period from the Battle of Changban to the Battle of Red Cliffs, which means that it naturally focuses primarily on Liu Bei's side of things. Sangokushi II, in turn, focuses on Liu Bei's marriage to Lady Sun Ren (a.k.a. Sun Shang Xiang), partially an attempt to keep Shu & Wu on the same side against Wei, & Liu Bei's takeover of Yi Province in 214, which in turns fulfills the plan his tactician Zhuge Liang had of splitting China up into the Three Kingdoms. As we can see, these two movies put the focus on Liu Bei, which will wind up being a common perspective for many adaptations of Romance; makes sense, since his is the most "rise of the underdog" of the three sides.
Next we compare those two TV movies to a trilogy of theatrically-released films. Produced over the course of 10 years with animation by Toei & costing around 1.5 billion yen (10x the 150 million spent for NTV's two movies!), these films were produced by Shinano Kikaku, a company best known for producing & releasing things related to members of Soka Gakkai, in particular the anime adaptation of the late Daisaku Ikeda's The Human Revolution. That being said, Shinano has also produced stuff that has no relation whatsoever to Soka Gakkai, like their Sangokushi film trilogy. The first film, Sangokushi Part 1: Dawn of the Heroes, debuted on January 25, 1992 & covers from the Yellow Turban Rebellion to the death of Lü Bu in 199. This film would actually see release in English, first in the 90s via Streamline Pictures, which dubbed it into English & featured Pat Morita doing the narration (calling it Great Conquest: The Romance of the Three Kingdoms), & then in early 2020 Discotek Media re-released the film on a two-disc DVD set, one disc featuring Streamline's dub (which edited things down to around 120 minutes) & the other featuring the original 140-minute Japanese version with English subtitles for the first time; for comparison, this is the shortest of the three films! The second film, Sangokushi Part 2: The Yangtze Burns!, focuses on Liu Bei initially serving under Cao Cao before climaxing with the Battle of Red Cliffs & the proper formation of Shu in 221. The third film, Sangokushi Part 3: Distant Lands, shifts focus over to Zhuge Liang & Guan Fengji (a fictionalized version of Guan Yu's daughter, Lady Guan Yinping) & tells a mostly fictional story before climaxing with the Battle of Wuzhang Plains. Once again, Liu Bei & Shu take the priority with these movies, though this marks the first time an anime adaptation of Romance actually made it to Wuzhang Plains... which winds up being rather rare, all things considered.
While I could certainly review both of these movie series as their own individual reviews, I actually plan on covering them using the "Vs. Battle" concept I occasionally bring out, as while they both total up to a lot of anime to watch (~183 mins/3.05 hours vs. ~446 mins/7.43 hours) I think the idea of "Sangokushi vs. Sangokushi" is too good to not go for, even if it's not exactly a "fair fight", due to the NTV movies not covering as much of the story.
Since Shinano Kikaku's film trilogy took a decade to make it meant that the first film actually ran in theaters while the first TV anime adaptation of Romance was airing on TV in Japan... and unlike NTV's movies this actually was an adaptation of the Yokoyama manga! As a reminder, the late Mitsuteru Yokoyama is possibly the most important mangaka who has never had any of his manga see official English release, though anime adaptations of his works have occasionally made their way over ever since 1966. Yokoyama had to his name the likes of giant robot innovator Tetsujin 28 (a.k.a. Gigantor), magical girl innovator Sally the Witch, manga/tokusatsu media mix Giant Robo, ninja manga innovators Iga no Kagemaru & Kamen no Ninja Akakage, sci-fi action innovator Babel II, Mars (the sci-fi manga, not the shojo manga by Fuyumi Soryo), & manga adaptations of various historical times. While Yokoyama himself never did a manga adaptation of Journey to the West he did do one for Water Margin from 1967-1971, with his follow up to that being a 60-volume adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms that ran from 1971-1987 in the now-defunct Comic Tom magazine (& the forms it previously had, Kibou no Tomo & Shonen World) & has since sold more than 80 million copies in total; coincidentally enough, Comic Tom's publisher Ushio Shuppansha has also had affiliations with Soka Gakkai. Also worth noting is that Yokoyama technically based his manga on the Japanese interpretation of Romance done by the late Eiji Yoshikawa that was originally serialized in newspapers from 1939 to 1943 & became a strong entry point for many "modern" Japanese fans of the story. However, Yoshikawa's version only adapted up to Zhuge Liang's death in the Battle of Wuzhang Plains (& now you know why this is a very common thing with most Japanese adaptations of Romance), so Yokoyama wound up also adapting Luo Guanzhong's original novel after that point & told the story all the way up to Jin unifying the land; it's arguably Japan's best & most complete adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms ever.
In 1991 a TV anime adaptation of Yokoyama's manga would debut on TV Tokyo, one that was quite literal with its title: Yokoyama Mitsuteru Sangokushi/Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Romance of the Three Kingdoms; apparently it was originally previewed as simply "Anime Sangokushi", but clearer heads prevailed. One of the most curious things about this anime, though, is that it was produced by a company that otherwise has had barely any involvement with anime: Dai Nippon Printing, a general printing company that really doesn't do things like be the lead production company for a 47-episode TV anime. The same is also true for the studio that did the animation, AZ (no relation to the restaurant management, & former entertainment, company), which from what I can tell had no other anime credits outside of doing the animation for the large majority of the Raven Tengu Kabuto TV anime the year prior. Despite those bizarrities, though, the Yokoyama Sangokushi anime is generally celebrated as one of the absolute best anime adaptations of the story, no doubt due to it being bolstered by a talented staff, including director Seiji Okuda, head writer Jinzo Toriumi, & character designers Shingo Araki and Michi Himeno, as well as a musical score done by Masatoshi Nishimura, of Fence of Defense fame; FOD even perform both OPs & the 2nd ED. As an adaptation, though, it is known for prioritizing Liu Bei's side of things over others, with many early events not involving Liu Bei simply being narrated of, & it only adapts up to the Battle of Red Cliffs, which is roughly the halfway point of Yokoyama's manga. However, the anime also changes some events to better match the original novel, and adds in some scenes that weren't in the manga at all, including giving some female characters more moments to shine, like Zhuge Liang's sister & the Two Qiaos. Since it's 47 episodes long, & I don't like to review something like that all at once, I'll be splitting the Yokoyama Sangokushi review into two-parts: Part 1 will cover Episodes 1-22, up through the death of Lü Bu, while Part 2 will cover Episodes 23-47.
Still, there's no doubt that all of the "direct" anime adaptations up to this point tended to side with Liu Bei & Shu, more often than not, so it'd be nice if there were other Romance of the Three Kingdoms TV anime that sided more with Wei and/or Wu...
Well, it'd certainly take a while, but eventually such things did in fact happen! First was in 2007 with Koutetsu Sangokushi, a 26-episode TV anime co-produced by NAS & (of all companies) Konami Digital Entertainment, with animation done by the now-defunct Picture Magic. Compared to all prior Romance anime adaptations, Koutetsu Sangokushi was easily the most "unique" of them all for two main reasons. First, it sided with Wu & starred Lu Xun, one of Sun Quan's most trusted generals who most notably helped with the invasion of Jing Province, which resulted in the defeat & death of Guan Yu, before later leading Wu to victory against Shu in the Battle of Xioating/Yiling, which Liu Bei started to get revenge. Second, this anime begins with the battles between the future Shu, Wei, & Wu already having started, Red Cliffs happens halfway through, and it ends with Wuzhang Plains, marking the second time a Romance anime adaptation actually told the "second half" of the story (or, at least, what Yoshikawa covered up to). It's also worth noting that Koutetsu Sangokushi also plays much more loosely with "realism", giving the Imperial seal essentially supernatural power & having the various generals fight with superhuman strength by way of special armors & weapons they can unleash; it's probably the closest we'll ever get to a "Sangoku Basara", I guess. Still, the story that's told is indeed that of the Three Kingdoms, so I'll count it here.
Koutetsu Snagokushi is also noteworthy for treating everyone's "full name" (i.e. Family Name, Given Name, & Courtesy Name) as standard, so (for example) instead of simply being "Lu Xun" he's now "Lu Xun Boyan", which goes against all traditional naming sense seen in Romance. Finally, there's also some really noticeable boys love elements to be seen here, with Lu Xun clearly having feelings towards Zhuge Liang (among other examples), almost every character is designed to look extremely bishonen... and both Liu Bei & Sun Quan are not just downright feminine in their designs but are also voiced by women (Rina Sato & Hitomi Nabatame, respectively); Cao Cao, meanwhile, is voiced by Yuji Mitsuya, so this was 100% intentionally done. To no surprise, this was a multimedia project from the start, with the anime being supplemented by a manga drawn by the artist KYO, two novels, three drama CDs, a stage play, & even an in-character radio show; surprisingly enough, there was never a video game, despite KDE being the video game division of Konami. Koutetsu Sangokushi is also notable for being the only TV anime adaptation of Romance to have ever seen any sort of official English release, back in 2012. However, this was via the streaming site Viki, now Rakuten Viki, which relied on crowd-sourcing to produce its English translations, and it's long since been removed from the site's offerings anyway. The end result is kind of a "If an anime had an official English release on a site that barely anyone used for anime... was it even licensed?" scenario; I mean, the answer is still "Yes", but it sure doesn't feel like it.
"But what about Wei?" you might be asking. While not exactly "evil", Cao Cao is often kind of portrayed as the most "ruthless" when compared to the "virtuous" Liu Bei or the "righteous" Sun Quan, so it's not shocking that his side of the story tends to be seen the least, at least outside of video games like the Dynasty Warriors series; even Luo Guangzhong had Cao Cao play the antagonistic role in the original Romance. Luckily, in 1994 writer Hagin Yi & artist King Gonta gave Japanese readers a look at Cao Cao's side of things with the debut of the manga Souten Kouro/Beyond the Heavens in the pages of Kodansha's Morning magazine. Where Souten Kouro zigged when other adaptations zagged, aside from making Cao Cao's perspective the focus, was that it fused together elements of both Records & Romance, thereby allowing Cao Cao's focus on pragmatism to be seen in a more positive light, while Liu Bei's more rougher edges from Records are allowed to be seen more here than they were in Romance... whenever he does appear, at least, since he's no longer a focal point. Sadly, Hagin Yi would pass away from liver cancer in 1998 at the age of 52, but King Gonta would continue making Souten Kouro on his own, eventually finishing it in 2005 with a total of 36 volumes.
In 2009 Madhouse teamed with NTV, DN Dream Partners, & VAP (the same group of companies that produced anime like Kaiji, One Outs, Death Note, Claymore, & Hajime no Ippo: New Challanger, among others) to make a 26-episode TV anime adaptation of Souten Kouro. To match the "manly" visual style of King Gonta, leading the production as "General Director", above even director Tsuneo Tominaga, was Toyoo Ashida, director of the Fist of the North Star TV anime, the ultra-violent anime movie adaptation of Fist, & the Vampire Hunter D OVA. That being said, since it still aired on TV the more explicitly violent & sexual scenes had to be toned down. Souten Kouro would be the final anime Toyoo Ashida would ever be a director for, & his penultimate anime in general, before passing away in 2011 at the age of 67. Iconic movie director John Woo, whose two-part theatrical Romance adaptation Red Cliff had just finished up in China, even performed a voice cameo in Episode 4 as a sort of promotion for his films, but he was only heard in the original TV airing & was replaced for the home video release in Japan; still, this marks Woo's only time doing voice work. The Souten Kouro anime looks to cover up to the death of Lü Bu, which (as you can tell) is considered a pretty major moment in the story of Romance. Amusingly enough, both Souten Kouro & Koutetsu Sangokushi feature Mamoru Miyano voicing their respective lead characters (Cao Cao & Lu Xun), which is honestly kind of hilarious; one's infatuated with Zhuge Liang, while the other literally just screams to rally his troops. And with that we now had one TV anime adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms from the perspective of each side, though Souten Kouro naturally could never cover the entire era, since Cao Cao didn't even live to see Wu get established as a kingdom anyway.
However, that's why I want to cover all of these throughout 2025, especially the three TV anime, as I think it's really cool that there is a way to experience all three sides of the conflict without simply booting up a new Dynasty Warriors game (as awesome as those games generally are, for the most part). I just wish these all had an official (& complete, in the Shinano Kikaku movies' case) English release, though they all do have fan translations out in the aether.
All that said, though, there is one more "direct" TV anime adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms... but I sadly can't cover this one, due to a lack of materials, i.e. only a single episode ever got translated into English (&, trust me, this is a subject I don't wish to even attempt to tackle without a translation); still, I should at least go over it here, for completeness' sake. On April 4, 2010 the first episode of Saikyo Bushouden Sangoku Engi/Tale of the Strongest Generals: The Popularized/Simplified Three Kingdoms debuted on Japanese TV & would run for 52 episodes, making it the longest overall anime adaptation of Romance. Unlike all prior adaptations, Sangoku Engi was actually a Chinese/Japanese co-production that was headed up by China Central Television's Beijing Huihuang Animation Company but primarily animated by Future Planet over in Japan, with Takara Tomy also providing funding in return for importing merchandise for the show to Japan. Taking around 25 months to fully make, though some reports claimed four years, Sangoku Engi did what literally no other anime adaptation of Romance ever did: Adapt the entire story from start to finish. While the Battle of Red Cliffs was a massive six-episode part of the story, it only marked the end of the first half, and while the Battle of Wuzhang Plains was also adapted there were still two episodes after it that finished off the anime by telling how Sima Yi & his family rebelled against Wei to form the Jin dynasty, bringing about the proper end to the Three Kingdoms era; I can tell all of this because the individual episode titles are rather self-descriptive. Obviously, even with 52 episodes telling this much story meant that certain parts had to be truncated, explained via narration, or even excised completely, but props to Saikyo Bushouden Sangoku Engi for doing what had never been done before in anime form & delivering a (mostly) "complete" telling of the entire story, and not just stopping where Eiji Yoshikawa did.
Unfortunately, Future Planet was already in financial straights when it went into animating Sangoku Engi, and after being unable to pay back what part it owed of the total 650 million yen it cost to produce the anime Future Planet had to declare bankruptcy on September 29, 2010, right as the anime was halfway into its Japanese airing; Future Planet had hoped to also produce a TV anime adaptation of Water Margin following this show. Luckily, this was a rare instance where the anime had been fully animated prior to its debut on TV, so the bankruptcy had no effect on the show itself, & Future Planet had transferred whatever rights it had to the anime before declaring bankruptcy, which at least means that it's not stuck in any legal licensing hell.
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And that's everything there is when it comes to "direct" anime adaptations of Romance of the Three Kingdoms... or, at least, everything that exists as of early 2025. I do hope to follow through on this & get all of these pieces & reviews done by the end of the year, but don't expect any sort of regular scheduling for this, unlike 2024's "one Masami Kurumada-themed piece per month" schedule. As of this introduction all that I have seen of these various Romance anime are just the first 13 or 15 episodes of Yokoyama Sangokushi & a handful of episodes of Koutetsu Sangokushi, both way back in the mid-00s, but I've always had an appreciation for this story based on actual Chinese history... and, like they say, "there's no kill like overkill".
Also, the fact that 2025 marks the 1,745th Anniversary of the end of the Three Kingdoms era is simply pure coincidence, I swear! Apparently people have only ever associated names & gifts up to the 80th (which would be Oak), so I have no idea what to even call something like this... The 21 Oaks & a Blue Sapphire Anniversary?
Sangokushi TV Specials © Hikari Production/Shin-Ei
Sangokushi Movies © Shinano Kikaku
Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Romance of the Three Kingdoms © Hikari Production/Dai Nippon Printing
Koutetsu Sangokushi © Koutetsu Sangokushi Project (NAS, Konami Digital Entertainment)
Souten Kouro © King Gonta·Hagin Yi/Kodansha·VAP·NTV·D.N. Dream Partners
Saikyo Bushouden Sangoku Engi © 2008 GAC/Tomy © 2010 "Sangoku Engi" Japanese Version Production Committee
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