#Ichi just has a general lack of emotion (he’s not doing it on purpose)

[canidance]

Meany McGrowlfaces

[drealyn22]

No Roads Where We’re Going

Chapter 9 Author’s Notes

Because of the length of Chapter 9, I’ve moved a lot of my author’s notes to Tumblr. 

The notes included with Chapter 9 on Fanfiction.net are an abbreviated version. The full version is below.

Also - I am changing the rating on "No Roads Where We’re Going” from T to M for language and violence. That means if you're used to finding it in a default search, you will now have to adjust the search filter to include M ratings.

SPOILERS AHEAD! (Duh.)

Additional Author’s Notes

“What in the heck was this author thinking?”

I have to admit, I bit off more than I could chew with this chapter. There are a lot of personal interactions here, some of them very emotional, and that’s always challenging to write. I had to take a few steps back on multiple occasions. There were times when I just needed to not look at it for a while so I could come back with fresh eyes. Hopefully readers enjoyed this chapter, and all of my effort wasn’t in vain.

I consistently underestimate how many words it will take to describe certain scenes in any meaningful detail, or I get overly descriptive and then I have to decide which details to cut. Typically it’s a back-and-forth game throughout the development of the chapter. Funny thing is, I have big chunks of future chapters already written. You’d think that would make it easier to start a new chapter… just plug in the chunks and fill in the gaps, right? As it turns out… no, it just doesn’t work that way. It does help, but it doesn’t make writing the connective tissue any easier. This will probably get worse as the story progresses because the complexity is increasing. Looking ahead, I can see a few chapters in particular that will be a big challenge.

After all was said and done, this chapter clocked in at around 14,800 words, not including author’s notes. Ridiculous, right?

Could I have split this into two chapters? Yes and no. “No Roads Where We’re Going” is laid out with a particular structure and timeline. Splitting this chapter in two would have blown that. This chapter was always intended to be three parts - 1.) Fuu training and finding her way with Jin, 2.) The conflict between Fuu and Mugen that forces him to examine his own motives, and 3.) Fuu training with Jin, with Mugen slowly becoming involved and eventually supporting Fuu. That’s where this chapter’s title, “Converge,” comes from.

Starting in Chapter 8, “Dissonance,” the three characters’ points of view start to diverge and become discordant, then they slowly converge back to a single point where everyone agrees and understands the importance of what they’re doing. They go through conflict and they find resolution.

For this to happen, all three of them have to understand that they need each other. 

Developing an emotional bond with someone comes with personal risk. It requires self-sacrifice. We all try to support the people around us in the way we think is best, but that doesn’t necessarily align with what someone actually needs. You have to learn how to support someone selflessly, in the way they need to be supported, even if that puts you in a vulnerable position. That means you have to trust someone else with your vulnerability, and that person has to be responsible with it so your trust isn’t broken. It requires effort and participation, and equal amounts of give and take.

Trust doesn’t come easily, especially if you’ve been burned before. It can be a source of fear and anxiety, and even anger. Relationships fall apart because of this. Not just romantic relationships, but platonic and familial relationships as well. Sometimes it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle, and it can easily become destructive if both partners aren’t willing to support each other fully.

Mugen, Jin, and Fuu need to learn this lesson.

For Jin and Fuu, this happens right at the start of Chapter 9. They made a clear agreement at the end of the last chapter, and now they’re both holding up their end of the bargain. 

Jin has to trust Fuu to put her whole self into training so he can be assured that what he’s teaching her will make her safe and not reckless. She has to trust him to guide her down the right path, even if it what he asks her to do is scary for her, and even if she has to spend most of her day taking a professional beating. That was their agreement. “You show me that you’re dedicated, and I will dedicate myself in return.” They are constantly reassuring one another by showing mutual trust, love, and respect. At the end of the day, they’re still friends, and Jin is still Fuu’s Onii-chan (big brother).

Mugen and Jin trust each other more now than they did before. They each recognize that they want basically the same thing: for Fuu to be protected, and hopefully happy. They converge on this, even though their ideas about how to achieve it are different. 

The agreement they make is one of sacrifice. “Fuu is the priority, even if you have to leave me behind to get her to safety.” There’s also a mutual emotion that remains unspoken. “If I see you go down, it’s going to hurt me, and it’s going to be difficult to leave you behind, because you’re my friend. But I’ll do it because you asked me to.” 

Through all of this, they’re finding out that they know each other really well. Emotional shit makes them both uncomfortable in general, but they’re open enough with each other to talk about it anyway. They care about each other, and they both know that when it counts, they’ll have each other’s backs. They’re still awkward when they have that little bonding moment, but what can you expect? It’s Mugen and Jin.

Fuu and Mugen are a different story. Both Fuu and Mugen have clear expectations in their relationships with Jin, but with each other, nothing is clear - although it’s getting there, little by little. 

Mugen has serious trust issues. For the most part, Fuu doesn’t. She keeps trying to trust Mugen, but he keeps confusing her, mainly because he’s confused himself. 

He knows without a doubt that he loves Fuu, but he still doesn’t know what to do with that. He’s freaked out by the fact that he needs her, and he’s scared of his own vulnerability. Those are two things he’s spent his entire life avoiding like the plague. He has to learn to trust Fuu with his vulnerability, and he also has to trust her like Jin does, to know that she can handle herself and that she’ll be okay in the long run. He also has to learn to trust himself and embrace his new emotions. He can’t get away with compartmentalizing anymore. 

After Jin sets him straight, and Fuu kicks his ass, he knows he was wrong. When he sits down with Fuu at the end of the chapter and apologizes to her, he’s finally putting his trust in her, and he’s letting her know that she can put her faith in him.

In the end, all three of them have reached a point of understanding, and they’ve all become closer. They’re even physically closer, sitting and resting peacefully together for the first time in quite a while.

Japanese words used in this chapter

You can find definitions of these words on my Tumblr (username Drealyn22) in a post called "No Roads Where We're Going Glossary." It’s even got pictures!

Dojo, engawa, gakusei, geta, gi, hakama, kata, katana, kimono, obi, Onii-chan, ronin, samurai, sensei, tachi, tanto, wakizashi, yumi

Onii-chan (お兄ちゃん): Older brother, or big brother.

Ichi, ni, san, shi (一, 二, 三, 四): One, two, three, four.

Before anyone gripes at me for using Japanese numbers, consider this: in martial arts dojos all over the world, students are taught to count their exercises in Japanese. The fact that you can walk into a dojo in the U.S. and hear Japanese being used was justification enough for me to use it here.

Martial Arts

I looked at tantojutsu, aikido, bujutsu, kendo, and some modern self-defense techniques for women. There are some great videos on YouTube, and I’ve posted a few of them on Tumblr.

I wanted the details of Fuu’s training to be at least somewhat grounded in reality even if it’s not completely accurate.

The most unrealistic part of this is that Fuu is learning so much so fast. No dojo master would ever inundate a brand new student with so many advanced techniques. Fuu is definitely getting a crash course. If Jin were teaching her in a structured setting alongside other students, I don’t think he would condone this at all. But they’re not in a structured setting - they’re out on their own, living one day at a time. He knows they could be attacked at any time, and Fuu needs to be ready. 

It’s also extremely dangerous to use a tanto against a katana. You know that saying, “Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight?” Yeah… you don’t want to bring a knife to a sword fight either. But the tanto is Fuu’s only weapon. It’s not optimal, but she has to work with the resources that are presently available to her.

Jin and Fuu

The first thing he imparts is mental awareness and a sense of purpose. That means, know who you are, know why you’re doing this, and know the right way to do it.

Keep in mind, those first two things Jin discovered because of Fuu, during their journey to find the sunflower samurai. He’s taking the lessons he learned from her, and helping her to rediscover them in herself.

Fuu has always known who she is, but because of their demanding circumstances, she’s lost her way a little bit, and she’s definitely lacking purpose. So far, her only reason for being on this journey is basic survival. That’s not enough to live by, and Jin knows it from experience. He wants Fuu to identify her most important goals, and choose a path that will help her reach them so she’ll remain invested and determined to keep going.

Karyuudo

We see a different side of Karyuudo in this chapter.  He expresses some opinions about society and a person’s character, he remembers his father and wonders what he would think of him now, and he identifies with Fuu in a number of ways. He possesses emotions and a degree of empathy and sentimentality.

He has always paid close attention to behavior, thought processes, and relationships. He wants to get inside the heads of his prey. Now that they’re not going anywhere for a while, he has an opportunity to watch their interactions more closely.

Mugen’s Dream / Experiences of the Past

He followed Fuu for a while after they split up last time. There’s a little bit of a backstory there, but that will come up in a later chapter, so I won’t spoil it for you.

The question is, when he followed her and “protected” her, did he do it for Fuu, or did he do it for himself? His dream is revealing here. As much as he thinks he’s protecting Fuu, he’s also unloading his own rage, and in a way, trying to clear his guilty conscience. It was mostly selfish on his part, and in his dream, he knows it. If he really wanted Fuu to feel protected, he should’ve reached out to her. Instead, he tried to ease his own anxiety, and then he moved on.

This method of coping with his stress was only partially effective. After he leaves Fuu alone, years go by and he doesn’t feel any better. That’s why, back in Chapter 1, he ultimately ends up at Ikitsuki Island burning down the church, and why, when he sees Fuu for the first time in Chapter 2, he’s hard-wired to protect her, even from her own emotional torment, which he feels at least partially responsible for.

Fuugen: The Kiss

I touched on a few different running themes:

1.) Fuu’s growing empowerment. I’ve known for a long time now that Fuu would make the first move. She’s taking the initiative. In so many fics, when Mugen and Fuu kiss, it’s Fuu’s first time, Mugen takes the lead, and it’s this big discovery moment told almost entirely through Fuu’s perspective. I wanted to turn that on its head.

2.) Mugen’s emotional development. He’s desperate for Fuu to stay with him. In past chapters, he hasn’t been able to sleep if she’s not close by. Now he’s injured, he can’t walk, he’s stuck in this house, he’s having dreams about Fuu being in danger, and to top it off, he knows he hurt her feelings when he wouldn’t open up to her about his pain. He doesn’t want to be alone, and he’s afraid that she’s going to leave. If she does, he knows it’s his own fault. He’s more vulnerable than ever before, and it scares him. He doesn’t like feeling that way.

During the kiss, I wanted Mugen’s perspective to matter just as much as Fuu’s - maybe even more so. If Fuu is taking the lead, that puts Mugen on the receiving end, and I wanted the reader to get a glimpse of what that’s like for him. 

3.) Always moving forward. Unlike other fics, I’m not going to have Mugen draw comparisons between Fuu and the dozens of prostitutes he’s been with, and I’m not going to have Fuu be all innocent and awkward as if she has no clue what she’s doing. I make no claims as to whether this is Fuu’s first kiss or not. For me that’s irrelevant. Mugen and Fuu are two ordinary people falling in love. I want that to be the focus, not whatever experiences they’ve each had in the past.

I didn’t want to shortchange the build up. This is just my personal opinion, but when you kiss someone for the first time, new discoveries happen before the kiss does. These discoveries are shared between two people, and it happens whether you’ve kissed someone else in the past or not.

When your faces are close together, a new type of intimacy comes into being, and with it, a new sense of curiosity. You’re looking more closely than you’ve ever looked before, and you notice little details that you missed up until that moment. Even the things you thought you knew, or things that seemed ordinary before - they look a little different and a little more interesting when you’re up close. You want to see and touch, and experience.

That’s what I was going for in the moments leading up to the kiss.

Fuugen: The Fight

What goes up must come down.

Something I’ve learned multiple times in my life is that the people you love the most are the ones who can tear you down in the most devastating way. They know your weaknesses, and they know how to hit you where it really hurts. It feels horrible when the person you put on a pedestal decides to treat you like dirt.

Fuu can see that Mugen has feelings and motives that he’s not sharing, and she wants answers. Problem is, there are some answers Mugen doesn’t have, and others he’s too inept to communicate. Fuu doesn’t understand why he can’t just say what he feels and what he wants. (Spit it out already!) The only explanation she can come up with is that he’s afraid, and too stubborn to admit it. She’s right. He’s scared shitless and he doesn’t know how to deal with it.

There’s a basis for this in the series. Mugen’s been alone since early childhood. Everyone he’s known has betrayed him in one way or another, and consequently, he doesn’t trust anyone. In his memories when he’s close to death, we see that he may have trusted Koza at some point in the past, but she and Mukuro betrayed him. The Roman Album says that he was betrayed over and over again. Sara points out that his anger and sadness stem from never being loved by anyone.

This helps to explain why Mugen is so afraid to let Fuu in, why he’s freaked out by the fact that he actually does need her, and why it hurts him so much when she walks away.

Fuu Takes It Too Far... But She’s Not Wrong

Fuu calling Mugen a murderer... yikes. “Over the line, Smokey!” (I’ll give a virtual high-five to anyone who knows that movie reference.)

I think that, as fans of the series and Fuugen lovers, we tend to forget just how evil Mugen really is... or was. In Misguided Miscreants, Mukuro tells us that Mugen has killed a lot of people, and we see in Mugen’s memories that his life was very violent and lonely. He was not a good guy. 

In the series, Mugen is generally pretty open and straightforward about who he is and what he’s all about, but he’s still guarded when it comes to his past. (Not too different from Jin in that respect.) He gets seriously angry when Mukuro brings up his past in front of Fuu and Jin. He doesn’t want his violent past to define him as a person, yet he always lives with the idea that it already has.

Fuu has the power to bring out Mugen’s lighter side. She sees the potential for him to be good. He has trouble seeing it in himself, but if she believes it, he’ll try to believe it too.

If Fuu stops seeing Mugen’s potential, and only sees the evil inside him, then that’s all he is, and all he can ever be. It’s the very same thought that already lingers in the back of his mind - the thought that he will forever be defined by what he was.

Later on, even though Fuu apologizes and says she didn’t mean it, Mugen admits that it’s true. Internally, he worries that if he told Fuu all the details, she might be afraid of him and she might not want him anymore.

Fuu still sees the good in him and she will still love him. She only cares about what kind of person he is right now, and what kind of person he’s trying to be in the future. Mugen actually takes a moment to appreciate this.

Jin the Security Blanket

Fuu latches onto Jin like a child, and he patiently lets her do it. All she has to do is call him her big brother, and he automatically falls into the role. He loves Fuu like a sister, and he enjoys caring for her. For the most part, he comforts her just by being Jin. He doesn’t have to do anything special. He has a nice soothing voice and a stabilizing presence, and he won’t pry by asking questions. That’s all Fuu needs.

I thought it would be funny if Jin’s favorite childhood stories were about history, something intellectual that can be analyzed, rather than fairy tales or other children’s stories. Even as a child, he was fascinated by military strategy and the concept of a worthy lord.

Another minor note about Jin’s story - Fuu asked him to tell her something about his family, and he went for a century-old history lesson instead of talking about his actual family. He could’ve talked about his parents, or siblings (if he had any), or other direct relatives. There are still some things he keeps locked away. 

He’s not alone.

Mugen and Jin’s Talk

Jin understands something Mugen doesn’t, and he goes so far as to talk about his emotional experience with Shino to get Mugen to realize it. 

Mugen is driven to protect what he loves, and his compulsion is so overwhelming that he’s not seeing or considering anything else. He’s so tangled up inside that he doesn’t realize what’s going on. He thinks he needs to protect Fuu, but a large part of his motivation is selfish. He already feels like he was negligent by allowing Fuu to get hurt on Ikitsuki Island. He feels shame for not helping her after that (the scene from his dream). He’s also having a crisis over the whole concept of being attached to Fuu. He’s never needed anyone before. There’s a lot at stake for him, but a lot of it is self-inflicted. 

Jin’s message to Mugen is, you’re in love, and love makes you vulnerable. You need to accept that, and acknowledge that it’s clouding your judgment. You’re not doing yourself any favors here. Learn to let go and trust the people around you. 

Jin knows this because of his love for Shino. It’s a big deal for him to talk about this. In general, Jin doesn’t talk about his emotions. The fact that he does it here is a testament to how much he cares for his friends. He’s willing to bring down one of his own walls in order to get Mugen to drop one of his.

Jin also knows it because of his love for Fuu. He dealt with that a little bit in the previous chapter. He doesn’t mention this to Mugen, but Mugen calls him out on it anyway. That’s the point when they really start to reach a shared understanding.

After that, they just keep getting more open with each other, talking about gooey feelings and other emotional shit that both of them normally avoid. It only lasts until their affections are focused on each other, for the tiny fraction of a second that it happens. 

Of course they missed each other. By this point in the story, we all know that, right? Fuu knows it. Mugen and Jin even know it, but they’ve never expressed it openly. Fortunately they’ve become close enough as friends that they don’t need words to express it - thank goodness, because that would be seriously awkward, and just plain weird (in their minds). They’re grown men, for shit’s sake. In their world, men shouldn’t get sentimental. That’s for women and pansies.

Mugen’s Participation & Apology

Jin tells Mugen that he believes Fuu is capable of learning to fight, but Mugen won’t believe it until he sees it for himself. He’s skeptical at first, but after watching her for a few days, he thinks maybe she’s competent enough that she might succeed if given a few pointers. But it’s not until Fuu kicks his ass that he really has to eat his own words.

When Mugen apologizes: some readers will see this as being seriously out of character. I see it as a point of growth. He knows he hurt Fuu, and he now sees that he was wrong. He also knows that Fuu wants to understand how he feels, and he let her down when he wasn’t able to express himself. He puts a great deal of effort into explaining why he didn’t want her to fight, and why he’s now changed his mind. All of this is a big step forward for him.

However, in his mind, he wants to say a lot more. He just can’t figure out how to articulate himself. He wants to tell her that he loves her. He really does, but it still scares him. The best he can do is show her he cares by holding onto her. It’s enough for now.

What Fuu Learned from Mugen and Jin

Both of the guys give Fuu some fighting advice. Mugen tells her to use her surroundings, improvise if necessary, and use the element of surprise. Jin won’t be expecting her to try something different, and that’s why it’s going to work.

Jin tells her to analyze what Mugen is doing, look for a weakness and exploit it. He also advocates for using Mugen’s injury against him, which is not very honorable, but it’s pragmatic. It’s in Fuu’s best interest to prove herself to Mugen, and if that’s how she has to do it, then so be it.

They both help to boost Fuu’s confidence. She’s learned a few new tricks, and she knows now that she has what it takes.

When Fuu Beats Jin

She says, “Suck on that, pretty boy!”

That line was inspired by the movie Mean Girls. I love Janis Ian.

Karyuudo and Kaibutsu

This is the first time Kaibutsu has spoken, and the first time he hasn’t been dressed in his red samurai armor. As it turns out, he’s actually quite talkative.

He’s acting sort of casual about this whole thing. It’s taking too long. He wants to get to the next phase of the mission so he can do his part. He even mouths off to Karyuudo a little bit, but when Karyuudo gives an order, he takes it without question.

So there’s a degree of familiarity between them, but Kaibutsu is definitely Karyuudo’s subordinate.

Karyuudo is more serious. Fuu reminds him of… someone or something. We never find out because Kaibutsu shuts him down, causing him to suppress the memory and any feelings attached to it. This is the second time in this chapter he’s displayed emotions.

Mugen and Jin’s Lack of Awareness of Karyuudo

One reviewer made a comment about it being strange that Mugen and Jin are unaware of Karyuudo’s presence in this chapter. I want to explain why - and I welcome any comments or suggestions on how I might improve this.

With Mugen being out of commission, Jin has taken on permanent guard duty. He’s been sitting outside every night, watching and listening. The same is true for his walks with Fuu to the hot spring. He knows that they’re probably not alone, but he hasn’t seen any obvious signs to prove it.  As the reader, you only get hints of Jin’s concern. Maybe that’s part of the problem. Perhaps I could’ve described this more explicitly so you’d know that Jin’s not completely oblivious to the potential danger. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

In previous chapters, they haven’t been able to detect Karyuudo’s presence unless he wants them to, so it’s not unusual that they can’t see him now.

Karyuudo doesn’t want to be seen. This is a chance for him to observe the trio in a different setting, compared to what he would normally see when they’re traveling. There’s no point in trying to intimidate them right now. It’s not like they can quickly flee the scene, with Mugen not able to move very fast. It wouldn’t give Karyuudo any new information.

The other piece is that I needed Mugen, Jin, and Fuu to feel secure enough in their safety to be able to stay at the cabin for a while. If Karyuudo did try to spook them, they would be forced to leave, and many of the events in the chapter wouldn’t be able to happen, at least not in the way I had planned. If they became aware of Karyuudo’s presence, it would have taken focus away from those events, and taken the plot in a different direction.

The only thing that could really come of that, is that they’d be limping through the woods again, and/or attacked again while Mugen is still injured. That already happened in Chapter 8. I suppose Mugen’s condition could worsen if he’s not able to heal properly before traveling again, and that could lead to a few other developments, but that’s not the direction I have planned.

In the next chapter, as Jin is walking to the village, he will be thinking about how odd it is that he hasn’t seen any signs of the man in the mask. In addition, the masked man will return to the forefront by making his presence known again in a much more obvious way.

I hope that explains what I was thinking when I wrote this chapter. I can see how it would seem weird that Jin hasn’t detected Karyuudo. I’m considering going back to Chapter 9 and adding more detail to show that Jin’s been watching, and that he thinks it’s strange and even frustrating that the man in the mask hasn’t shown himself in all this time.

What do you think? Would it be worthwhile to add more detail to Chapter 9 to clarify what’s happening?

History: Takeda Shingen

Jin started to tell Fuu a story about the brilliant military strategy of Takeda Shingen, but Fuu fell asleep before he got to the good part. I thought I’d share the meat of that story, for those of you interested in history.

Takeda Shingen was widely feared and respected as a military warlord. The Takeda army was huge. Under his leadership, the Takeda greatly expanded their territory by defeating many of their rivals.

Although we like to think of samurai as honorable men who carried a katana and wakizashi everywhere they went, that wasn’t the case for most of Japan’s history. That didn’t come about until the Edo period. Prior to that, during the Sengoku period, around the mid-late 16th century, the weapons of choice for the samurai were yumi (bow) and spears. They did use swords, but never as a primary weapon, and when they did, they used tachi more so than katana.

What would typically happen in battle (and this is an over-simplification) was that each army would be made up of a combination of mounted samurai, and foot soldiers who were usually peasants and farmers by profession. We’re talking thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of men (and occasionally some women).

For the most part, they all carried yumi. Both sides would fire at each other from a distance. When they advanced closer, the yumi were pretty useless. For one thing, yumi are the longest bows in the world. They’re huge, generally between 7 and 8 feet long by today’s measurements (the basic size and design of the yumi hasn’t changed much since the 16th and 17th centuries). Samurai needed to hand their yumi off to their attendants, who marched alongside them, then they would pull out their swords and fight in a big melee brawl. They might remain on horseback, or they might be forced to dismount. At that point, it was basically one-on-one combat.  You’d fight against one guy, kill him, and move on to the next guy.

Takeda Shingen was famous for a strategy known as the cavalry charge. He converted his mounted archers into lancers. The foot soldiers still carried yumi, but the samurai on horseback carried spears. They would ride in formation and charge against the enemy in waves. When they advanced on their opponents, they were able to remain mounted, leveraging the long reach of the spear. Then it wasn’t so much of a one-on-one fight, because they just plowed through the enemy’s ranks as a group. The enemy archers were not at all prepared for this strategy, and they were easily defeated. This became the trademark of the Takeda army, and one of the reasons why the Takeda were so feared in battle.

That’s where Jin’s story would have ended. Nobody wants to talk about the impending downfall of their own clan, but I figured some readers might actually be interested in this part, so I’m including it just for fun.

The Fall of the Takeda Clan

Unfortunately, after Shingen’s death, his son Takeda Katsuyori attempted to use the cavalry charge at the Battle of Nagashino in 1575 against the combined forces of Tokugawa Ieyasu (who would later become shogun) and Oda Nobunaga. It was a colossal failure.

Oda Nobunaga used Portuguese firearms - a matchlock rifle that the Japanese called tanegashima, named for the island where the Portuguese shipwrecked while carrying a load of these guns in their cargo. Some of the Japanese daimyo copied the design and produced their own rifles. (In the series, remember the so-called Francisco Xavier III and his guns? Those were a fictionalized version of the Portuguese-inspired design of early Japanese firearms.)

It didn’t require a lot of training to use these weapons, so Nobunaga could use peasants and farmers, and save his samurai for other duties. Some sources say that he had as many as 3000 rifles, in addition to 10,000 foot soldiers with yumi. Meanwhile, Katsuyori’s cavalry was made up of all samurai, plus some foot soldiers in the infantry.

Nobunaga was one of the first people in the world known to have used the strategy of volley fire. His men would be organized in groups. One group would fire off a round, then reload while another group fired. He also used archers. Arrows traveled farther than bullets, and yumi were faster to use - no reload time required. So a combination of the two was very effective.

Ieyasu and Nobunaga positioned their men behind a set of wooden palisades, on the far side of a river. When Katsuyori sent his cavalry, the river slowed them way down and many of them were wiped out before they ever made contact with the enemy soldiers. Most of those that made it across the river were stopped at the palisades. Nobunaga had spearmen waiting who could reach out from inside the palisades to strike down the few Takeda samurai who actually made it all the way there.

Between the use of firearms and the way he positioned and organized his men, Nobunaga’s strategy rendered the cavalry charge totally ineffective. Katsuyori was soundly defeated, losing two-thirds of his forces and many of his best generals.

After that, the Takeda clan started falling apart. Katsuyori had lost most of his best samurai in the battle, and two of his relatives defected to the Tokugawa/Nobunaga faction. People questioned his ability to lead, and most of his followers abandoned him. The clan was destroyed, and Katsuyori, his wife, and his son all committed seppuku - ritual suicide.

Poor Katsuyori. He’ll forever be remembered as the guy whose failure destroyed the mighty Takeda clan.

This provides a bit more context for the Mizuno brothers back in Chapter 7. Hideki talked about Jin’s clan having been defeated and scattered to the wind 100 years earlier. This was how it happened.

That’s all, folks! Thanks for reading!