People of The Sengoku Period in Popular Culture - Imagawa Yoshimoto

Imagawa Yoshimoto

• As a young man, Imagawa Yoshimoto is a playable character in the Koei action game Samurai Warriors: Xtreme Legends, as well as in Kessen III, an action-strategy game. Both games depict Imagawa as a childish dandy, although Samurai Warriors takes this to an extreme by giving him a kemari (a Japanese kickball), which he uses as a weapon (though he used a generic sword in the original Samurai Warriors game). In his story mode ending, Yoshimoto miraculously manages to defeat both Takeda Shingen and Oda Nobunaga in Kyoto, and then plays kemari to his heart's content in front of the other warlords, who look on in amusement and disgust.
  • In Samurai Warriors 2 however, due to time constraints (as well as an overall shift away from Nobunaga's life towards the post-Nobunaga years), the Battle of Okehazama was shown as part of Nobunaga, Noh, and Mitsuhide's intro movies, and Yoshimoto was only mentioned and shown impaled to death within his palanquin by Nobunaga's spearmen.
  • However in Samurai Warriors 2: Xtreme Legends, the battle was brought back, and Yoshimoto himself is given an updated appearance and additional moves as well as a new story mode that tells about his quest for somebody to play kemari with him due to his extreme loneliness.
  • He is once again made a free mode only character for Samurai Warriors 3. He is also in the spinoff of Samurai Warriors called Samurai Warriors Katana.
  • In Warriors Orochi, he is found retreating from the burning Wan Castle but, is rescued by the Tokugawa and escapes. Later, he becomes part of the Resistance against Orochi aiding Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin but, ends up supporting Wei after being defeated by them in the Saika Territory. Days later he had been ordered by Cao Pi to give Lu Meng aid at Osaka Bay. In the sequel, he joins Liu Bei. In Dream Mode, he works with Xing Cai and Tachibana Ginchiyo in rescuing their allies at Chen Cang Castle.
• Yoshimoto is also featured as an unplayable character in the Japanese video game Sengoku Basara, as well as the sequel (he becomes playable in Sengoku Basara 2: Heroes). On the anime, he was portrayed as a coward,weak and a pathetic leader that uses his men as scapegoats to save himself,but he was killed by Mitsuhide Akechi.
• In the translation of Path of the Assassin, a Dark Horse Comics translation of Hanzo no Mon, which focuses on Tokugawa Ieyasu and Hattori Hanzō's perspectives, Yoshimoto is viewed more positively (perhaps ironically, compared to Nobunaga) and even decides during the Okehazama campaign to replace Ujizane with Ieyasu (then Matsudaira Motoyasu) as his heir, though dying before doing so.
• Imagawa Yoshimoto is the Hanny's king who rules a province full of hannys in the eroge Sengoku Rance.
• He also appears briefly in the short manga Kacchu no Senshi Gamu by Yoshihiro Takahashi.
• Yoshimoto appears as a gender-switched character in Sengoku Otome: Momoiro Paradox.