A kid from nowhere watches the world change and realizes he has to change with it, or die defending a Japan that's already dead. Ryoma's not fighting to preserve samurai honor, he's fighting to survive the moment when honor stops mattering. By the time you understand what he's become, you've watched the entire system that made him collapse.
In the mid-19th century, Japan is still shut off from the outside world, though the long Tokugawa regime is showing its first signs of reform. On the island of Shikoku, seven-year-old Ryoma grows up in a lower-class samurai family. He is honest, gentle and a little naive, and he hates cruelty so much that even a child crushing an insect can bring him to tears. Other kids, and even his own family, call him a cry baby, yet he is no coward: his distress comes from wanting to stop senseless wrongs. Only his older sister sees his depth. She believes he has a special gift, and she protects and encourages him. About a decade later, Ryoma will become one of the leading figures in bringing down the Shogun's rule and opening Japan to the West. The series is an adventure drama whose story opens in his early boyhood.
