one flew over seppuku's nest - a thread for SHOGUN on FX (2024)

they are intetesting: a lot of interview w different actors, historian, set decorator, stunt coordinator .. a lot of variety. My only small quibble is it’s too short, given the richness of the show & level of detail all these folks bring to it, could do with longer conversations in some places

Hahaha...you know, I *thought* that subtitle font they're using felt familiar.

wow, surprises round every corner

Starting to get more interviews and features from everyone popping up

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/shogun-tadanobu-asano-kashigi-yabushige-interview-1235870734/

https://www.gq.com/story/shoguns-hatamoto-cosmo-jarvis

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/anna-sawai-shogun-little-gold-men-awards-insider

Okay yeah, he would do that. Per the Sawai interview:

Q. How did you find your scenes with Cosmo, bringing out this side of her that is really tartly funny and mysterious?

A. It was very organic because we shot it chronologically. The first time that she does meet (Blackthorne), I didn’t know Cosmo too well. I was still trying to figure him out. And as we shot, I would open up to him and he would to me. Cosmo is very different from me. I saw him as John Blackthorne most of the time. His voice was different. I only heard his real voice a couple of months ago for press.

Finally caught up. Such a stunning production. I have to rewatch some of the scenes since I’ve been missing bits of dialog while marveling at the beauty of the shots fabrics faces etc.

i know i keep saying this but omg this fucking show

i am going to need to lie down in a darkened room for a week to get over all of this emotional intensity & sadness

GREAT episode! (#9)

intense

What a shot to end on.

JFC the last scene

caught up with this series over the last week or so and i love it, it's a real treat to have a compelling story so lavishly depicted - the production design and the costumes are gorgeous

tadonobu asano, hiroyuki sanada and anna sawai are obv the mvps but i think cosmo jarvis is really good at playing someone who is constantly having to listen carefully and search people's faces for meaning, which is kind of a thankless onscreen task he pulls off v convincingly

i also enjoy his very blocky screen presence, he's shaped like a minecraft character

one thing i love about the way it looks is how the wide-angle shots often have a subtle fisheye curve to them, with straight lines bowing at the edges of the frame, and how the out-of-focus areas in some closeups have a similarly striking circular bokeh, very different from the way modern lenses usually look

i'd love to hear from the production team as to why they chose to shoot things that way - maybe the distortions and imperfections do help give it the kind of 'visual antique' feeling like tracer suggested upthread when he noted the heavy vignettes that sometimes show up at the edge of the frame

This article has background on some of the production and cinematography choices including use of anamorphic lenses

https://www.theringer.com/tv/2024/4/8/24124015/shogun-cinematography-tv-background-blur-anamorphic-lens-effect

On a merrier note, I have amazed/befuddled my podcast cohosts with the fact that this existed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Dgun:_The_Musical

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ_GcrzB_Pg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oJaU0PO5bw

well i set a record for myself by crying through 90% of the finale

"No translator" 😩

absolutely gutted me

Spectacular, brilliant in its perfect underplaying. How deft was that opening flash-forward alone! (Though as my cohost Jared rightly observed, "I think it’s interesting that the scenes of an old Blackthorne seem to be fantasy rather than an actual flash forward." And how to address the 'it all ends with a big battle' cliche too. But the clifftop scene, well. And Fuji and her own arc getting attention -- that was a good way to tie it all back in to the start, an underscoring of all the cost.

Anyway, just bank all the Emmys and be done with it.

It was really beautiful the way Mariko still was so present throughout the finale, as though she’s just off-screen or something

And yeah re Blackthorne
my theory last night was confirmed by showrunner ie that the opening was a dream Blackthorne has of himself as an old deathbed colonialist with weapons of “savages” having not taught his offspring of the actual people or where they were from… and so all of his actions in the episode culminating with the confrontation w Torunaga was his attempt to “kill” the possibility of him living out that path, and to finally commit himself engage w Japanese in a more meaningful way instead. well, as meaningful as he can manage, anyway.

Mm. Having it end where you don't know 'the' ending for any of them is just...smart. The history is unwritten.

Such unexpectedly beautiful scenes between Blackthorn and Fuji. Awesome finale.

Pretty much at this point I want the Bluray with eight million bonus features, commentary throughout, the whole damn nine yards.

agree! I watched the little 5 min behind the scenes features on Hulu & wished they were all hours long, really just a fascinating production on and off-camera

Anyway, good read:

https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a60582279/shogun-finale-ending-explained/

yeah, this was brilliant - i kinda sighed at the opening reveal of old blackthorne, expecting it to undercut any tension over whether he'd survive whatever happened in the episode's inevitable big battle sequence but it expertly undercut me with a much subtler, sadder story

the final scene with torunaga and yabushige was fantastic - torunaga suddenly appearing much grander and more arrogant, seemingly without sanada playing him any differently, was a remarkable bit of acting sleight-of-hand

fuji and blackthorne sitting next to the empty space and then together in the boat was shattering, yeah

the brief flashforward scene where young blackthorne appeared to acknowledge the presence of old blackthorne kinda reminded me of that uncanny cut between young dave bowman and his ancient counterpart at the end of 2001, a v unsettling bit of editing

re men's health article, I was really expecting "Say Sayonara to Belly Fat! Producers of Shogun reveal 10 Supplements from Feudal Japan that will Get You More Cut than Ritual Disemboweling in time for Samurai Summer!" Teen Vogue-level dissonance.

goddamn what a final episode

so wait why was Toranaga taking heads in the village if he burned the ship?

also, real talk, that had to have been an unrealistic amount of seppuku?

xpost gives him a pretext to weed out known traitors

re men's health article, I was really expecting "Say Sayonara to Belly Fat! Producers of Shogun reveal 10 Supplements from Feudal Japan that will Get You More Cut than Ritual Disemboweling in time for Samurai Summer!" Teen Vogue-level dissonance.

A pound of seaweed a day keeps the goiters away.

I wish this show could have gotten a few more episodes; there were dramatic moments that would have been stronger if we'd gotten more time with those characters. I went back and forth on Cosmo Jarvis' acting too, liking and disliking his acting at various points. But between some phenomenal acting from Sanada, Sawai, and others, and such beautiful costumes, visuals, and music, this was certainly a success

i think Jarvis was good, he suited the character & based on the overall arc i think that he served the show really well

Andy Greenwald on The Watch podcast on Ringer had a hilarious Blackthorne impression on their weekly Shogun recaps that honestly i’m going to miss lol

I'm sure some of his overplaying was intentional on his or the directors' parts. it stands out sharply among the subtlety of most of the other roles. I think I'd still have preferred a different actor in the role though

I came around to like Jarvis as Blackthorne. I kinda think we went meant to dislike him for the first several episodes and Jarvis did a good job being an arrogant oaf. To VG’s point, he suited the character arc.

It was weird to see a little Requiem For A Dream callback pop up in the middle of this.

Meanwhile, I've been reading up on the historical figures the story is based on. Interesting detail in Aijin's wikipedia entry:

At this time, Adams also attempted to send letters to his family and friends in England through the Dutch, but Quaeckerneck and Santvoort did not deliver the letters in order to avoid making Adams's fate known to the English East India Company, which was becoming a trading rival to the Dutch.

Yeah I found this dope-looking book on Adams but it's out of print and copies are going for like $40

https://www.japansociety.org.uk/review?review=546

All of the Shoguns! https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/shogun-season-2-and-3-in-the-works-fx-hulu-1235901617/amp/

hmmmmmm

I feel like the wrong lesson has been learned here.

plenty of history left to draw from, hopefully they can distill a story out of it. Would love it if undermining Toranaga's mystique carried through from the last episode of s1.

Might work if they do a Fargo approach - different cast, another self-contained story, same era and themes. The Continued Adventures of Blackthorne would be pretty disappointing.

Yeah heard some people suggest just adapting Tai-pan or one of Clavell's other books, and make Shogun an anthology. But with Sanada already signed in, I'm pretty sure it will be a continuation of the story. Apparently the real life "Blackthorne" stayed in Japan many more years anyhow