The Spring 2023 anime season had a lot to offer fans, from a bizarre story of idols and revenge to the most relaxing romance anime we could have asked for. It also offered longtime fans of the Vinland Saga historical Viking anime series a super emotional ride, which just reached its glorious conclusion. Let’s explore why the show was so good!
Vinland Saga Ends. Why Did This Anime Represent Peak Fiction?
As I often write, what attracted me to anime at first was the hugely dramatic stories in which the fate of humanity hung in the balance, with influential works such as Space Battleship Yamato and Macross. How could anything beat these giant stories?
Imagine my surprise at finding a historical anime that manages to tell a similarly compelling story despite being on a much smaller human scale. Vinland Saga was so good, with each well-crafted episode filled with so much human drama, that I bestowed the honor of watching each episode twice, to make sure I could savor each one properly.
Vinland Saga is basically the story of two men: Thorfinn, son of Thors, a boy from Iceland who follows his former Viking father into battle, and Canute, a Danish prince who became King of England in between the Anglo-Saxon period and the Norman Invasion of 1066. We follow both characters from immaturity as they grow into hardened men tempered by their environments.
The journey fans have been on has truly been amazing. While 2019’s season 1 was a more traditional story following Thorfinn as he got older and fiercer as a Viking warrior, season 2 was a thing of beauty as we come to see the savage side of the world of 1,000 years ago.
Thorfinn has become a slave for raising his hand against King Canute, and works in the field alongside his friend Einar. Thorfinn feels tormented by all the evil things he’s done as a Viking warrior, and seeks peace. Meanwhile, Einar has feelings for a slave woman named Arnheid, who he’d like to marry someday. I wonder how that will work out for him?
It’s Pure Shakespearean Drama
I love the dramatic elements the animators at Mappa employed, like the scenes where the floating head of Canute’s father Sweyn Forkbeard (son of the great Harald Bluetooth) shows up to torment Canute on the responsibilities of being King. We’ve never encountered this level of drama in an anime before this.
The Fandom for Vinland Saga is Great
The best anime fandoms are broad and deep, with many different people contributing to it. I loved browsing the memes fans make expressing their love of Vinland Saga and its characters on Twitter and other places.
It’s an Amazing Historical Drama
I love the way Vinland Saga is based on actual history, with all the major characters being real people you can look up on Wikipedia. Even the scene in which King Canute tries to command the ocean waves to stop their motion is based on a historical event.
In real history, Thorfinn Karlsefni was a merchant who followed Leif Eriksson’s path to Vinland to try and establish a permanent settlement there. Thorfinn married the widow of Leif’s brother, and they traveled to the Vinland with 60 men and five women and many livestock, where they interacted with the native people there. Their son is believed to be the first European born in the New World. If you want to read the ongoing story of Thorfinn in the New World, the manga continues it!
The period of history when the Vikings held sway over England, carving out a kingdom called the Danelaw, was a very dramatic one. It also left a mark on the English language of today. For example, the words “shirt” and “skirt” come from the same root word, though the former comes from Old English and the latter from Old Norse. For a language nerd like me, the Vinland Saga anime is right up my alley.
(Now if we could get a dubbed version of the anime in Old English and Old Norse…)
Vinland Saga Could Become the Heidi of Our Generation
I’ve got a friend who’s half-Swiss and half-Italian and he grew up watching the influential anime Heidi, Girl of the Alps from the 1970s, animated by Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki. The anime has basically become a National Treasure for several countries in Europe and a major cultural bridge between East and West. Looking at the response to Vinland Saga by fans around the world, I wonder if something like this couldn’t be possible again?
Social Media Connects Us With Our Favorite Creators
The best thing about social media is when you can react to posts by your favorite manga-ka and get replies from them. In addition to giving us Vinland Saga, Makoto Yukimura is the creator of the Planetes manga, which is one of my favorite anime series.
Have You Ever Eaten “Viking” in Japan?
If you’ve ever stayed in a Japanese hotel, you might have enjoyed an all-you-can-eat dinner or breakfast buffet called a “Viking.” This unique naming started when the manager of Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel traveled to Sweden in 1957, where he discovered the wonderful Smörgåsbord buffets there. He wanted to introduce this kind of buffet in his hotel.
They were a big hit, except that none of the Japanese could hope to pronounce the word Smörgåsbord properly. One of the staff got the idea to substitute the term “Viking” instead, and the rest is Asian culinary history.
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