Shuna's Journey

Shuna's Journey by Hayao Miyazaki

An artful retelling of an old story. A quest to get grain -- in an era where the hero has a rifle -- and it's so clearly mythic that it works. Charming art.

The Gunpowder Age

The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History by Tonio Andrade

The adventures of the gun. With frequent ventures into explaining fallacies in why China fell behind. (To be sure, sometimes the fallacies seemed a bit cherry-picked.)

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casus belli

On reflection, it would help if the villain of the piece offered a reason for his war.

On deeper reflection, I suspect he's of the mind of the First Emperor, who called for endless war to consume resources so that the subjects would not go after luxuries like poetry, filial piety, and food, but in his period, he's going to have to at least feign a reason beyond that.  If only for his claims to care deeply for the people.