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Any thoughts on/ insights on Mariko's lack of movement/ stoicism during the arrow scene? It could be interpreted two ways (at least) and unsure which it was. 1. Further committing her place in the structure/obedience/trust to her husband and his disallowance of her freedom to even take her own life 2. Defiance and "leaning in" to a chance at death and not flinching at the opportunity to have it come for her
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Mar 20, 2024 11:36
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TraderStav posted:Any thoughts on/ insights on Mariko's lack of movement/ stoicism during the arrow scene? It could be interpreted two ways (at least) and unsure which it was. Mariko knows Buntaro is a violent drunk and those people do not respond well to disobedience. She was enduring. At least my interpretation. Also, Buntaro was exerting control, and, perhaps, sussing out how Blackthorne felt for Mariko. Blackthrone's extreme concern gave Buntaro his answer. Nice Tuckpointing! fucked around with this message at 11:43 on Mar 20, 2024 |
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Mar 20, 2024 11:40
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FLIPADELPHIA posted:I thought the reveal of Mariko's family name was well done. Having read up on the period recently, I recognized the name from actual history so it landed well. It was a real Oh poo poo moment, and really did explain a lot of the subtext that we've seen in her relationships. Yeah I liked that too and I also like that she clings to the idea that her dad was actually a Good Dude even though he was a huge traitor who tried to seize power for himself and ended up hated by everyone.
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Mar 20, 2024 12:09
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Interesting in the context of the show where so many of the lords and their retainers are scheming but there’s still this idea of “geez can you believe that guy was a traitor??? What a piece of poo poo!”
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Mar 20, 2024 12:19
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Dr.Radical posted:Interesting in the context of the show where so many of the lords and their retainers are scheming but there’s still this idea of “geez can you believe that guy was a traitor??? What a piece of poo poo!” He was a traitor who did the betrayal but didn’t get away with it. The poster who likened it to “my name is Jenny Brutus” was on the money.
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Mar 20, 2024 12:27
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"Unless I win."
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Mar 20, 2024 12:40
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Dr.Radical posted:Interesting in the context of the show where so many of the lords and their retainers are scheming but there’s still this idea of “geez can you believe that guy was a traitor??? What a piece of poo poo!” Hideyoshi (the Taiko) was running on the borrowed legitimacy of Nobunaga as a unifier, and everyone wants to use that idea of legitimacy too. He’s still a complicated character in history today, but nobody celebrates the traitor. Again, the Brutus thing rings very true.
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Mar 20, 2024 13:34
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Dr.Radical posted:Interesting in the context of the show where so many of the lords and their retainers are scheming but there’s still this idea of “geez can you believe that guy was a traitor??? What a piece of poo poo!” I guess it sounds dumb but there's acceptable scheming/political maneuvering, and then there's what the Akechi clan did, which was raising their army against their lord without warning and marching it into the imperial capital to assassinate him. Historically, even the Akechi army didn't know what they were doing (allegedly) until moments before the assassination was launched. Historically the Akechi army gets crushed by the loyal retainers/Nobunaga's sons, led by the future Taiko. In the show Mariko said her father was forced to kill his own family (which is more dramatic for sure) but historically most of them get killed in sieges or kill themselves when it's obvious they're going to lose to the loyalist forces. Mitsuhide flees after losing a major battle and gets killed by bandits in the woods less than a month after his attempted coup.
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Mar 20, 2024 13:43
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Jamwad Hilder posted:Mitsuhide flees after losing a major battle and gets killed by bandits in the woods less than a month after his attempted coup. I tell you what man, those damned wood bandits will get ya
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Mar 20, 2024 13:56
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Beefeater1980 posted:He was a traitor who did the betrayal but didn’t get away with it. The poster who likened it to “my name is Jenny Brutus” was on the money. I kind of like the idea of Mariko using this analogy only for Blackthorne to go "Jenny who?" like a big ox, because his schooling was vocational and didn't include the classics and he left England literally just a year before Shakespeare published the play
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Mar 20, 2024 14:14
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Oda Nobunaga's descendant Oda Nobunari is a figure skater in Japan. About 15 years ago he biffed a crucial performance and the Japanese internet had a meme going around of the ghost of Akechi knocking him over.
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Mar 20, 2024 14:28
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Jamwad Hilder posted:I guess it sounds dumb but there's acceptable scheming/political maneuvering, and then there's what the Akechi clan did, which was raising their army against their lord without warning and marching it into the imperial capital to assassinate him. Historically, even the Akechi army didn't know what they were doing (allegedly) until moments before the assassination was launched. Sounds dumb because it is dumb. We don’t have to pretend that this wasn’t all some old bullshit that the people in charge used to shield themselves from their own crimes. Like people said, it’s only a disgrace if you lose. Speaking of which, Buntaro giving the old “I did it because of the booze” defense is some classic poo poo if you’re familiar with Japanese crime reporting
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Mar 20, 2024 15:13
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I had forgotten some of the scene and at first took Mariko's caution of drinking sake from the soup bowl as just her amazement at the amount an English Sailor could put down. Then a masterful amount of acting from everyone involved reminded me that Buntaro is a mean drunk and wow did they nail that scene. I felt PTSD from some past experiences. not being the mean drunk, being around one
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Mar 20, 2024 15:27
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:Hideyoshi (the Taiko) was running on the borrowed legitimacy of Nobunaga as a unifier, and everyone wants to use that idea of legitimacy too. He’s still a complicated character in history today, but nobody celebrates the traitor. Again, the Brutus thing rings very true. Well nobody but video games. There's quite a few Nobunaga was a dark evil sorceror games set in the period.
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Mar 20, 2024 15:38
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Dr.Radical posted:Speaking of which, Buntaro giving the old “I did it because of the booze” defense is some classic poo poo if you’re familiar with Japanese crime reporting I enjoyed how he apologized not for beating Mariko, which was his right as her husband, but for disrupting the peace in Blackthorne’s house. Reminds me of an episode of Rome where Pullo kills that one slave boy and Vorenus is furious at him, not because of the murder, but because he did it in his house, in front of his children.
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Mar 20, 2024 17:05
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idk if this is a hot take because I dont' keep up on the community, but having read Shogun like 20 years ago, multiple times, I kinda feel like they are taking this adaptation WAY too fast and as a result, many moments feel... unearned? Don't get me wrong the show slaps. My wife works in medicine so when she gets home, she rarely wants to read subtitles. It's just too much for her after a long day. But you know Shogun is 100% fire because she is all-in on watching it when she gets home. It's all so amazing but there's a small part of me that feels sad how fast everything progresses due to the need to fit the entire giant book into 10 total episodes? I could cite many examples, but Mariko for example, her relationship with Blackthorne is so quickly baked that the viewer fails to understand the slow simmer going from viewing Blackthorne as a lowly savage and eventually a love interest. It all happens so quick. Or how Blackthorne gets the Hashimoto title, which is a huge part of the book and felt earned, whereas here it feels random. Idk, anyways, just curious what people think about this aspect of the show. I give it a 9/10, can't give it a 10 due to the pacing. PS kind of random but they shot most of this in British Columbia; I live north of Seattle so I'm right by there, and ever since I was told the filming was in Canada I can't unsee it, 
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Mar 20, 2024 17:15
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I don't think it's that hot a take except insofar as anything going against the general oh holky gently caress reaction the show is getting is. I also had the thought during this episode that we're now halfway through and it doesn't quite feel like the blackthorne/mariko relationship is where it needs to be at this point for things that happen later to have the appropriate impact. Hopefully episode 6 or 7 can spend a lot of time on it and mitigate that, but I have a feeling it's going to be mitigating a problem, rather than not having a problem
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Mar 20, 2024 17:23
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Taima posted:idk if this is a hot take because I dont' keep up on the community, but having read Shogun like 20 years ago, multiple times, I kinda feel like they are taking this adaptation WAY too fast and as a result, many moments feel... unearned? You're not wrong about that stuff, but it's a miniseries, so they're working within a lot of time constraints they wouldn't have if they were planning for like 4 seasons or something.
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Mar 20, 2024 17:28
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Pacing feels mostly fine to me. We just got up to chapter 40 or so of the book and there are 61 total. So a little more than halfway, 50% through the show. The back half of the book is a lot more dense in terms of plot and there are things in the epilogue that I suspect they'll show on screen instead of just being reduced to one sentence at the end of the novel.
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Mar 20, 2024 17:31
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That is the one thing I wish could be different, but at least it's 10 episodes and not six or eight. Twelve to 15 episodes might be perfect for letting the time that passes feel more organic. Right now it feels like it could be anywhere from two weeks to three months since they returned to Ajiro. In the book there is a definite slow burn to how Blackthorne learns Japanese and local customs, and by the final act, you really get a sense of how far he's come. We're now halfway through the show and he still seems to be making rookie cultural mistakes. That being said, some things work in both the book's and show's presentation. The Hatamoto title feels sudden, but in the TV show's world, Toranaga sees an asset in Blackthorne, he just hasn't figured out what it is yet, but giving him that title is a quick and powerful way to keep hold of Blackthorne while also protecting him. As for the shooting location, I hand-wave it away with geography nerd knowledge. The Izu peninsula, where Ajiro is, is geologically unique from the rest of Honshu because until a few million years ago it was an isolated island in the Pacific with a different geology and biome. Granted it has now had a long time to mix that biome with the rest of Honshu, but, oh well.
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Mar 20, 2024 17:54
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What is Izu like IRL?
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Mar 20, 2024 18:12
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Burns posted:What is Izu like IRL? Not much, what izu with you?
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Mar 20, 2024 18:17
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Yeah I prefer how the miniseries is handling many or most or maybe all things besides blackthorne/mariko and the more down tempo feeling of time passing stuff. As everyone is saying always they are absolutely killing it on the toranaga side (man I loved his performance being dug out of the dirt and smiling like a loving demon) and that's probably the most important thing to me. I guess it's just one of the hard things about adapting shogun that you also really have to do blackthorne/mariko well because uhh it's going to be pretty important also
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Mar 20, 2024 18:23
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The way I look at it, FX had some concrete parameters that they gave to the showrunners / writers, such as "we're doing 10 episodes max" or "you have 50 mil to spend on this, do what you will" and within those constraints, whatever they are, I feel like the showrunners are exceeding my expectations to such a level that it's nearing perfection as an adaptation. With that in mind, I can't fault the writer(s) for having to rush some things just to make them fit. I do wish we could have 20 episodes but then again, that alternate universe me would be here complaining we can't have 30 lol I think the love story as a rushed element actually makes a lot of sense. They've depicted/cast Mariko as an astonishingly beautiful woman who has been completely trapped in a life she mostly hates, in a marital relationship she completely hates. Even her brief respites from her suffering (her tender moments with her son) are under the cloud of her husband's scorn, disapproval, and abuse. In stumbles this absolute dipshit who has almost nothing in common with her, until she starts to realize they actually have a lot in common and that his dream of adventure and freedom is a captivating, if impossible dream for her. It's totally believable that she'd develop strong feelings for him, and that he would for her as this tragic, melancholy figure who needs protecting. I think the love story is very well done given the above constraints.
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Mar 20, 2024 18:54
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I wanna give the actress playing Fuji a shoutout, she really nails the  multiple times when dealing with Blackthorne in the first half of the episode.
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Mar 20, 2024 19:04
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Would love a gif of her eyeroll when they were drinking
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Mar 20, 2024 19:10
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They're dropping some time passage signifiers here and there. Blackthorne and Mariko talk about how nice the weather is and she says "oh just wait till winter it loving sucks" and we're starting to see snow. They said multiple times it would take about six weeks to train the gun regiments, and that passed in about an episode and a half. Took the heir's mom loving forever to get back to Osaka though, oof must have been quite the trip
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Mar 20, 2024 19:11
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XYZAB posted:Mariko: You appear to be in good spirits today. avatar/post combo
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Mar 20, 2024 19:52
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People saying the relationship hasn't been earned have apparently not had and an entire relationship's life cycle in the span of a week before like I have 
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Mar 20, 2024 19:56
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kiimo posted:People saying the relationship hasn't been earned have apparently not had and an entire relationship's life cycle in the span of a week before like I have Yea, it's also been quite a bit more than a week and they are clearly going through some crazy times. I don't find the relationship unbelievable at all, including the fighting they are doing. Ballz posted:I wanna give the actress playing Fuji a shoutout, she really nails the That scene at the end with the comforting hand and smile really sold it. She's fulfilling her duties and also starting to see why she has been asked to perform those duties. She's also really embraced that pistol she was given. She's rolling up on people ready to blast.
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Mar 20, 2024 20:06
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lol she's like history's first suburban mom gun nut, going to the firing range daily
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Mar 20, 2024 20:21
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Ballz posted:I wanna give the actress playing Fuji a shoutout, she really nails the In early episodes she does some fantastic eye acting with having them bounce back and forth trying to figure the situation out. I've really noticed how well her non-verbal presence is. Definitely A+ casting here Not a book-reader, would someone care to weigh in on the lack of exposure we have to the opposing force(s) in Osaka through Ishido and the plot lines with the Black Ship/Portugeese? Seems like these lines have really taken a back seat, but is that intentional and we are not meant to really understand their machinations?
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Mar 20, 2024 21:04
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When Sekigahara?
Tankbuster fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Mar 20, 2024 |
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Mar 20, 2024 21:29
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TraderStav posted:In early episodes she does some fantastic eye acting with having them bounce back and forth trying to figure the situation out. I've really noticed how well her non-verbal presence is. Definitely A+ casting here Purely speculation and I'm not a book reader, but Ishido really seems like someone just catering to the other lords, who has somehow amassed quite a bit of power. If you watched Ep 5, it's already starting to unravel. I like the way they depicted all the other council members gradually leaving as they didn't get what they want. I think Ochiba (the mother to the heir) is really gonna start taking over, and from a storytelling perspective, focusing on what Ishido is doing and then just squashing that and letting someone else take over as the council leader seems like a waste of screen time. Toranaga is the main protagonist and we focus on what he and his allies are doing because it's very crucial to what's gonna happen. Blackthorne, the black ship, the cannons, etc, are kind of just a catalyst and a side story to what's really happening. But having someone like him seemingly be the main focus of the storytelling gets us a little more involved with how things would seem from our perspective. Saying that, I bet those cannons are gonna loving wreck in whatever battles come up, but it shows what kind of things the Portuguese have been depriving from the Japanese, either purposefully or because they are just behind what the English were doing.
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Mar 20, 2024 22:05
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I wonder if they are ever going to give us the prophecy about Ishido, which he kind of views as plot armor? that he will die an old man
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Mar 20, 2024 22:12
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Tankbuster posted:When Sekigahara? I dunno that you can "spoil" something that happened over 400 years ago but it might be a good idea to anyway
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Mar 20, 2024 22:12
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I like that didn't even try to sanitize the men. Starting every commentary with, "Obviously, as your husband, he has every right to do with you as he wishes..."
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Mar 20, 2024 22:19
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FLIPADELPHIA posted:The way I look at it, FX had some concrete parameters that they gave to the showrunners / writers, such as "we're doing 10 episodes max" or "you have 50 mil to spend on this, do what you will" and within those constraints, whatever they are, I feel like the showrunners are exceeding my expectations to such a level that it's nearing perfection as an adaptation. Also they don't overdo it, so far it's just an affair between too deeply lonely people, not some great epic love story.
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Mar 20, 2024 22:21
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Not too shabby for an 1:1 remake of the old TV special. Though whoever the hunk of meat playing Blackthorne is ain't no Richard Chamberlain, that's for sure. sauer kraut fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Mar 21, 2024 |
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Mar 21, 2024 01:18
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Hey now He's doing his best Tom Hardy impression and he's pretty good at it, give him a break
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Mar 21, 2024 01:46
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