Let's be frank here: Red River was made during a younger, less progressive time in the world, which honestly shows with the genuine lack of basic social decency evident everywhere in the manga.
In total, I believe it was four guys that tried or did rape Yuri. Her supposedly good love interest, Kail, tried once, and it was completely glossed over. Actually, it was one legitimate time where she was explicitly saying no, but in literally all of their smut scenes (which are scattered but fairly plentiful in comparison to other shoujos), she says "wait" or "stop" or "no", and yet he just completely ignores her. It honestly made me vastly uncomfortable, but I suppose one that the manga just was a product of a time where "no means yes" mentality was common and accepted. However, that doesn't really excuse that he tried to rape her for real, and that time she was very, very strongly against it, but her handmaidens tried to ignore it at first and then she just drops the subject forever after being saved? The entire manga just glided past that moment, and Yuri just kept on stormin' on without any regard to literally all the rapey stuff going on. It sends a terrible message to younger readers (which is why this should be marketed as a josei instead of a shoujo). He even tried to rape her when they first met, but it was written off as "okay" or "excused" when he stopped because she said she liked someone already. WTF? He should've stopped because she said no, not because she already liked someone. That's basically saying that if she was single but still against having sex with him, he could have raped her and that would be the end of it.
Also, about the other rapists, one of them literally could not control his mind, but the other two were in-love-but-not-really with her and tried to express their interest in her by forcing her to have sex with them. Even then, the two, the Prince of Darkness and Ramses (who tried several times, let us not forget), somehow were both regarded by Yuri in the end as a friend worthy of respect. I'm sorry, but what? That's insane. Perhaps that happens for some rapists and victims of rape, but even I, an arguably stupid person, cannot even begin to fathom the amount of destruction and impact that readers are forced to endure. So, yeah, there is a lot of horrible stuff that goes on inside this manga that never gets addressed and is probably only there for dramatic effect. It's a terrible strategy and adds nothing to the plot besides horrifying its readers, but I suppose that one must forgive the times and move on.
However, despite its social issue problems, it still has honestly very frustrating, hypocritical, and badly-developed characters.
Kail is the worst love interest I've seen in a while. Besides being a rapist, he also happens to be only interested in her for sex. I read this manga a while back and just recently re-read it, and now I can see clearly that in every single scene they have together, he ends up trying to pressure her into sex. It's kind of ridiculous how horny he is for her. But I will give him some credit here: He does seem to care quite a bit about her. He wants her to be happy, physically hurts when she isn't there, and constantly pushes her to be her best, even if she isn't prepared for it. I did feel that the mangaka tried to put him on a pedastal too often by juxtaposing Yuri's innocence with his sexual maturity or political savvy, which glorified his worser actions and made Yuri seem like the stupid or wrong one even when she wasn't, but I digress.
Kail, at times, could be cold and uncaring, but he was, ultimately, a pretty solid, moral character and someone strong for Yuri to partner with.
Yuri herself was a pretty emotionally strong female character. Many people have said she's rather unrealistically strong, given her age and her several accomplishments, but you have to consider how she was forced into her situation and still was able to make the best of it. The mangaka handled a lot of the emotional turmoil that Yuri had to go through nicely. However, there were some points that I felt the author completely glossed over and only added in for dramatic or shocking effect when she could have harnessed it to groom Yuri's rapid and ever-changing character development. Nevertheless, Yuri's humble, kind, mature character is a fairly good role model for all female readers to follow.
I did not care too much for the side characters, as there was a large cast of them. Several of their storylines felt unnecessary or rushed at points,
especially Rafael's love for Yuri and Ursula's death
. But I will give the author some credit, as she was able to incorporate quite a large amount of characters with ease and still introduce them at appropriate times. As for the villains, the mangaka was really good about giving them emotional backgrounds and histories. Though some smaller characters and 'evil' characters may not have had too much time, they still seemed like real people with emotions and histories hidden within themselves.
Besides some of the complaints I have against the social issues and the characters, the manga is overall a very long epic with really interesting arcs, engaging dialogue, and a hard-to-put-down aura. The mangaka has really amazing storytelling skills, for sure. The bits of history infused with battles, romances, heavy suspense, and a large amount of magic were incredible! Though there are still some points that I felt she could have expanded on
(for instance, Kai's magic and the magic system in general)
, it was still a very smooth, almost flawless storyline. For once, I couldn't identify any immediate plot holes or inconsistencies because the author covered it all.
TL;DR: Conclusively, I cannot recommend this manga in good conscience, especially to a younger audience. Though this is definitely considered one of the most famous, classic staple pieces of historical romance mangas, it has many character flaws that were poorly addressed, several missed opportunities that made for a bad world building and emotionless build-ups, and a horrid view on literally basic human rights. But it does have a very engaging story with several well-executed and enormously interesting arcs, a strong female character (which is a lot more than every single shoujo out there), and very clean art. On that note, I still am divided on what matters more: giving a manga a good review because it’s a long epic with a lot of prestige, or giving a manga a bad review in order to dissuade younger readers from being pulled into a toxic manga? Therefore, 2/10.
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