SHOGUN part two –

Over the last week, I was able to finish the series.  Lots of interesting changes and different add ins which made it quite different from the 1980 series.  Also a cringeworthy announcement which made me delay my posting a bit.

The series continued with the notable difference that Toronaga, not Blackthorne, was the main character and locus for action. Characters went along their paths in relation to him, and as his ambitions were revealed he became even more central to the drama.

Nevertheless, I very much liked the character of Yabushige (the Kashigi Yabu of the original series and book).  Played by Tadanobu Asano, he somehow managed to be a conniving survivalist who was eventually caught in a trap of his own making, but also one of the more endearing and interesting characters of the whole show.  Watching him continue to squirm and try to maneuver as the various traps closed around him was exciting and interesting.  Ironically, if he had just trusted Toronaga his path would have been quite different.

Blackthorne also had his break with Toronaga, based on misunderstanding Toronaga’s intention to fight instead of surrender.  This was the weakest part of the entire series, since it was an even that was not from the book, and was a blatant attempt to diminish the Englishman’s role in his own story.  Cinching the weirdness was that Toronaga did not really punish the Anjin, making it clear that the whole botched subplot was just a ploy to arrange for him to end up in Osaka.

So, that change was crap.  A change that was excellent was fleshing out the bad guy camp with the Lady Ochiba, and making the climactic act Mariko’s sacrifice to convince her to change sides and support Toronaga instead of Ishido and the regents. The penultimate episode had this as its main plot. Maybe the best of the series, it covered Mariko’s forcing of Ishido’s hand to allow the hostages he was holding to leave. That act broke his power over the Council of Regents.  This gave the Anjin the chance to declare his love for Mariko for agreeing to act as her second when she attempted to commit Seppuku. This plot also showed Yabushige’s ultimate betrayal, when he used his ties to the Shinobi to kill Mariko in a last act by Ishido to undo her victory.

Sadly, it took Mariko’s death to put Blackthorne back into the spotlight of the series, and the last episode, while dedicated to wrapping up loose threads, allowed him and his efforts to dominate the storyline. His ship, the Erasmus, was destroyed by Toronaga in trade for the Anjin’s life. His threat to commit seppu ku to save the people of the town of Ajiro (blamed by Toronaga for destroying the ship, which he attributed to hidden Christians in their midst) was his final transition to understanding the Japanese.  I really like the scenes of the Anjin and the people of the town raising the hulk of the ship so that it could be rebuilt. Mariko’s husband Buntaro joining the effort was an unexpected but nice touch.

The show stealer for the final episode, though, was the interplay between Toronaga and Yabushige before the latter committed suicide. Everything was laid out, including Toronaga’s ultimate plan to become Shogun. It was touching and added even more to Yabushige as a character.

Overall, this was an amazing series, and I highly recommend it!  What I don’t recommend, though, is the unfortunate decision recently announced to ruin Shogun, which was a stand alone book that ended largely as the series has done, by making further seasons of the show.  It’s a very very bad idea which runs the risk of cheapening the primary work, and, frankly, sucking as bad as other unneeded extensions (read here, any Star Wars since 2015, The Rings of Power, etc.  It’s a straight up money grab that I strongly hope that they won’t screw up.