Kingdom - Something About The Ousen Army

The Shukai Plain battle has been raging on for quite a long time and we got to know a tad more about the Ousen army, their performance on the battlefield have been arguably neat for a supporting role since this arc is meant for the trios to shine and carve their way to become general.

However, that’s not really the topic here, but rather, there’s something unique and terrifying at the same time about the Ousen army, or to be more precise, how Ousen actually organizes and runs his army, and today I’m going to make an analysis of this matter.

First off let’s have a quick review of how Ousen’s subordinates have been portrayed:

1.­ On the first day, MaKou used the “wave” strategy to push Kisui into a corner.

You’d think that this was his handiwork but I personally think that is not the case, and it was Ousen who came up with that or to be more specific, Ousen taught him that strategy.

2. On the 9th day, AKou managed to stall 3 noticeable Zhao armies at the same time for a fair amount of duration:

And of course, it was Ousen’s defense strategy, one that even Riboku acknowledged.

And it was pretty much stated that AKou is capable of precisely imitating some of Ousen’s strategies:

Therefore it should be safe to assume that Ousen also taught AKou his own strategies.

3. On the same aforementioned day, Gunei, AKou’s deputy, also revealed that he too can use some of Ousen’s trick, albeit not on the same level as AKou.

On a side note, he first showed up at Sanyou so that means he’s been with Ousen for a very long time => lots of strategies learned.

4. Lastly, ever since the demise of MaKou, Hara occasionally dropped a panel of Denrimi, who’s always shown to be next to Ousen.

Also doing some fancy analysis of the situation, and being used as a comedic relief with that Ousen mind-reading but ok let’s get back on track.

On the opening of the center clash, he proved himself to be a commander with lots of weird strategies at his disposal.

And there’s definitely more but the battle was interrupted so we could not get the full grasp of his real capability as a general, at least for now. However, following the pattern above, I don’t think it’s far-fetched to say that all of Denrimi also inherited these strategies from Ousen. So Denrimi lowkey is Ousen’s best disciple.

So what can be concluded from those portrayals? To me, unlike the Kanki/Ouki/Renpa/(insert any noticeable army name here) army which is pretty much diverse in some ways, the Ousen army is like a school full of disciplined and brain-washed students, who only know one thing and one thing only that is to follow exactly what Ousen says this is also backed by how the spies behaved at Gyou.

Imagine, an army with a lot of commanders that can use Ousen’s strategies to some degree, strictly follow his order, and gather no ambition

Isn’t that just frightening? It’s like playing a game, you have a clan full of people using the same set of gears, the same skill tree, and the same technique as the top player in the team, sounds like a real pain to deal with huh?

You can argue that it’s no fun and boring to play the game by following the same method, being uncreative and in the first place there’s no guarantee that it’s the best approach since people can always come up with new ideas and the likes every day.

But hey, I know this because I’ve been through before, lots of people would rather follow this indoctrinated way than starting everything from scratch and finding all the tricks of the game on their own because it’ll cost a lot of time and there’s also no guarantee that you can find a way to climb to the top this way, because, well, not everyone was borne a genius, no?

So back to the main point, Ousen brainwashed his entire army and shared his strategies with his commanders so they no longer have to spend their time needlessly in hope of creating new ones, because, obviously,

So why bother doing the hard way when you already have a

laid out by the Ousen who ranks really high on the leaderboard right now?

And to be honest, this really fits the way Ousen

.

This is not because he is interested in what they have in store, but because of the chance that

, thus making them more efficient on the battlefield, by his way, just so he can manipulate the chessboard to his own will .

On top of that, a general who excels in martial art now only need care about just one thing, that is to hone their fighting skill to the pinnacle and come drop by Ousen’s personal classroom once a while to cram up new strategies, and tadaa, we got a general who can utilize both brain:

And brawl alike:

Even further than that, the scariest thing about this method of building an army is the fact that Ousen has absolutely no concern for his fallen commanders, as they can be easily replaced by those that he has recruited from various campaigns.

One last thing to add, for what purpose did Ousen decide to shape his army like that? I guess you already have the answer ever since his introduction. Long may he reign.