If you read the novel or watched the miniseries in 1980, this one is worth a look. Only 2 episodes in so far and it’s going ok.
So far it’s running close to the novel and the original miniseries but with some language corrections. Not as polished IMO as the original, they rely on CGI a bit more but they haven’t ruined it, gone woke or made one of the central characters gay (ironic given that Richard Chamberlain in the original turned out to be gay).
Hiroyuki Sanada always seems to do a good job and if anyone could try and fill Toshiro Mifune’s tabi it would be him. Like the 1980 series it would be a good intro to feudal Japan during the Sengoku period even if the actual history and people are heavily fictionalized.
Yup, if anyone, it would be Sanada. He does good work. Yea…feudal Japan isn’t a time I would pick to grow up in. It would far down towards the bottom. I think Europe/Asia was kind of lucky that Japan didn’t go Genghis Khan on the continent. Too busy fighting each other.
Actually they were good at fighting each other but not much of a threat beyond that. Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea (which was actually supposed to be a walk through to an invasion of China) was a disaster.
Actually pretty true. They wouldn’t truly be truly unified until Sekigahara (1600) under Tokugawa, every shogunate before that had some kind of problem which made them temporary. But even under Tokugawa, the Japanese military really wasn’t an effective expeditionary force which was probably a result of their trend towards isolationism.
I watched the 80’s miniseries and also read the book back then, as I was just getting into samurai and ninjas (after watching The Octagon, of course). Just watched the first two episodes that dropped and am enjoying it so far. Anyone watch ‘House of Ninjas’ on netflix?
Read the book more than once, but could not get through the series. Ended up reading the rest of James Clavell’s books as a result. They were all very good, if not a bit too detailed for most people. With the exception of his autobiographical, King Rat, which was fairly short, and set in a Japanese WW2 POW camp. Fascinating.
Strongly recommend. Probably the best into to the subject I’ve ever seen. If you want to crash course Japanese history through the “warring states” period this is the one.