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I do really like the forwarding of the Japanese politics aspects of the story and i think it gets to the better side of the book moreso than the miniseries. Clavell did some trashy stuff (Gai-Jin, for example, is a much worse book than Shogun), but he had a knack for action-adventure. Also Yabu owns. The cuts mostly seem to be scenes of Blackthorne being confused about things alone which is also where Clavell tends to be at his worst in the book so i appreciate it. Honestly they might end up bringing back the prostitute scene just as a show of Blackthorne being homophobic but i dunno. Panzeh fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Feb 28, 2024 |
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Feb 28, 2024 13:48
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Steve Yun posted:Can anyone who is old and remembers the 1980 version recount what it was like and how it compares? One thing I’m hearing is that it laid on Japanese stereotypes pretty hard, so much that Japanese audiences groaned over it Clavell did a lot of work on the script and as others have said, a lot of the Japanese politics elements have been truncated to focus mostly on Blackthorn's story. The book does this a little bit too in that it takes longer to get into Japanese politics, whereas the new show puts it front and center with Blackthorne being sort of a piece added into it, and i think it's vastly improved for it. Though, for the length the 1980 series had, the Story of John Blackthorn is probably all the time they had. Clevell has some trashy quality to his work but he does have a knack for drama and action-adventure. In the book, "Unless we win" is used in reference to Toranaga suggesting that the Dutch should be executed for rebelling against their Hapsburg liege lords, to kinda show that all those rules everyone talks about really doesn't apply compared to power. I'm not really sure the line was appropriate for the conversation this adaptation had, and it just felt like a nod to the scene that was cut for this one. Panzeh fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Feb 29, 2024 |
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Feb 29, 2024 01:46
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Phenotype posted:Although I have to say I didn't realize until the second episode that the "English" they were speaking is actually Portuguese, I thought the Portuguese priests were just talking to the Englishman in English. I finally got it when the priest is talking to Mariko and asking her if she gets more use out of her Latin or her Portuguese and I was like "'or her English,' right? You're talking in English... oh..." The way the book shows people speaking portugese is the most normal English with a few Portugese-ish words (because Blackthorne almost never speaks English in the book), but in the book he uses Latin when he just wants to talk to Mariko and not be understood and the book indicates the use of Latin with Biblical English.
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Feb 29, 2024 10:57
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When the book is talking about Oda Nobunaga, his analog is "the Dictator Goroda", Toyotomi Hideyoshi is like the only historical figure other than Akechi Mitsuhide with a name that doesn't just have a few letters changed.
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Mar 1, 2024 11:53
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I'm not sure why the Captain-General didn't blow up the galley or didn't agree to do something to ensure Blackthorne's death but it does make more sense as a resolution than the book where the Portugese got cold feet about actually getting involved and just gave the galley crew guns to fight the fishing boats. Mariko's basically been doing everything she can to keep him alive. I do think the way they handled the madman scene makes more sense.
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Mar 6, 2024 01:55
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I like the way they changed up what Blackthorne does for them- in the book he seems to be a kind of do-it-all European who also seems to be involved in land battles and i thought it was a good change to have him try and bullshit his way through until he manages to go to something he would conceivably know.
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Mar 12, 2024 12:24
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Yabu's great, an absolute idiot going through betrayal city.
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Mar 12, 2024 12:51
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Nice Tuckpointing! posted:I mean, there's already a thousand slow-hang Ghibli-adjacent Japanese TV shows and movies. The 1980 miniseries is an adaptation that leans more toward the action-adventure elements of the story rather than Japanese politics, and is much more strictly the Tale of John Blackthorne.
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Mar 12, 2024 13:10
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Nice Tuckpointing! posted:Oh man, I just realized that we're probably not going to get village life delights such as the rotting pheasant/dead gardener and the threat to wipe out the village if Blackthorne doesn't learn Japanese in six months that are in the book. We might not even get Buntaro's return, though honestly Blackthorne's threat to do hara-kiri is a pretty good moment. Usually when they have a moment they like they recontextualize it, though, kind of like "if I win", where they avoided a scene of Blackthorne explaining the Dutch Revolt to Toranaga.
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Mar 12, 2024 15:46
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boo boo bear posted:fuji sama is going to be japan's greatest gunslinger, without ever actually touching a gun. Having Fuji give the idea to hang onto the guns was a pretty slick way to give her some character.
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Mar 12, 2024 16:29
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No Mods No Masters posted:I also reread that section last night because I certainly didn't remember ishido's messengers getting turned into paste by cannons. And indeed they simply get turned into paste by 20 matchlocks at point blank instead. But overall they did a good job adapting it with a lot of the implications intact, while cutting out like 5+ really long conversations between all the players making everything explicit Yeah I think it was a lot smarter to have Blackthorne know cannons than some fresh new musketry tactic as muskets were well understood in Japan at the time he came. Also it's a great scene.
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Mar 12, 2024 18:42
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Bloody Pom posted:Based on dialogue in the episode I feel like the Portugese deliberately gave the Japanese older, shittier cannons/mortars. After all, with all the shady dealings they'd been up to in Japan's overseas holdings, why would they risk giving them weapons on parity with their own? I think the Japanese might not have really had the infrastructure to cast decent cannons and the Portugese weren't going to be helpful about that.
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Mar 12, 2024 23:10
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hailthefish posted:ride or die captainsama is also in the book! I will say I would've preferred the explanation of the Dutch revolt as the context for "unless I win", but i didn't really hate the way it went down, i just think they didn't need to shoehorn the line in in the explanation of the Treaty of Tordesillas.
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Mar 14, 2024 19:29
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Jamwad Hilder posted:Well the show/book, while broadly accurate to history, is mostly made up stuff obviously. IIRC Clavell changed the names so he could have them do whatever he wanted them to do for the novel and not be accused of being a historical revisionist or whatever. There's more leeway to say "and then he was over here doing this" because theres no actual historical record that definitively proves that the real person wasn't. The weird thing is, many of the changes in the show are done to make it more historically accurate. Like, Blackthorne bringing the cannons actually does have a historical basis Ieyasu Tokugawa did indeed have the european cannons brought out during the battle of Sekigahara. Panzeh fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Mar 16, 2024 |
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Mar 16, 2024 15:48
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The fun thing is, if they wanted to do a sequel, the actual story of William Adams is pretty good.
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Mar 16, 2024 20:34
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I do love scenes of people being tired of Anjin's nonsense.
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Mar 19, 2024 10:42
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No Mods No Masters posted:Out of any material in the book that isn't sex weirdo stuff, this is probably what I wish they would have taken the hatchet to the most. They made a few smart snips but it's not the full success I've been conditioned to expect The problem is (spoilers on future events from the book) I think it's needed to set up the attempted seppuku scene by blackthorn and I think it's a bit too good a moment to axe entirely.
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Mar 19, 2024 17:27
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MiddleOne posted:Uh so, what was Blackthorne actually trying to accomplish by leaving the pheasant to rot. It makes the meat a lot more tender sitting out a little bit.
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Mar 19, 2024 20:40
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:You know, like the goon that tried dry aging the hitchhiker they killed. I uh... how did you get that from that?
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Mar 20, 2024 00:45
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No Mods No Masters posted:This is part of why I think it could be genuinely interesting to take the story beyond sekigahara. You could take a lot of the bullshit evasive sheen off of toranaga watching him come directly to the point and finally ruthlessly obliterating ochiba and the heir William Adams' actual story is honestly also interesting enough to keep going with that thread, yeah. There's definitely something there.
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Mar 21, 2024 12:34
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I mean i enjoy watching Toranaga do his thing, i don't know if i'd call him a good person but there's really not many good people in this series.
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Mar 22, 2024 14:00
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Also Blackthorne giving up the swords is more reasonable because him being caught out without his swords isn't such a big deal.
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Mar 22, 2024 15:53
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mossyfisk posted:The historical Anjin brought a bunch of bronze guns fwiw In fact they were at the historical battle of Sekigahara.
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Mar 24, 2024 00:30
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I think this last couple of episodes really suffered from cutting Blackthorne bits without replacing them with anything much better, it feels like in some cases an AI tool filling in for the blank.
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Apr 2, 2024 11:59
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No Mods No Masters posted:I would love to be wrong and just completely underestimating the writers. But I think their argument would be that's hard to depict in a filmic format in an exciting way I think they'll do better than that but it's a distinct possibility. As I said before, some of the cuts to Blackthorne scenes feel like they just weren't filled in with anything meaningful- i'm not that interested in the way of the Japanese hooker, to be honest.
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Apr 3, 2024 03:20
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Cojawfee posted:These weren't just Spain and Portugal deciding, the pope also weighed in on these things. The treaty that split the world was based on a previous papal decree. The pope had influence over catholic kings and queens, so he was one of the most powerful people on the planet. So when Spain and Portugal are told by the pope that they get to own any non christian lands in some part of the earth, then they are going to believe it pretty strongly. Yeah, about 20 years before that treaty Spain and Portugal were at war over the Beltranejo claim to the Castilian throne so the Pope was trying to resolve it and future conflicts once and for all.
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Apr 3, 2024 10:45
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Cojawfee posted:I assume he'd also be busy with the ship instead of boarding. Yeah he actually still has a pretty important thing to do even in a boarding action. I don't mind him being bad with swords.
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Apr 5, 2024 23:11
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Mauser posted:loving lamo at the priest's face falling when he sees the new neighbors Toranaga, the most excellent troll. This part of the story, i think, has less of a Blackthorne-shaped void in it (where all his good scenes are cut for three episodes) and it works.
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Apr 9, 2024 12:30
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Nybble posted:At least she hasn’t stolen all of Blackthorne’s rice and gambled it away. Yeah, this is one of the things that gets cut by being more the Toranaga show than the other series- a lot of details as to what Blackthorne is up to over the time period are gone (and some good scenes for him). I'm not sure, in terms of adaptation, these cuts are the same cuts I would've made (the hooker arc is hilarious in how it ends but the rest of it probably didn't need to be there, especially if they're not going to have the scene from the book where it shows how Blackthorne befriends Omi once and for all).
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Apr 11, 2024 23:59
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EVA Unit-002 is going to drop into Osaka and fix the timestream by killing Ishido.
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Apr 12, 2024 21:15
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Blackthorne using that pistol like it's a glock but i'm down for that.
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Apr 16, 2024 20:59
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Laterite posted:My one complaint is that there's been a distressing lack of Fuji-sama the past few episodes. I honestly thought she was going to be in Osaka blasting the ninjas with Blackthorne.
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Apr 18, 2024 23:18
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Sentinel Red posted:Does feel like this version has been sorely lacking a lot of the fun Blackthorne/Rodriguez frenemy moments though. It's missing some of Blackthorne's good stuff from the book yeah.
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Apr 19, 2024 14:12
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No Mods No Masters posted:The show also went out of its way to add even an additional case study of the big "acceptance of death is a perspective worthy of respect and consideration" theme over the book with hiromatsu. I think they kinda had to when they removed the scene that had Blackthorne learning that.
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Apr 19, 2024 21:35
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It would absolutely be possible to make a second season based on the actual William Adams story but i don't think it would really have anything like the book's momentum and i don't think the monologue works well in that context. I'm not sure I really care for the reworking of the Anjin suicide attempt, I think it's really stuff he needed in ep 6-7 when things were stalling out- in the book, that's where he really does a lot of development. I do like the placement of Toranaga's monologue about the future with Yabushige's death. Probably the most sensible way for him to get his plans out there.
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Apr 23, 2024 10:03
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snoremac posted:I really liked their bonding too. And I loved the rope pulling scene at the end. This could have so easily felt sentimental but they pull it off. I don't love this show but this was a fine ending, and it's great that it pulls it off with an unfulfilled 'promise' of a big showdown. I thought the scene of everyone pulling together was about as subtle as a brick, but i'm not sure what I would've wanted differently after Toranaga's monologue and the boat scene.
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Apr 23, 2024 14:50
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No Mods No Masters posted:(Transposing the actual history onto shogun here a bit but) The decision to not get the heir involved at sekigahara contributed to them living for about 15 more years. At that point toranaga had officially become shogun and consolidated enough power that he could finally brutally obliterate them. That story is also very deeply interesting and I hope someday it gets its own great telling If they wanted to make a season 2 based on William Adams-Tokugawa stories that would probably end up being an interesting throughline but it'd be over years instead of the temporally quite tight story of Shogun.
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Apr 23, 2024 16:12
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Nice Tuckpointing! posted:You know what, screw it, I am drat glad it ended very similarly to the book. Action addicts gonna hate it. But it's a good corrective to the more common trend of characters serving plot rather than plot serving characters. We got some great moments with Blackthorne and Fuji, Alvito and Blackthorne, Yabu and Yabu. I wish there was one last encounter with Rodrigues. Not sure how they could have fit it in though. Unfortunately, Rodrigues showing back up is one of those things that'd only really make sense in a more Blackthorne-centric adaptation, he largely served his purposes in the first couple episodes. The 1980 miniseries is basically that adaptation though it's worse in a lot of ways.
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Apr 23, 2024 16:19
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nine-gear crow posted:lol Yabu's death poem was basically "gently caress my life. God drat it. poo poo." Yeah, i think it's a lot better context than the ending paragraph of the book. Toranaga explaining himself to someone he's about to kill is exactly him, and works pretty well.
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Apr 23, 2024 16:44
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C-Euro posted:As others have said, Blackthorne is more useful to Toranaga in Japan than outside of Japan. Most importantly, Toranaga says (quoting the book) "I need one friend" and he doesn't want to make friends with the other Japanese or the Portuguese. Yeah, eventually, Tokugawa actually did give the real William Adams permission to leave Japan once the first English captain to come to Japan on purpose showed up, but Adams declined (It may be because said captain was kind of an rear end in a top hat to him). This was around 1612, though, a long time after Sekigahara. There was actually a lot going on between Sekigahara and the closing of the country, and Adams had a pretty real impact on how that went down.
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Apr 24, 2024 16:31
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