Shogun: More like Shogood (Spoilers 4 days post episode release, show spoilers only)

[Mexal]

4 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

The existence of a Portuguese base in Macau for instance :p 

Fairly sure the Japanese knew that the Portuguese had a base in Macau. What I don't think they knew was that they had a Japanese army of ronin to protect it.

[Veltigar]

39 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Fairly sure the Japanese knew that the Portuguese had a base in Macau. What I don't think they knew was that they had a Japanese army of ronin to protect it.

Time will tell, but that was not how I interpreted it. I think our Japanese friends are surprised by all of it. Macau, the gun running and the Japanese soldiers manning it.

[Corvinus85]

2 hours ago, Veltigar said:

The existence of a Portuguese base in Macau for instance :p 

So basically any info that would come to the Japanese would be from the guys who have an interest to keep their commercial operations a secret from their enemies in Europe, which is the point that the show was trying to make.

[Werthead]

There is some simplification going on here, but for once that was true in the novel, which is why Clavell replaced all the actual historical characters with very-close originals he could do what he wanted with without people yelling at him. He was almost Guy Gavriel Kay before Guy Gavriel Kay had started writing.

To be honest, if he'd kept the names the same, he'd probably have largely been okay.

Edited March 4 by Werthead

[Jaxom 1974]

Caught up on the first two episodes today and damned if this isn't everything I want from my television.  More please.

And I say this even knowing I'm struggling to, at times, keep up with who's who without a list of the various cast of characters to continually flip back to and reference until I figure it all out...

I'm only ever really taken out of a scene when the translating Jesuit is out and about without his hat...the hair cut/piece the actor is sporting doesn't seem very good...

[Arakasi]

Jeez some people here don’t realize this is an interpretation of the book not an interpretation of real history. If you have an issue with inconsistencies take it up with Clavell. Well he’s dead but year it’s in the source material.

[Veltigar]

12 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

So basically any info that would come to the Japanese would be from the guys who have an interest to keep their commercial operations a secret from their enemies in Europe, which is the point that the show was trying to make.

Have you ever met human beings Corvinus  A massive organisation where everyone is able to keep their gob shut seems kind of unlikely, especially since these ronin are most likely to be mercenaries untied by a specific ideology. Not to mention that these guys must have friends and families back home. Leaks are bound to happen.

9 hours ago, Arakasi said:

Jeez some people here don’t realize this is an interpretation of the book not an interpretation of real history. If you have an issue with inconsistencies take it up with Clavell. Well he’s dead but year it’s in the source material.

So just because the book makes mistakes against history, the show gets a pass? That's a rather slippery slope to embark on. No one stops an adaptation from trying to improve on its source material you know, it is kind of what an adaptation should strive for.

12 hours ago, Werthead said:

There is some simplification going on here, but for once that was true in the novel, which is why Clavell replaced all the actual historical characters with very-close originals he could do what he wanted with without people yelling at him. He was almost Guy Gavriel Kay before Guy Gavriel Kay had started writing.

To be honest, if he'd kept the names the same, he'd probably have largely been okay.

You know, they should emphasize that more in the marketing for the show. When I started watching it, I was kind of confused recognizing a few characters from Japanese history and these people then all of a sudden having different names or coming from an ancient line of shoguns.

It depends on personal preference of course, but I'd actually would have preferred more name changes (including of the countries involved), to make it even more distinct from actual history. Just to ensure that people get that the writers are essentially freewheeling here.

 

 

[Ran]

There were 22 million people in Japan, according to estimates, in 1600. Ronin, masterless warriors, would not exactly be carefully tracked, especially as they'd come from throughout Japan -- which was not really "unified" -- and so no one person would be aware of what numbers went off to act as mercenaries overseas. As to how many ronin there were, an account of one battle in this era said as many as 100,000 ronin took part, so ... even that number is very big. 

As it happens, accounts from both the Portuguese and Spaniards from that era show they did employ ronin as mercenaries, sometimes in large numbers. 

So, I don't know, I don't feel like this specific idea that the Portuguese have quietly hired ronin mercenaries to protect their secret base in Macau and that someone like Torenaga isn't aware of it (at least not to the scale and import of it) is all that strange. Nor that the Japanese had very limited knowledge of Europe and most of what they had came from the Portuguese and Spanish who had self-serving reasons to present only a partial picture.

Edited March 5 by Ran

[Werthead]

The third episode was also outstanding.

Spoiler

Nestor Carbonell absolutely slaying it as Rodrigues. The pacing was also great, with it being a relentless chase sequence by land and sea.

Also, Blackthorne's affected way of speaking makes way more sense now. He's used to screaming orders from the helm of the ship, of course his way of speaking and diction is arranged around that.

A major shoutout to the soundtrack, which is outstanding. Atticus Ross's work very easily discernible there, and his best work since (and maybe including) Watchmen.

[Ran]

Yeah, Carbonell's terrific in this.

If I had to ding the show on anything, is that I'm surprised that the fight sequences are as static and uninteresting as they are, when so much else is top-notch. Very basic choreography, camera tends to be locked in place from moment to moment, etc.

[Corvinus85]

Yes, another great episode. The relationship between Torunaga and Blackthorne is developing nicely.

Maybe a nitpick

Spoiler

I wonder if a Japanese ataka-bune could actually keep up with a carrack. Maybe in the waters of the harbor, I suppose. 

I second Ran on some of the fighting scenes. It feels like not all the Japanese actors got enough training with swords or spears. Sanada, of course, knows his stuff.

 

Edited March 5 by Corvinus85

[IFR]

Excellent episode. Many details differed quite a bit from the book, and there were several sequences from the book I really liked that were omitted, but the events themselves do follow closely to the book and all the changes were in service of a very tense, tightly written episode.

I'm not a scholar of history, so as long as what occurs doesn't egregiously clash with my knowledge of historical events, I'm happy. Clavell being open with the fictional nature of these historical events he portrayed by changing the names of the figures depicted I think is a satisfying compromise to allow himself more liberties.

I would compare it to hard science fiction and soft science fiction. If something advertises itself as hard science then I'm going to be very particular about the actual science depicted, and whether any fabricated science has enough fidelity to known science to make sense. With soft science fiction, I really don't care as long as the system developed in the story doesn't break its own rules.

Shogun is clearly a work of soft historical fiction. A lot of research has been performed to ensure many elements of the book/show are historically accurate for greater verisimilitude and immersion, but many liberties are to be expected. And none of the liberties are any worse than something like The Imitation Game, but at least this story isn't pretending to be anything other than complete fiction.

As for issues of logic, such as how the Portuguese could hide their base in Macao from the Japanese regents - this isn't modern days where advance communication makes conspiracies an untenable challenge. Didn't the Chinese successfully hide from their trading partners for 2000 years how they manufactured silk?

A conspiracy of this nature during this time period is believable to me.

[Underfoot]

Man this show is good

[Jaxom 1974]

This show is just gorgeous.

As much as I enjoyed the third episode, something felt off... I'm not sure how to describe it though...something with the pacing I think.  It felt like there were some jumps in the pace that seemed off...

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Read the book a long  time ago,will wait for the entire show to come out before giving it a try! I remember really liking Toranaga’s character and his political machinations,hope the adaptations captured that well. 

[Zorral]

Japanese quickly began getting around, as soon as the Portuguese arrived with their Jesuits.

There were samurai in Mexico by 1603, in Sevilla by 1614. There are books about them.

The Smithsonian Magazine has a piece, available online, about Yasuke, an African samurai, thought to have been born in Madagascar, and enslaved, ending up in Japan. He was employed by the Sengoku era powerful feudal lord, known as "the Grea Unifier" of the later 16th C. By then there were several hundred Africans living in Japan.

Edited March 7 by Zorral

[Ran]

There's a Netflix anime named Yasuke loosely (very loosely) based on his life.

 

[Spockydog]

Man, I love this show. Yer leading man is doing a very passable impersonation of Richard Burton. He is top, top value.

My mum had the books on her shelves in the 80s. We all had a go at them. The sequels were okay and I think I read each one once, but I remember the spine of Shogun falling off after a while.

I think the TV adaptation back then was decent. I wonder how it stands up.

[Relic]

On 3/5/2024 at 10:07 PM, Ran said:

Very basic choreography, camera tends to be locked in place from moment to moment, etc.

Really bad editing as well. 

I thought episode 3 was a step down from the first two, but still pretty good. 

[sifth]

Been watching this show with my friends these past two weeks. We basically take a night off from playing Demon Souls, to watch Shogun each week and we're loving it.