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Notes -
Opinions on The Shogun? We just finished it, and I quite liked it all around. Solid plot, good visuals, great characters like Toranaga and Yabushige and Mariko (and acting performances), the Anjin grated me a bit at first but I got used to it. Probably the best miniseries of such kind in a long time...
...and yet, I don't think there's been an inlength discussion on it here. I suppose that's what happens when something is good; it's not as notable as when something can be complained about, especially since there's precious little of anything that might be seen as wokeness here. I haven't read the book (I tried some time ago but got sidetracked pretty quickly), but I haven't seen complaints about major deviations or deviations from (lightly fictionalized) actual history.
I've seen the first episode, and am unsure whether to keep watching. (I've read the book and seen the 1980 miniseries, a few times each, and like them both, and am not worried about spoilers at all.)
It felt a lot like a certain failure mode often associated with Internet fan-fiction, where the author fell in love with so many of the side-characters that they wind up killing the pacing and narrative structure by ballooning out character "development" with empty scenes that could have better been collapsed into a throwaway reference or a single glance. (GRRM was very good at managing this in ASoIaF, at first. But after book 4 or so, it got beyond his ability to control.)
Despite the claims that various people involved never watched the 1980 miniseries, it was interesting to see how many casting and costuming choices mirrored it and played with it. I especially liked the new interpretation of Rodrigues; he seemed like someone who hadn't exactly gone native, but had adopted a pick-and-choose attitude toward philosophies of life, making him no longer fish nor fowl. And I pity the actor who has to follow in Toshiro Mifune's shoes, but he seemed to be doing a good job. I did not like Yabushige's characterization, but that's on the writers, not the actor. (And why did they alter the name? I searched for a while but found nothing.) I didn't like the actor for Blackthorne - partly because he looks so... early 21st century North American action movie - but maybe he'll grow on me.
Putting aside the annoyance I have at the various interviews that criticize the originals for culture war reasons, I did think there was a lot of promise in the idea of presenting the story from the Japanese viewpoint. The early part where the ship showed up out of the fog was spooky, and the samurai boarding it reminded me of space marines boarding a derelict hulk. But I think to do that properly, they'd need to view Blackthorne as something like a space alien, and the series overall as a "second contact" story with a new alien species that tells you that the "benevolent federation" that you've joined isn't quite so benevolent after all. But instead, they give us enough of his POV that this doesn't work, but not enough of his POV to really get into his head. They left out some bits that provide motivation for his actions, and sped through bits where he should have been working on communication difficulties.
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