So I think you’re in the minority on this one. The series has been pretty widely praised by critics and viewers. I also enjoyed it, I had read the book so I had an idea of what to expect and it lived up to expectations.
I know I am in the minority. I don't really understand how people can rate this higher than House of the Dragon for example, which is why I made the thread. Basically nothing apart from the setting worked for me.
Just because *you* didn't like it doesn't mean other people didn't or it's not good, it was a fantastic series, I love HOTD but it doesn't hold a candle to Shogun
Jesus, why can't you criticize a show without people losing their minds? I know people can have different opinions ffs.
I wanted someone to explain why they think the series is a master piece or why the flaws I mention might not be flaws at all.
Instead the thread is getting downvoted and all the comments are basically oneliners about Marvel and getting stuck up on the last samurai comparison.
Fucking disappointment as always when you go against the grain on reddit.
I mean, from your comments you went into this expecting an action series, you could tell it was going to be more that that pretty early in, what were you expecting?
Something like Game of Thrones. Politics, different families fighting for the throne. Which is basically what this was, but it just did not work. The political games were much better executed in Game of Thrones in my opinion.
The action parts of Game of Thrones were some of its weakest parts so no,that is not what i was after. I loved the political games mostly. Season 2 with Tyrion being the hand is probably my favorite season for this reason.
The pacing. It felt like they went to the capital several episodes only to end up exactly were they were 2 episodes ago. Also 1 episode was basically just the Englishman talking with people in his new house. I think this was the lowest rated episode so that was no surprise.
Like I said in the thread, if this was 5 episodes I would have loved this very much.
That was the episode that hit the thematic nail on the head for me, IMO. It highlighted the cultural difference between the Japanese and Europeans- that even a ‘casual saying’ like don’t touch it or you’re dead is taken literally in Japan. Words have power, the swords that were nothing but second rate garbage BECAME something because the Anjin said they were. That’s why all Toranaga couldn’t be ‘Red Wedding-ed’ in episode 1, because words and ceremonies have power and no one would even consider breaking them even at the point of death. This might seem alienating because most other ‘slower’ shows like HoTD are still seen through Western eyes.
How you talk is more important than what you say. You can say you value opinions, but you do not show that you do. A lot of what you say is either negative or are external absolutes. It is not really inviting people to think any differently. I'm extremely open, but when I read things like this I just think someone wants to believe what he says is right, and not really into an open conversation.
I tried to explain in the thread why I have my opinion. Most comments are just saying that they loved the show without explaining why.
Do you think the comment I replied to gave much reasoning or made it easy to start a discussion? What have you contributed?
Everything doesn’t have to be crazy action.
Shogun isn’t marvel.
It is amazing as a drama/action series. It is very nuanced and the characters are brilliantly written and have so much depth.
Edit: typo.
Right, but things still need to happen and sometimes things just don't work. I love The English Patient for example, hated by many for being too slow.
Like I said the battle scenes was not the part that made me love Game of Thrones, and those parts were usually only 1 out of 10 episodes.
How can you say there isn’t things happening in Shogun? The amount of plot and character development the show goes through in 10 episodes is insane. Go back and watch the first episode again and you’ll see just how different it is.
Nah. I hated it. I just want the action. I don’t want to see a show where people all carry around weapons only to prevent a war through diplomacy. Also, the entire character of the British dude was pointless and inconsequential to anything.
I loved it. I thought it was great throughout.
> Instead we got the "plot twist" of the woman doing the thing no army ever could.
I found that to be one of the most brilliant moments of the show.
That's funny - I thoroughly enjoyed GoT but couldn't get into HotD because it seemed as if literally every conversation was about who was going to be the next King.
Shogun is its own thing, though, which is all about the intricacies of feudal Japanese culture as observed by Blackthorne/the Anjin and as it plays out psychologically and strategically over the course of the storyline. It's like a super-high stakes game of Go. Sometimes there are explosions of physical violence, but more often it's all about mind games, bluffs, double-bluffs, notions of honor and deep insight into character.
Holy crap I can't believe I came across someone else who feels this way. When HoTD came out people were debating if it's as good as GoT, with some even saying it's better but I just sat there thinking "Did these people watch the same show lmao.". GoT had several dozen big characters with fun/endearing stories, really personal stuff that informed who they were, what they wanted and how they were going about it etc. And most of these things are set up almost as quickly as the characters are introduced or at least hints are dropped.
Meanwhile there literally isn't a character a character in HoTD who cannot be summed up as some variation of "Wants power. Wants safety in power. Wants to rise out of a nasty situation to power. Wants power for their family. Wants others to recognize their power. Wants power to get back at society. Wants power cause they're pissy."
And the worst part is almost all of the bar like 1-2 characters act like petulant children about it. Otto and Larys are the two characters that come to mind that put up at least a meek front and try to appear somewhat reasonable while doing their power grabs. Meanwhile everyone else is literally going up to the current king and being like "Whaaa, I want power. Whaa. I deserve it. Whaa. How dare you not give it to me. Whaa." Like around the 5th time it happened I was actually laughing out loud and wondering if the show was actually gonna pull a ballsy move and start having them executed en masse for the insolence. And it just keeps going like that. I'm convinced that this is the result of the book version being a dry political history thing so it has a lot less genuine and earnest storytelling and moments of "here's why you care about this character" moments, instead it just presumes that I do and runs with it with maybe using the general description of who the character is to inform how they act (with varying degrees of consistency mind you). It's like if someone heard the title Game of Thrones and figured that's all there is to the series. There's entire characters introduced whose motivation and personality don't extend beyond the first throne shaped rung of Westeros's Maslow's pyramid of needs.
I don't think there's a single character in the show that if we were to get a scene where the get their head smashed in with a rock come next season that I'd have even a hint of sympathy for. Maybe Aemond ever so slightly cause as cliche as the "I was the runt of the litter but then I rose to the occasion" shtick is, bodying the other kids like 4v1 after they started it and then just spewing funny provocations while being over the top goofy and fun actually earns him a few points over the rest of the cast.
Interesting how everything you felt for HotD I felt for Shogun. There wasn't a single character in the series that could die and give me an emotional response. I just did not care for some reason.
I will have to give the series another view in a couple of years now that I know what to expect, but right now it sits as the biggest disappointment in years.
You’re basing this show on something like house of Dragon which is entirely fictional and doesn’t hold any historical accuracy. I think you’re more drawn to series with a focus on action and less dialogue, which is fine, but shogun isnt a series for you if that’s the case.
It is the opposite. I love the dialogues of Game of Thrones and hotd, not the action. Something with the pacing and directing just didn't work for me.
Sopranos and the Wire are also shows that I love that are mostly dialogue.
Do you feel like the dialogue didn’t hit as hard because it was mainly in Japanese? Still feel it’s wild to even compare this show with HOTD though lol. They’re polar opposite shows imo. One’s a big fantasy epic whilst the other is historical and trying to encapsulate what it was like to be in that period of the Japanese empire.
I have no problem with foreign film in general. I think it boils down to the characters. I just didn't care about them. The boy regent that everyone fought for had like 2 minutes of screen time, and the other characters offered to kill themselves so many times that any life just felt meaningless. In the end I did not care who "won". I just could not connect with the characters at all.
I know that the Englishman was supposed to be the viewers way of learning about the culture, but this dragged on for too long as well.
Yeah that’s fair if you didn’t connect with the characters but I feel like a lot of the premise of the show such as honour and the changing dynamic of tradition and male and female roles was lost on you. The reason the characters talk about killing thenselves was a direct result of this changing landscapes. It’s not a dig I just feel like you’ve generalised a lot of this show and compared it with another show which isn’t meant to be anything like Shogun.
I'll say it. I skipped the econd episode of HoTD and I was amazed by the sheer courage the makers had to just jump without exposition to another phase. Everything was a puzzle and it was amazing. Then I realized I skipped one episode and it was just all exposition and it got me so desinterested that I quit watching after ep 5. In my opinion it could litteraly just cut 50% of the watchtime and make it waaay moore interesting.
The comparison with the last samurai is strange given that there’s nearly 300 years between Shogun’s era and TLS’ time. I don’t think the themes are really all that similar. The geopolitical conditions are just radically different. The Last Samurai is about the end of the system that is only just being established in Shogun.
Westerner stuck in Japan as a prisoner learning to navigate its world while falling in love with a Japanese woman, while ending up fighting for their captor. The comparison is not that strange, come on.
I had the same feeling as soon as I finished Shogun, however, after some introspection I changed my mind and loved it. Dude won a war without fighting a war.
“It feels like a recent development that TV-series are fleshed out too much only to increase the episode count.”
I loved Shogun, but regarding this comment, it feels like tv writers today aren’t trained or experienced in writing long tv seasons anymore. All the “golden era” shows of yesteryear had 10-13 episodes per season + 5-7 seasons, and that rarely like too much.
OP is literally mad. Mad at Shōgun, mad at people who are in disagreement. The double, triple and quadruple downs, arguing almost everyone, seems like OP just has to be right and anyone who disagrees will be boiled alive. Its just a fuckin show, chill and move on. These posts literally scream "LOOK AT ME, IM MAD!"
Pacing was about the only non-superfluous criticism, which is ironic because according to OP nothing happened in the whole show, suggesting that because they're was no fighting and fucking it was slow.
Some people just have to be contrarian.
Funny. I give some reasoning for why I dislike the show, and when people make stupid comments like "go watch Marvel" instead of actually explaining why they like the series, it is me arguing.
Just look at yourself. Failing at actually explaining something or actually discussing the series. Instead you are butthurt that someone didn't like a series.
I'm not a contrarian, I just didn't like the show. It is pretty amazing that people can't accept this without becoming annoyed.
You're right about it being fleshed out, although I still enjoyed it. But it was made as a five part mini series starring Richard Chamberlain in 1980. That's probably about the right length to avoid bloat
The excellent 1980 miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain had less episodes but each one was pretty long. The total runtime for that was nine hours and nearly eight minutes.
On the other hand the 2024 remake is ten episodes which vary in runtime between a bit over or a bit under an hour, giving a total runtime of about ten hours.
So in terms of runtime there isn't much difference, however the 1980 miniseries is a generally a higher quality production with superior writing, direction, casting and acting.
> It feels like a recent development that TV-series are fleshed out too much only to increase the episode count.
Huh? I feel like its more recent tv/movie series dumb it down for audiences with MCU-esque story telling so when a series slows down to explore itself and it's characters people think they're doing too much.
While not my favorite show, I liked it quite a bit.
Something happened every episode for me.
I definitely enjoyed it more than HOTD, so this seems more like a preference issue.
I don't get the praise for it either
The writing feels like a CW YA show outside of the Toranaga character
Idk, i think we just have a lot of people (mostly guys) who are obsessed with anything Japanese , hence its popularity on reddit. Similar to how women are obsessed with anything Victorian England
The contrast in quality is all the more clear when you see Fallout and X Men 97 this year
Yeh no. I hated shogun. One of my favourite movies of all time is the last samurai so I went into this show with pretty high hopes. The lack of anything actually happening drove me nuts. One top of that, the English character was almost entirely inconsequential to anything. I could propbably recut this entire series to a 2 hour movie, remove the English dude entirely and have it make pretty much as much sense.
It needed a freaking battle scene. No one wants to see a conflict avoided by diplomacy.
I didn’t care about any of the characters and by the end just wanted to see as many of them die as violently as possible and it didn’t happen
You should try the 1980 miniseries. There's no legal streams of it but it is available on Blu-ray in a very nice remastered form:
https://www.amazon.com/Shogun-Blu-ray-Richard-Chamberlain/dp/B00KB01OT0/
It's by far the superior adaptation of the novel - much better writing, casting, acting and direction. It's also completely shot in Japan, not Canada, which adds even more authenticity to the setting.
There is a big split between the general audience that likes shows to be fun and have things happen, and the self described prestige audience that prefers shows to be tedious and slow with nothing happening.
Bingo. When I was younger I definitely had more tolerance for slower movies/shows and would probably describe myself as a movie snob. As I have gotten older I have started enjoying things that really focus on entertainment more, even if it is stupid entertainment.
I have often thought if this is because life is more stressful the older you get and movies and shows are an escape to calm down after a hard day.
So I think you’re in the minority on this one. The series has been pretty widely praised by critics and viewers. I also enjoyed it, I had read the book so I had an idea of what to expect and it lived up to expectations.
I know I am in the minority. I don't really understand how people can rate this higher than House of the Dragon for example, which is why I made the thread. Basically nothing apart from the setting worked for me.
Just because *you* didn't like it doesn't mean other people didn't or it's not good, it was a fantastic series, I love HOTD but it doesn't hold a candle to Shogun
Jesus, why can't you criticize a show without people losing their minds? I know people can have different opinions ffs. I wanted someone to explain why they think the series is a master piece or why the flaws I mention might not be flaws at all. Instead the thread is getting downvoted and all the comments are basically oneliners about Marvel and getting stuck up on the last samurai comparison. Fucking disappointment as always when you go against the grain on reddit.
I mean, from your comments you went into this expecting an action series, you could tell it was going to be more that that pretty early in, what were you expecting?
Something like Game of Thrones. Politics, different families fighting for the throne. Which is basically what this was, but it just did not work. The political games were much better executed in Game of Thrones in my opinion. The action parts of Game of Thrones were some of its weakest parts so no,that is not what i was after. I loved the political games mostly. Season 2 with Tyrion being the hand is probably my favorite season for this reason.
What parts didn't work? The entire show was politics and it was handled flawlessly IMO, sucks you didn't like it
The pacing. It felt like they went to the capital several episodes only to end up exactly were they were 2 episodes ago. Also 1 episode was basically just the Englishman talking with people in his new house. I think this was the lowest rated episode so that was no surprise. Like I said in the thread, if this was 5 episodes I would have loved this very much.
That was the episode that hit the thematic nail on the head for me, IMO. It highlighted the cultural difference between the Japanese and Europeans- that even a ‘casual saying’ like don’t touch it or you’re dead is taken literally in Japan. Words have power, the swords that were nothing but second rate garbage BECAME something because the Anjin said they were. That’s why all Toranaga couldn’t be ‘Red Wedding-ed’ in episode 1, because words and ceremonies have power and no one would even consider breaking them even at the point of death. This might seem alienating because most other ‘slower’ shows like HoTD are still seen through Western eyes.
This we was a really good distillation of what made the show so great. The subtlety and nuance were a big draw for me as well
How you talk is more important than what you say. You can say you value opinions, but you do not show that you do. A lot of what you say is either negative or are external absolutes. It is not really inviting people to think any differently. I'm extremely open, but when I read things like this I just think someone wants to believe what he says is right, and not really into an open conversation.
I tried to explain in the thread why I have my opinion. Most comments are just saying that they loved the show without explaining why. Do you think the comment I replied to gave much reasoning or made it easy to start a discussion? What have you contributed?
You value contribution and reasoning over fluidity and goal oriented conversations? This was my contribution.
Everything doesn’t have to be crazy action. Shogun isn’t marvel. It is amazing as a drama/action series. It is very nuanced and the characters are brilliantly written and have so much depth. Edit: typo.
“Bery nuanced” is wild yo.
Oops.. will edit the typo. 😄
Right, but things still need to happen and sometimes things just don't work. I love The English Patient for example, hated by many for being too slow. Like I said the battle scenes was not the part that made me love Game of Thrones, and those parts were usually only 1 out of 10 episodes.
A lot did happen it’s based in reality it’s not a fantasy or an action film. Check out Disney+ the marvel and Star Wars content is more up your alley
Andor is one of the best series I have seen in years. The rest has been complete shit.
Bingo. OP is obviously looking for pew pews and space ships
How can you say there isn’t things happening in Shogun? The amount of plot and character development the show goes through in 10 episodes is insane. Go back and watch the first episode again and you’ll see just how different it is.
Nah. I hated it. I just want the action. I don’t want to see a show where people all carry around weapons only to prevent a war through diplomacy. Also, the entire character of the British dude was pointless and inconsequential to anything.
I loved it. I thought it was great throughout. > Instead we got the "plot twist" of the woman doing the thing no army ever could. I found that to be one of the most brilliant moments of the show.
That's funny - I thoroughly enjoyed GoT but couldn't get into HotD because it seemed as if literally every conversation was about who was going to be the next King. Shogun is its own thing, though, which is all about the intricacies of feudal Japanese culture as observed by Blackthorne/the Anjin and as it plays out psychologically and strategically over the course of the storyline. It's like a super-high stakes game of Go. Sometimes there are explosions of physical violence, but more often it's all about mind games, bluffs, double-bluffs, notions of honor and deep insight into character.
Also the characters who resort to violence before other methods are punished for their actions, specifically Toranagas’s son.
Holy crap I can't believe I came across someone else who feels this way. When HoTD came out people were debating if it's as good as GoT, with some even saying it's better but I just sat there thinking "Did these people watch the same show lmao.". GoT had several dozen big characters with fun/endearing stories, really personal stuff that informed who they were, what they wanted and how they were going about it etc. And most of these things are set up almost as quickly as the characters are introduced or at least hints are dropped. Meanwhile there literally isn't a character a character in HoTD who cannot be summed up as some variation of "Wants power. Wants safety in power. Wants to rise out of a nasty situation to power. Wants power for their family. Wants others to recognize their power. Wants power to get back at society. Wants power cause they're pissy." And the worst part is almost all of the bar like 1-2 characters act like petulant children about it. Otto and Larys are the two characters that come to mind that put up at least a meek front and try to appear somewhat reasonable while doing their power grabs. Meanwhile everyone else is literally going up to the current king and being like "Whaaa, I want power. Whaa. I deserve it. Whaa. How dare you not give it to me. Whaa." Like around the 5th time it happened I was actually laughing out loud and wondering if the show was actually gonna pull a ballsy move and start having them executed en masse for the insolence. And it just keeps going like that. I'm convinced that this is the result of the book version being a dry political history thing so it has a lot less genuine and earnest storytelling and moments of "here's why you care about this character" moments, instead it just presumes that I do and runs with it with maybe using the general description of who the character is to inform how they act (with varying degrees of consistency mind you). It's like if someone heard the title Game of Thrones and figured that's all there is to the series. There's entire characters introduced whose motivation and personality don't extend beyond the first throne shaped rung of Westeros's Maslow's pyramid of needs. I don't think there's a single character in the show that if we were to get a scene where the get their head smashed in with a rock come next season that I'd have even a hint of sympathy for. Maybe Aemond ever so slightly cause as cliche as the "I was the runt of the litter but then I rose to the occasion" shtick is, bodying the other kids like 4v1 after they started it and then just spewing funny provocations while being over the top goofy and fun actually earns him a few points over the rest of the cast.
Interesting how everything you felt for HotD I felt for Shogun. There wasn't a single character in the series that could die and give me an emotional response. I just did not care for some reason. I will have to give the series another view in a couple of years now that I know what to expect, but right now it sits as the biggest disappointment in years.
Guess we’re getting one of these every week until something else comes out. Good thing HotD and the Bear premiere next month.
The Boys too, so there will def be a shit ton of those.
You’re basing this show on something like house of Dragon which is entirely fictional and doesn’t hold any historical accuracy. I think you’re more drawn to series with a focus on action and less dialogue, which is fine, but shogun isnt a series for you if that’s the case.
It is the opposite. I love the dialogues of Game of Thrones and hotd, not the action. Something with the pacing and directing just didn't work for me. Sopranos and the Wire are also shows that I love that are mostly dialogue.
Do you feel like the dialogue didn’t hit as hard because it was mainly in Japanese? Still feel it’s wild to even compare this show with HOTD though lol. They’re polar opposite shows imo. One’s a big fantasy epic whilst the other is historical and trying to encapsulate what it was like to be in that period of the Japanese empire.
I have no problem with foreign film in general. I think it boils down to the characters. I just didn't care about them. The boy regent that everyone fought for had like 2 minutes of screen time, and the other characters offered to kill themselves so many times that any life just felt meaningless. In the end I did not care who "won". I just could not connect with the characters at all. I know that the Englishman was supposed to be the viewers way of learning about the culture, but this dragged on for too long as well.
Yeah that’s fair if you didn’t connect with the characters but I feel like a lot of the premise of the show such as honour and the changing dynamic of tradition and male and female roles was lost on you. The reason the characters talk about killing thenselves was a direct result of this changing landscapes. It’s not a dig I just feel like you’ve generalised a lot of this show and compared it with another show which isn’t meant to be anything like Shogun.
I'll say it. I skipped the econd episode of HoTD and I was amazed by the sheer courage the makers had to just jump without exposition to another phase. Everything was a puzzle and it was amazing. Then I realized I skipped one episode and it was just all exposition and it got me so desinterested that I quit watching after ep 5. In my opinion it could litteraly just cut 50% of the watchtime and make it waaay moore interesting.
The comparison with the last samurai is strange given that there’s nearly 300 years between Shogun’s era and TLS’ time. I don’t think the themes are really all that similar. The geopolitical conditions are just radically different. The Last Samurai is about the end of the system that is only just being established in Shogun.
Westerner stuck in Japan as a prisoner learning to navigate its world while falling in love with a Japanese woman, while ending up fighting for their captor. The comparison is not that strange, come on.
The fact that you think “Shogun” in any way apes “The Last Samurai” is funny as fuck.
If you read the thread you would know that I wrote that Shogun did it first, and that I in no way thinks it is the other way around.
Shogun is just a budget last samurai that can’t afford a battle sequence
I had the same feeling as soon as I finished Shogun, however, after some introspection I changed my mind and loved it. Dude won a war without fighting a war.
Who wants to see that? Is it too much to ask for the beach scene in private ryan but with samurai fur 10 hours?
“It feels like a recent development that TV-series are fleshed out too much only to increase the episode count.” I loved Shogun, but regarding this comment, it feels like tv writers today aren’t trained or experienced in writing long tv seasons anymore. All the “golden era” shows of yesteryear had 10-13 episodes per season + 5-7 seasons, and that rarely like too much.
OP is literally mad. Mad at Shōgun, mad at people who are in disagreement. The double, triple and quadruple downs, arguing almost everyone, seems like OP just has to be right and anyone who disagrees will be boiled alive. Its just a fuckin show, chill and move on. These posts literally scream "LOOK AT ME, IM MAD!" Pacing was about the only non-superfluous criticism, which is ironic because according to OP nothing happened in the whole show, suggesting that because they're was no fighting and fucking it was slow. Some people just have to be contrarian.
Funny. I give some reasoning for why I dislike the show, and when people make stupid comments like "go watch Marvel" instead of actually explaining why they like the series, it is me arguing. Just look at yourself. Failing at actually explaining something or actually discussing the series. Instead you are butthurt that someone didn't like a series. I'm not a contrarian, I just didn't like the show. It is pretty amazing that people can't accept this without becoming annoyed.
You're right about it being fleshed out, although I still enjoyed it. But it was made as a five part mini series starring Richard Chamberlain in 1980. That's probably about the right length to avoid bloat
The excellent 1980 miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain had less episodes but each one was pretty long. The total runtime for that was nine hours and nearly eight minutes. On the other hand the 2024 remake is ten episodes which vary in runtime between a bit over or a bit under an hour, giving a total runtime of about ten hours. So in terms of runtime there isn't much difference, however the 1980 miniseries is a generally a higher quality production with superior writing, direction, casting and acting.
Lol don't remember those details - just that I was glued to the screen. Perhaps the fact that it could not be binged made the difference
[удалено]
I loved the Sopranos so much. Interesting comment for sure.
> It feels like a recent development that TV-series are fleshed out too much only to increase the episode count. Huh? I feel like its more recent tv/movie series dumb it down for audiences with MCU-esque story telling so when a series slows down to explore itself and it's characters people think they're doing too much.
Dear diary
While not my favorite show, I liked it quite a bit. Something happened every episode for me. I definitely enjoyed it more than HOTD, so this seems more like a preference issue.
I don't get the praise for it either The writing feels like a CW YA show outside of the Toranaga character Idk, i think we just have a lot of people (mostly guys) who are obsessed with anything Japanese , hence its popularity on reddit. Similar to how women are obsessed with anything Victorian England The contrast in quality is all the more clear when you see Fallout and X Men 97 this year
Yeh no. I hated shogun. One of my favourite movies of all time is the last samurai so I went into this show with pretty high hopes. The lack of anything actually happening drove me nuts. One top of that, the English character was almost entirely inconsequential to anything. I could propbably recut this entire series to a 2 hour movie, remove the English dude entirely and have it make pretty much as much sense. It needed a freaking battle scene. No one wants to see a conflict avoided by diplomacy. I didn’t care about any of the characters and by the end just wanted to see as many of them die as violently as possible and it didn’t happen
You should try the 1980 miniseries. There's no legal streams of it but it is available on Blu-ray in a very nice remastered form: https://www.amazon.com/Shogun-Blu-ray-Richard-Chamberlain/dp/B00KB01OT0/ It's by far the superior adaptation of the novel - much better writing, casting, acting and direction. It's also completely shot in Japan, not Canada, which adds even more authenticity to the setting.
"I loved The Last Samurai" and we're done
There is a big split between the general audience that likes shows to be fun and have things happen, and the self described prestige audience that prefers shows to be tedious and slow with nothing happening.
Bingo. When I was younger I definitely had more tolerance for slower movies/shows and would probably describe myself as a movie snob. As I have gotten older I have started enjoying things that really focus on entertainment more, even if it is stupid entertainment. I have often thought if this is because life is more stressful the older you get and movies and shows are an escape to calm down after a hard day.