TV Series Review – Shōgun

There is a lot to love about Shōgun. 

• It has amazing sets
• Fantastic cinematography
• Brilliant acting
• Compelling story

But to me, the thing that stands out the most about Shōgun is the character building.

Bad writers create one-dimensional characters that are likeable or unlikable.

Good writers create characters that are unlikable but become likable, or vice versa.

Great writers create layered characters that are sometimes good and sometimes bad and sometimes simultaniously a little bit of both.

Well-written and layered characters are never random or unpredictable. As we get to know the character, we anticipate which characteristic will manifest. The character becomes a symphony of characteristics the writers conduct via the situation the character is in. The most complex scene a writer, director, and actor can pull off is showing a character doing something that seemingly doesn’t fit with what we would expect, only to discover later, that the character did exactly what we would expect but we, the audience, didn’t know everything the character knows. That happens often in Shōgun to beautiful effect.

Rare Earth Element

Great writing is the rare earth element of story-telling; it’s in short supply and high demand.

If you build a car with 90% of the parts assembled, you won’t drive it anywhere. It’s obvious when a machine is missing a part because it doesn’t work. But stories aren’t like that. Stories can be incomplete, with some parts missing and others in the wrong order, but they still sort’a work. It’s because our brains are great at fixing stories on the fly.

Maybe that’s why incomplete scripts get adapted into movies. Because directors think that once they take the incomplete story and add their directorial brilliance to it the story will shine. But it doesn’t. So the director figures it’s okay because the editor will fix it in post. The editor ends up with a bunch of parts that don’t all fit together, or some are missing or broken, and they’re expected to work their magic and make it all come together to tell a brilliant story.

That is the sad story of too many movies and TV shows being made today. Otto Von Bismark’s famous quote should be amended.

There are three things you never want to see being made: laws, sausage, and movie editing.

Modern audiences are drowning in an ocean of substandard entertainment. But now and then, a show like Shōgun comes along, providing a temporary respite, reminding us that there are great scripts directed with competence and acted with aplomb. And so we watch, and we remember that sometimes a team of people can come together and create something beautiful. Hopefully, that feeling will stay with us long enough to get us through another slog of poorly produced entertainment until we watch the next gem. Hopefully, there’s another gem before season II of Shōgun is released.

Shōgun: Season II and III

The news every fan was waiting for: Hiroyuki Sanada (Lord Toranaga) signed a deal to return for two more seasons. The married Co-creators Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo announced they’re already in the early stages of writing the next two seasons. The couple toured Japan in preparation to write the next chapters of the saga. Justin Marks said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter: “There’s a lot of great conspiracy theory in history, a lot of different theories about ‘Oh, it was said that this went on, but this really went on,’ and those little darker corners are what we’ve really enjoyed exploring. The third season is really an ending. We know where it starts, and we know where it ends, and we know who is there on that journey. We’re just focusing on part two right now to really make sure we can get to that point. But part two is, as second chapters go, kind of a darker chapter.”

There currently is no announcement for the release date for season II. Given that the script is currently unfinished it is unlikely that we’ll see Lord Toranaga, Mariko, Blackthorne, et. al. for a few more years.

One minor complaint

If there were one bit of advice I would give to the director/editor it would be to pace some of the scenes better so that there is time to read the subtitles. I was fascinated to learn that the script is written in English. Then translators work to produce period-accurate Japanese for the actors. Then, translators translate that back into English. There are some scenes where the dialog goes too fast to read the subtitles before being replaced by the next character’s subtitles. It ends up causing me to rewind the scene and watch it again, which breaks the flow of the story.

How Shōgun Makes Translation Exciting

This is another excellent video from one of my favorite YouTube channels about the the translation process in Shōgun.