The source material of the book is very rich and from what I remember the 80’s series was pretty faithful to it. From what I saw last night of the first two episodes it’s about 80% faithful to it.
There were women who fought and during the dark decades of Japan when the country was almost in a state of perpetual civil war women would fight as it things were so chaotic and dangerous. There is archaeological evidence of women in major battles. They were not samurai in the sense of a warrior caste nor were they entitled to the privileges of Samurai. In the book Shogun Mariko and other women will defend themselves when they or their families are threatened but aren’t warriors and it’s specifically noted they don’t use swords but daggers.
I really really really want to watch the first two episodes...but going to wait until the series is completed so I can binge it all in its full glory.
They've rearranged the timeline a bit. In the book and original miniseries, Toranaga and Mariko show up later.
watched both episodes last night...its pretty awesome! who is the female samurai? the assassin at the end? i found her to have more ninja-like qualities than samurai. i didnt realize how much the last samurai ripped off shogun. its the exact same plot, even when he defends the leader against the assassin during the attack. also, the guy in the original showgun mini-series, toshiro mifune, was the star of all those kurosawa samurai movies from the 50's and 60's. if youre into this series then i highly recommend checking some of those out if you havent seen...seven samurai, hidden fortress (george lucas was highly influenced by this film when making star wars), yojimbo, rashomon, throne of blood...
Amazing show so far....and that's with no knowledge of the book. Hiroyuki Sanada really kills it so far with his subtle acting.
As someone who’s cosplayed as a samurai carrying the two swords is pretty cool. The dying for your feudal lord not so much.
The first 20% of the book is Blackthorne's story, with asides of Omi, Yabu, the villagers. I think this version wanted to show us that the story revolves around three protagonists, and so found that background exposition to introduce them in Episode 1. I really appreciate the Japanese with subtitles. As a Portuguese speaker, I would have loved that the actual second language spoken in the story was used rather than English, but for obvious reasons that couldn't be the case ("what, I have to read the whole series?!")
It’s probably a good idea to jump on this show now since the 80s version you can’t even find a copy in print or streaming which is ridiculous. You gotta either torrent it or bought it a thousand years ago when DVD was still new. Or you can always just read the novel since that’s not going away anytime soon.
Also is anyone doing one episode at a time instead of force feeding and binging all the episodes in one day? *** that I’m glad an episode drops weekly that’s old skool TV.
