YMMV / Red River (1995)

• Complete Monster: Zuwa is a feared enforcer of Queen Nakia for his method of skinning victims alive for the slightest offense. Using the skins he takes as materials for his clothes and accessories, Zuwa's favorite targets are children and "exotic" people seen as rare material, desiring to do the same with Yuri. In charge of capturing her, Zuwa even went as far as to murder the child Tito for defending her and helped frame Yuri for his death to his sisters to plot an assassination attempt with them. Having enough of Yuri escaping his constant attempts on her life, Zuwa went on a rampage, killing a number of solders in a final attempt to kill Yuri.
• Hollywood Homely: Yuri is a Japanese teen who gets magically transported to the ancient Hittite Empire. She is drawn cute, but most people in the ancient times comment on her being very scrawny and plain, and more than once she is mistaken for a young boy. Justified as a case of Deliberate Values Dissonance: back in such times, feminine beauty was defined by a full and voluptuous body, not the slim builds generally considered more attractive today. Early in the manga, Prince Kail is shown attempting to fatten her up, as he considers that to be more attractive. Progressively subverted in-universe, since as the story goes on and she becomes more and more popular, descriptions of her become increasingly flattering.
• Iron Woobie: Kail, Yuri, Rusafa.
  • Kail goes through the sickness and death of his father, the death of his favorite brother and the apparent death of Yuri at the hands of the Egyptians, the evil schemes of his stepmother, and generally works as hard as he can to end the wars and suffering spread throughout his homeland. And while he loves Yuri and wants her to stay with him, he still refuses to force her to stay, thinking that she ought to go back to her family and boyfriend in her own time.
  • Yuri, meanwhile, is kidnapped from her home, nearly murdered and raped multiple times, and quickly sees how corrupt and evil Nakia is. After extremely awkward beginnings she responds by learning how to fight physically and mentally, going to war to protect the people of Hattusa, and vowing to see to it that Nakia pays for everything she has done.
  • Poor Rustafa is utterly smitten with Yuri, to the point where he does just about anything for her. He knows that she loves Kail though, and doesn't so much as say a word about his feelings for her. In her name, he fights battles shoots Urhi in the eye (with a bow that requires three men to bend!), and humbles himself before the Egyptians so they can bring Ramses to ensure Yuri's care and survival after she nearly drowns and miscarries. He's brainwashed by Nakia into kidnapping Yuri, but despite being ordered to do all the things to her he wanted to, he still can't bring himself to do more than kiss her feet. He's nearly killed and his reputation is in tatters after the kidnapping. And by the end of the manga, he is still so utterly in love with Yuri (despite her marrying Kail) that he sacrifices himself to protect her from Nakia.
• Jerk Ass Woobie:
  • Ursula is this, after revealing that she agreed to impersonate Yuri and ruin her reputation because after watching her family die of The Plague and suffering through poverty, she was desperate to know wealth for any amount of time. She then becomes Yuri's lady-in-waiting, and by the time she dies in an Heroic Sacrifice she has evolved into an Iron Woobie.
  • Nakia herself was this when she was a teenager. She was willful and sullen, but she was also forced to marry a man old enough to be her father, who rules the country that she views as her homeland of Babylon's sworn enemy. When she marries him, she ends up lonely in a foreign land, surrounded by a royal family who was already close-knit and had no need for her. Also, when she finally had a son by the king, she faced rumors that the child was illegitimate.

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