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Originally Posted by biggerboat
We finally finished Shogun. It was quite disappointing and we barely made it through the whole thing. Kinda boring really.
it really dragged at the end
mariko started off a cute character but by the end i just found her so annoying
first few episodes were great and then just kind of dragged and was a lot of stuff i didn't really find any interest in nor care about
also do not like how they fetishsize things and dive into tropes about japan which in reality are a bunch of outliers which they present as the norm
japanese were not these group of zealots who would happily kill themselves over the slightest issue, it sometimes happened, but was not the norm by any means, and in times it did happen was often "you kill yourself now or we'll kill your entire family" kind of situation
ie japan was always very big on gunpowder weapons and bordering china, they were very early adopters of them
when the mongols attempted to invade japan a good 300 years prior to the events of shogun, they brought bombs, grenades, rockets and very early versions of muskets and cannons - we know this because we've recovered these things from the mongol shipwrecks
however something that did happen was that gunpowder weapons were rapidly improving during that time because Europe was in a constant state of war whereas asia was relatively stable
as a result of this, when the europeans arrived, they had significantly more advanced cannons and muskets than the locals - this did have a very big impact - but they soon adapted and began making cannon in that manner
is asia, they always built massively thick city walls with an earthen interior and brick outer layer and they were the size of city streets
as a result, these were wholly impervious to cannon fire, despite that many of those city walls were used defensively in WWII vs modern artillery, they still stood at the end of the war and survived WWII
you can blast at it all day, you'll destroy the exterior stone, blow up the towers and gates, but the earthen core will remain no matter how many times you shoot with cannon
the only reason why most Chinese cities no longer have walls is because they were torn down because of the traffic congestion they caused in the modern world
compare that to Europe which always had thinly built stone walls that were possible to be taken down with cannon
this led to a great divergence of gunpowder armament philosophies in the east vs west
in the east they focused on things for anti-personnel
such as rockets, grenades, bombs, & spread fire anti personnel devices
here is a 3 barrel cannon from the ming dynasty
here's another
they still have the design papers of many of the old cannons and they are always of the shotgun style variety
like a shotgun today, this meant limited range & terrible accuracy so their uses were limited
meanwhile, since in Europe gunpowder took on more of a siege role, designs began favoring accuracy, power, & distance
the result was that asian cannons stagnated, they filled their niche and thus remained the same, whereas over time, the europeans were able to innovate and develop their cannons so much that eventually, they even exceeded the anti-personnel capabilities of asian shotgun style cannons by simply firing grape shot or chained ammunition
those developments also spurred on to creating powerful muskets which could be used from a distance
shogun is incredibly lazy, what should be depicted as fighting forces with a diverse armanent which includes local cannons and muskets is shown as one of sword, spear, & bow
they also rapidly began copying the European innovations when they came into contact with the portugese
ie they occasionally reference an invasion of Korea in the show, that invasion force irl was 1/4 musketmen
so it really annoys me that it takes the last samurai route and pretends a country which fully embraced gunpowder weapons instead did not
what keeps me watching is the main character is really charismatic and has a really good presence, he also sounds exactly like jeremy irons and I've always loved the sound of that man's voice, also really like yabushige - he's one of the only people who acts genuine and looks out for his own best interests instead of "according to tradition i must kill myself right now"
but all those historical inaccuracies aside, this is what really gets me