Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
All alliterations are accidental.
User ID: 83
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
17hr ago
Honestly, I found it thoroughly unremarkable.
Now, it's been a long while (20 years?) since I watched the old Shogun series, so I certainly have some rose-colored glasses on, but somehow I didn't really enjoy my the new one like I expected to based on my fondness for the old one.
The plot seemed to meander meaninglessly, with the intrigue too opaque to make sense to the viewer, and the characters too guarded and game-of-thronesy for their motivations to really shine through.
The visuals were...decent, I suppose, but the desaturated and heavily filtered appearance made it look unreal and cheap.
The characters, oof. Yabushige was fun but too cartoonish. Omi, Nagakado, Saeki, Hiromatsu, Buntaro, Tsuji and Fuji were enjoyable, relatable even, but seemed to have very limited agency. But ultimately the whole tale revolves around Toranaga, Mariko, Anjin and Ishido. Ishido, meh, good performance but is mostly just there to act as a less-competent foil to Toranaga. Toranaga I don't know about; I just greatly preferred the Mifune version. Mariko and the Anjin were outright painful to watch, with Mariko being so wooden her husband wanted to kill himself (I guess that's the point) and getting too much attention by half, and the Anjin just being an overdramatic clown.
At least the fight scenes were modestly decent.
Overall it's just...mediocre. There were production values, some decent performances, some that really missed the mark for me, but in the end it needs to measure up to Rome, and no, it's not Rome.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
22hr ago
Why shouldn't I just let the fat pack on and on?
Why do you want to continue to live at all? Whatever your answer to that is, it probably works better when you're not getting dragged down by half a ton of flab.
Also, what's wrong with diet and exercise? Eat half, move double, problem solved.
Well eat away then, champ.
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