Anatolia Story

Run, Yuri, RUN!

Red River (天は赤い河のほとり, Sora wa Akai Kawa no Hotori), also known as Anatolia Story, is a historical fantasy shōjo manga series by Chie Shinohara. Sadly, it is only a manga. If anyone wants to turn it into an anime, please hurry up.

The story is about a fifteen-year old Japanese girl named Yuri Suzuki, who is magically transported to Hattusa, the capital of the Hittite Empire in Anatolia. She was summoned by Queen Nakia who means to use Yuri as a human sacrifice. Yuri's blood is the key element needed in placing a curse upon the princes of the land so that they will perish, leaving Nakia's son as the sole heir to the throne. As the story progress, however, Yuri not only repeatedly manages to escape Nakia's scheming, she also becomes revered as an incarnation of the goddess Ishtar and falls in love with prince Kail.

Also, this summary is straight off of Wikipedia, so someone please change it soon and add creativity.

Compare Oke no Monshou, in which a 15-year-old American girl named Carol Reed is thrown in Ancient Egypt.

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Tropes used in Anatolia Story include:

• Actually That's My Maid: Prince Zananza initially mistakes Hadi as the infamous concubine that Kail picked up. When he's corrected and sees Yuri for the first time, he assumes that Kail is shacking up with a young boy.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Nakia's sister, princess Nadia is in love with Mattiwaza, who doesn't seem to share the sentiment. Aside from running away with her because his own people began a mutiny, that is.
  • Ramses is in love with Yuri, and so are Rusafa and Zananza. It's too bad the latter two died.
• Anchored Ship: When she was younger, Nakia begged Urhi (who was at the time, a junior priest) to marry her and run away together. He refused. She had a crush on him when they were younger, but there seems to be nothing going on between them now. When she was testifying against him, he hugged her from behind and said "I wish we could start over from where we first met."
• Annoying Arrows: Averted. When Yuri is shot in the back by one, she nearly dies and is clearly feverish and unable to think straight when she makes it back to Kail. And when the arrow is pulled out, she goes through even more pain (not helped that she had to keep the arrow in until the skin around it hardened, for plot-related reasons).
• Attempted Rape: Odds are if Yuri gets kidnapped,this is bound to happen.
  • Even if she's not kidnapped. Kail doesn't show much concern for her actual consent several times over the course of the series.
• Battle Butler: Urhi. For Nakia.
• Better as Friends: Yuri says this to Ramses. Looks like denial is just a river in Egypt.
  • Yuri wants to say this to Rusafa, but is told to pretend she doesn't know about his feelings for her.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Zannanza, after being drugged by Nakia's rose water, begins to act much more violently, abducting Yuri and endangering her life by taking her through the desert with no food or water. Tito also falls into this territory after being drugged by Nakia's black water, which is justified, because it was meant to make him kill Yuri.
• Brother-Sister Incest: It's strongly hinted that Mattiwaza from Mitanni had a sexual relationship with his older sister Tatukia, who later became Nefertiti in Egypt.
• Bifauxnen: Yuri was mistaken to be attractive young boy while she was pretending to be a dancer.
  • She's also mistaken for a boy when one of Kail's brothers comes to visit. This leads to a Crowning Moment of Funny where he comments that he did not think Kail was into that sort of thing.
• Big Bad: Nakia. She plans to curse the Hittite princes so that her own son can become king. She will do so by killing Yuri.
  • Nefertiti counts, too.
• Blood Magic: The Katashiro requires Yuri's blood.
• Cool Horse: Aslan, who even can survive being shot with multiple arrows.
• Creepy Child: Jude after Nakia drugs him with her magic water, to prevent him from clearing Yuri's name of a murder charge.
• Dark-Skinned Blond: User Ramses, and presumably most of his sisters under their wigs, like Nefert.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Prince Kail tries to sleep with Yuri, even though he's legally an adult and she's hitting fifteen (and he later admits that he thought she was really thirteen). Also, the fourteen-year-old Juda has a wife and several concubines. There's also the various socio-political issues that Yuri, as a girl from the modern world, sometimes has trouble grasping.
• Mr. Fanservice: Kail and Ramses, mostly, but arguably most of the male cast.
• Eye Scream: Urhi gets an arrow to his eye.
• Eyes Always Shut: Kikkuri.
• Fantastic Romance: Kail and Yuri's relationship is this. Kail points this out as one of the reasons they aren't meant to be together.
  • Of course, the Babies Ever After ending indicates otherwise.
• Fish Out of Temporal Water: Yuri is a girl from the 20th century AD stuck in the 14th century BC.
• Flaying Alive: Poor Tito.
• Foe Yay: The relationship between Kail and Ramses. It doesn't help that they end up fighting naked.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Kail and Ramses
• God Save Us From the Queen: Nakia.
• Godiva Hair: Urhi, when revealing his nature as an eunuch.
• Historical Domain Character: This is kind of a given, as this whole manga is based on actual Hittite history, including The Annals of Suppiluliuma, written by Mursili II. aka Prince Kail.
• Hot Mom: Güzel when she is introduced. Nakia counts as well. Later on Ryui and Shala become mothers as well.
  • An extra chapter takes place several years after the last chapter and mother-of-four Yuri barely looks any different.
• Hot Dad: Kikkuri later on. Also Kail.
• Identical Twins: Ryui and Shala can't be told apart by anyone, except by Hadi and Yuri.
  • Later, Ryui and Shala both give birth to two sets of identical twins. By the same guy, who couldn't tell them apart either.
• If I Can't Have You: Under the influence of Nakia's rose water, Prince Zananza threatens to kill Yuri if he cannot have her as his princess.
• Letting His Hair Down: Ilvani as a "disguise" when he tries to capture Urhi.
• Longing Look: Zananza has given Yuri several of these. As has Rusafa.
  • Urhi has given Nakia enough longing looks to last a lifetime.
• Luke, I Might Be Your Father: Urhi is rumoured to be the true father of Prince Juda, Nakia's son, and no wonder! Juda is his spitting image. When Juda's boodline is questioned, Urhi reveals that he is a eunuch in order to save Nakia's reputation.
• Mismatched Eyes: Ramses, with an eye of gold.
• Outlaw Couple: Urhi and Nakia.
• Plucky Girl: Yuri is this, most notably when she survives being shot with an arrow and stalks Ramses until he agrees to patch her up and take her back to Hattusa, going so far as to threaten to haunt him if he continues to refuse.
• Polyamory: Since Kikkuri couldn't tell the difference between Ryui and Shala, ending up getting one pregnant while he thought it was the other one, he ended up marrying them both.
• Settle for Sibling: In an extra chapter, we find out that Satoshi, Yuri's boyfriend from her own time, eventually married her younger sister, Eimi.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: The general reaction, whenever Yuri dresses up.
• Shown Their Work: With just a few changes for dramatic purposes, this otherwise sticks rather closely to the actual Hittite records, and the final scenes depict the modern-day ruins of Hattusa as it appears today.
• Slap Slap Kiss: The first few moments between Kail and Yuri appear like this, until they fall for each other for real.
• Spell My Name with an "S": Rusafa in particular was known as "Lucifer" in early scanlations due to the ambiguity of katakana and lack of linguistic context.
  • Another example is Tatukia (from the Hurrian "Tadu-Hepa", usually depicted in the Hittite histories as Tadukhipa). Sure, most of these character names come straight from those same histories, but she's referenced so infrequently that the translators can be forgiven for the miss. Considering she disappears from history about the same time Nefertiti shows up in Egypt, though that's not 100% confirmed in real life. Oddly enough, called Tatsukia in earlier translations, making this a literal example.
• Stable Time Loop: As it turns out, Yuri's appearance in ancient times and her involvement among the Hittites ultimately leads to their history as known in real life. Crossed with You Already Changed the Past.
• Subordinate Excuse: Urhi is fiercely loyal to Nakia, to the point of attempting to bite his own tongue off when interrogated for answers. Even after countless failed attempts to kill Yuri, Nakia still keeps him around.
• The Faceless: Urhi stays this for several chapters.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Between Kail and Ramses.
• Trapped in Another World: Not that Yuri doesn't try to escape back to Japan, but between Nakia's machinations and Yuuri's own feelings for Kail (and arguably Anatolia itself), this just never ends up happening. After she marries Kail, definitely crosses the boundary into I Choose to Stay.
• True Beauty Is on the Inside: People are shocked when they see that Kail's concubine is such a shallow kid with no figure. Soon enough they see her true beauty in her personality and strong will.
  • This often feels like a case of Hollywood Homely to a lot of readers, as Yuri is always drawn as being rather cute from the start.
    • It could also be Deliberate Values Dissonance. When Yuri is in present-day Japan, everyone generally acts like she's quite attractive. In Hattusa, Yuri is much shorter than everyone else, and Kail mentions that girls her age ought to be more voluptuous and have larger breasts, hence his trying to feed her things that would help her gain weight (hence also Kail's assumption that Yuri is thirteen, when she's really nearly fifteen).
• Weak but Skilled: Yuri has no physical skills of her own, but manages to become Genre Savvy enough to dodge murder/rape attempts several times and survive in this world that she has just arrived of.
• 100% Adoration Rating: Yuri, naturally. When she's stung by non-fatal scorpions as a result of a prank pulled on her by some princesses who want to be made Kail's queen, the news gets out and most of the town tries to stampede the palace with scorpion sting remedies for their beloved Ishtar. Kail too, though not always to quite the fanatical degree that Yuri inspires in subjects and strangers alike.