Sangokushi v55 (complete)

Volume 55 is now complete! If you think the Northern campaigns have been entertaining so far, you haven't seen anything yet. Get ready to see even crazier baits and traps in the coming volumes.

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Sangokushi v55:   Mega;   Mediafire
All Previous Sangokushi volumes:   Mega;   Mediafire

NOOOOOOOOOOO

One of Sima Yi's weaker plans. Does the commander really need to leave his camp to go quell minor unrest when he's busy with an enemy army? I'm sure the generals are perfectly capable of doing that in his stead.

Sima Yi's mental note to self: Do the opposite of what Zhang He says.

Another mistake with the Brewitt-Taylor version. It should be 5000 reinforcing troops led by Sima Yi, not 50,000. Reminds me of all the mistakes I also made in forgetting or adding an extra zero when translating this manga. I think the Battle of Red cliffs volume still has an error with the Wei casualties missing an extra zero. I should fix that later.

Interesting key-difference here. In the novel, Kongming's plan to send Jiang Wei and Liao Hua to attack the Wei camps is merely a ploy to get Sima Yi to make a dangerous risk as he's hounded by Shu troops. The capture of the camps themselves is not considered important as long as the Wei army is routed, meaning that Shu won a complete victory. In the Yoshikawa/Yokoyama adaptation, the capture of the camps is the real objective, and thus the battle ends as only a partial victory. If I had to guess why Yoshikawa made this change, it may be to make Sima Yi look more competent. Because in the novel, had Sima Yi held his ground and ordered the Wei army to fight to the very end, it's possible the battle could have ended as a very costly stalemate for both sides. But what happens is that Sima Yi second-guesses himself into making a costly retreat, and then he berates all the Wei generals for a defeat which the readers know he was partially responsible for. Too bad Yoshikawa didn't write some sort of commentary explaining why he made the changes he did.

This is how court intrigues start. Liu Ye better watch himself.

Wang Ping is such an underrated general.

Poor horses.

One thing I really like about the manga are these down-to-earth scenes of humble foot-soldiers, showing that these wars didn't just involve romanticized heroism and epic mind games.

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Sangokushi c383:   Sendspace
Sangokushi c384:   Sendspace
Sangokushi c385:   Sendspace
Sangokushi c386:   Sendspace
Sangokushi c387:   Sendspace
Sangokushi c388:   Sendspace
Sangokushi c389:   Sendspace
Sangokushi c390:   Sendspace
Sangokushi c391:   Sendspace