The False Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc truly has a rich history of consuming men's hearts and minds far beyond french borders. Mark Twain the great, american author for example obsessed over her since he was a kid until the day he died and he considered his book about her to be his magnum opus. Twain was a hardcore waifu-fanatic, but no shortage of other, later otaku pledged their life to the Maiden of Orleans, be it in Type Moon works or history. "The False Joan of Arc" is the best story about the titular maiden and it does not even feature her directly. Instead it's a romanticized tale ofClaude de Armoises a woman who succeeded in making people believe that Jeanne had survived and impersonating her for several years. This makes it a fair bit more novel than many other stories and more importantly it's a premise more ripe with moral ambiguity and internal struggle, self-doubt and imposter syn- wait actually just the legitimate feeling of factually being a imposter. Despite many morally questionable actions and the different spin on the material, I found it very nice that the story is not cynical about this criminal and neither is it mean-spirited towards the saint she impersonated. It's a reflection on a person from a stranger trying to emulate them, in some ways marrying the character acting of series like Act-Age or Akane Banashi with intense medieval politicking and conflict the likes of which you expect from your historical, seinen action series. Our mc has to grapple with trying to understand Jeanne and also try to come to terms with the similarities and differences between them, under the threat of death looming over her. Just like Citizen Kane is a great character portrait that starts out with the man himself dying, so is de Armoises imitation and tracing of Jeannes steps more than just flattery, it is a fascinating retrospective on Jeanne through a adjacent, yet different pov, while telling a exciting story with historical basis of it's own. Or something like that I dunno, I am just rambling at this point. The manga looks good and I liked it a lot.