After watching Episode 10, I reduced the rating from 7 to 3. Why? Because the finale is just bad, so bad that it made me feel cheated. You have 9 episodes of build up, multiple scenes of large armies, all this talk about "war war war" and... nothing, not even a small flashback.
When the finale began with a glimpse of an elderly anjin, I thought this would be a good flashback to the battle of Sekigahara. But it didn't capitalize. In fact, there was no reason to even bother with the elderly anjin.
And what is the ultimately let down is that they didn't even follow the book. The show is called Shogun and they didn't bother to show you the ending in which he became shogun or show you what happened to Ishido. These were all in the book.
Either they ran out of budget or for whatever reason, the finale seemed rushed and just overall one of the worst episodes ever and definitely one of the worse finales ever.
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With such high rating, you can be sure every review out there will tell you all the same positive things about this series that I can tell you. It is filmed crisp and beautifully with the newest technology and a very high budget production. The dialog is smart, deep, often with philosophy as well as wisdom. The actors are top notch and fit the realism and seriousness of the tone.
But what many may have overlooked, especially the western audience, is just how "comic book" and cliche they portrayed ancient Japan. The one scene that completely throw me off the suspension of disbelief came early in episode 1 when a random NPC walked up to the prisoner aijin and asked a few questions. The "leader" of the village then just out of the blue decapitated him in front of the public.
I get they're trying to portray an ancient Japan that was brutal, but that scene was so comical because of how out of touch it was with reality. For a better representation of how ancient Japan was, I recommend Yoji Yamada's famous samurai trilogy - The Twilight Samurai, The Devil's Claw, and Love & Honor. Even "When the Last Sword was Drawn" was more accurate and realistic in their presentation.
The error in Shogun's portrayal comes from the fact the book was written by a westerner. It almost, I would say, demonized Japanese as if they were completely inhumane. This theme would progress into further episodes. Again, perhaps it is just how the westerners view the culture from their lenses.
In Yoji Yamada's trilogy, it demonstrate that despite the culture, despite the code of the samurai, that they were still human, they still feared death and valued family, marriage, etc... In the movie "Hari Kari - Death of a Samurai" it showed how the most proud and arrogant samurai feared death and would hide themselves when their top knot was removed in order to wait for it to grow back than commit seppuku.
For this, I would put Shogun at a 7/10. It is entertaining and it has a lot of great qualities. But for this one shortcoming, it just makes it really hard to take it seriously despite much of the element is actually based on a true story.
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