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Amakusa 1637 is a 12-volume manga by Michiyo Akaishi. It follows the adventures of six Japanese teenagers: Natsuki Hayami, Masaki Miyamoto, Naozumi Yatsuka, Eri Kasugano, Seika Akishima and Eiji Horie. They're classmates from a Catholic school in Kobe, and they barely survive the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995; five years later, during a school trip to Nagasaki, they get mysteriously transported... to the Amakusa region in the year 1637, shortly before the historical massacre of the Christian population.
Having been transported to different times, the six kids first must reunite with each other and assess their current situation, as well as what has changed between them since some arrived to a time set prior to the others's arrivals. And when they're done with it and gather their common knowledge of the future, they set out to exorcise their own inner demons as well as to prevent the carnage...
Tropes used in Amakusa 1637 include:
- Action Girl: Natsuki is a Kendo expert and the sister of a Heir to the Dojo. Said abilities come off VERY handy when she's mistaken by a local swordsman.
- All-Loving Hero : Natsuki's greatest strength is her ability to unite others behind her through sheer kindness. The real Shirou also was this... but he was much less fortunate.
- Ambiguously Bi: Naozumi has felings for Natsuki (which she rejects when he gives her an Anguished Declaration of Love), but is also said to yearn for Shirou.. Considering that he pretty much raped a prisioner Shirou and the Values Dissonance, he could toe into Depraved Bisexual or Situational Sexuality for some.
- Eri is rather close to Ginji, Shiro's best friend, but she's also VERY strongly implied to have romantic feelings for Natsuki too. At very least she says that, had Natsuki actually been a guy, she would've fallen 100% fallen for him.
- Asian Gal with White Guy: A Dutch captain named Jahn is interested in Seika/"Marina". She doesn't reciprocate.
- Babies Ever After: The Happily Married Eiji and Kichou have five daughters, and the eldest is named Eri.
- Battle Couple: Natsuki and Miyamoto, sorta.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Natsuki, full stop.
- It also rubs on Miyamoto.
- Downer Beginning: The manga starts in 1995, with the junior-high-aged Natsuki and Masaki barely surviving the Great Hanshin Earthquake that decimated their city, Kobe. In-story, said 'quake actually was caused by the same phenomenon that would throw the kids in the past six years later.
- The Dulcinea Effect: Jahn saved Seika's life when she arrived to the past and fell for her. She doesn't reciprocate, though, and in the end she becomes an Intrepid Merchant, but there's no records of her ever taking a husband..
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: Shirou Masuda aka Shiro Amakusa. (Truth in Television, as he was described as a very handsome young Samurai).
- Elegant Classical Musician: Seika Akishima, a promising classical singer.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Eiji
- Girlish Pigtails: Eri braids her hair
- Heel Face Turn: Occur frequently among those exposed to Natsuki.
- Historical Domain Character: Shiro Amakusa, Tokugawa Iemitsu, Yagyu Jubei, Tadanao Matsudaira, the Nabeshima clan, etc. Even more so: Masaki became none other than Miyamoto Musashi.
- Identical Stranger: Natsuki looks a LOT like Shirou (only younger and female), and this is a BIG plot point since the people believe her to be either Shirou or an angel that took Shirou's form to help them. In the end she pretends that "Shiro" disappeared alongside Eri after the uprising's end, retaking her identity as Natsuki and marrying Miyamoto.
- I Will Wait for You: Ginji never married, waiting for Eri to come back. When she finds out in the present, she feels very sad.
- Love Dodecahedron: Natsuki loves Miyamoto. Miyamoto loves her but later is amnesiac — yet he falls again for her when he recovers his memories. Naozumi loves Natsuki and also Shirou, though he also saw him as a Replacement Goldfish. Otsu loves Miyamoto. The lost Shiro's best friend, Ginji, likes Eri. Eri herself seems to like Ginji a little, but is strongly implied to like Natsuki even more.
- Japanese Christian: Both the peasants and the students.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The locals believe the time-travelers to be messengers from "Deus". The time-travelers are a lot less certain, and know that their "miracles" have mundane explanations, but some of the coincidences are troubling.
- Meaningful Rename: Seika is also known as "Mariana", her Christian name. Natsuki is first referred to as "Francisco-sama" and later as Shirou. Naozumi is renamed as Kotada... and Masaki, as Miyamoto Musashi.
- Mission from God : Seika is confident the group is on one. Her confidence isn't necessarily shared.
- Mundane Afterlife: Inverted. At one point, the locals ask the protagonists to describe the "Heaven" they believe they come from. When the protagonists comply, they are themselves shocked and moved when they realize the modern society they describe - one of electric light and heating, religious tolerance, rule of law, and ample food - is, in fact, Heaven for the medieval peasants. A paradise that they'd been taking for granted.
- Romantic Two-Girl Friendship: Eri and Natsuki.
- Saintly Church : The protagonists seem to be forming a proto-example of this.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong : The protagonists' goal throughout the series. They succeed, resulting in a modified, quite better timeline, which begins when Iemitsu witnesses the phenomenon that brought the kids to the past, decides to listen to "Shiro" and the Christians, the kids convince him that said phenomenon was a miracle from God, and he decides to retreat and end the uprising peacefully. As a result there persecution of Christians stopped, a Southern Shogunate led by Tadanao Matsudaira was founded and Japan as a whole was much less isolated later, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were never hit by the Atomic Bomb (implying Imperial Japan was much less cruel and iron-fisted before and during World War II), Japanese wolves thrived to the point they became pets not unlike actual dogs, etc.; all thanks to "Shiro Amakusa and the Saints of San Francisco" (Natsuki/Shiro, Naotaka, Seika, Miyamoto and Eiji)
- She Is All Grown Up: Eri grows into a borderline Hot Librarian, according to the last chapter.
- The Strategist: Eri is the brains to Natsuki's Action Girl-like brawns.
- Student Council President: Natsuki, with Masashi as her vice-president. That is, before they get thrown back in time.
- When Eri returns in the present, history has been rewritten enough for her to actually be this at school rather than Natsuki.
- Time Travel
- Trapped in the Past: In the end, almost everyone in the cast remains in the 17th century. Only Eri returns to our era, finding it changed for the better by the group's actions
- Cell Phones Always Existed : Justified; the cell phones only work when the phenomena that caused the time travel is active (allowing communication to pass through modern-day satellite infrastructure).
- Write Back to the Future : Well, more like leave sealed cell phones to be found in the future. The box they're sealed in does NOT open, until an adult Eri gets there and calls out to Natsuki instead of Shiro. There, she finds them and sees that Natsuki's phone still works - at least enough to let Eri hear her and the others' last messages to her.