People of The Sengoku Period in Popular Culture - Akechi Mitsuhide

Akechi Mitsuhide

Akechi Mitsuhide is featured in various fictional works, mostly as a hero.

• He is featured in Capcom's Onimusha as Samanosuke Akechi's uncle/relative, as well as Onimusha Tactics, as a playable character.
• Mitsuhide is also one of the playable characters in Koei's Samurai Warriors series. He wields a katana, obviously taking techniques from the sword school of Iaido, and is portrayed to have a very close relationship with Mori Ranmaru. He goes against Oda Nobunaga but lets him live in one story. In another story, he is forced to kill Oda Nobunaga and Mori Ranmaru. In the second installment of the series, the relationship with Ranmaru is not present; instead he becomes closer to Nobunaga (and takes longer to fall out with Nobunaga) to a point where he does not want to kill him. This caused Saika Magoichi to assassinate Nobunaga from afar, leaving Mitsuhide to be blamed. Akechi Mitsuhide somehow defeats the Toyotomi and the Saika, uniting the land in Nobunaga's name. In a special side story, he has to fight off and defeat the Tokugawa and the rest of Japan. He also appears in the Warriors Orochi spin-off series as a starting character in the "Samurai"/"Sengoku" story lines. In this game, he shows no intention of killing or betraying Oda Nobunaga and follows him faithfully; in fairness, this depiction is based on the Samurai Warriors 2 incarnation. In Warriors Orochi 2, he and Hosokawa Gracia, his daughter, are rescued by Xing Cai and Inahime. They become allies of Shu, and they tell Liu Bei of Taira Kiyomori and Sun Wukong. He has a dream mode stage where he teams up with Ling Tong and Yue Ying to battle Masamune Date. He is also in the spinoff of Samurai Warriors called Samurai Warriors Katana.
• He is featured as a playable character in Sengoku Basara, where he is portrayed as a sadistic psychopath who wields dual scythes, and enjoys killing his opponents. His counterpart in Devil Kings is known as the "Reaper". He appears in Sengoku Basara 3 in a new costume as well as a mask concealing his mouth, under a new name of "Tenkai".
• Mitsuhide plays a part in Konami's video game Demon Chaos.
• In Eiji Yoshikawa's novel Taiko ki (released in English as Taiko: An Epic Novel of War and Glory in Feudal Japan), Mitsuhide is emotionally abused by Nobunaga, who calls him by the nickname "kumquat head".
• In Koei's video game Kessen III, he is portrayed as an ally turned main villain through the game; this is because Oda Nobunaga is portrayed as the hero and unifier of Japan.
• In Hikaru no Go, a character named Yuki Mitani plays Mitsuhide in a school play.
• In the manga series Tenjho Tenge, the character Sōhaku Kago initially went by the name Akechi Mitsuhide, and killed Oda Nobunaga by decapitation. He then faked his death and became the High Buddhist priest called Tenkai, manipulating the Tokugawa from within.
• In the James Clavell historical novel Shōgun, the character of "Akechi Jinsai" is a pastiche of Mitsuhide.
• Akechi Mitsuhide is one of few captains who have non-generic faces in the eroge Sengoku Rance. He can be replaced with his daughter Hosokawa Gracia, after doing two of his events using Rance's satisfaction points.
• In the anime series Sengoku Otome: Momoiro Paradox, Mitsuhide is portrayed as a gender-switched version of himself, played by Eri Kitamura.