Cinepals - SHOGUN 1x10 FINALE "A Dream of a Dream" Reaction & Discussion!

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Shōgun, a new and adapted historical drama series, has arrived, depicting war and power in 1600s Japan. Shōgun stars: Hiroyuki Sanada (The Wolverine, 47 Ronin, Bullet Train, Mortal Kombat (2021), & John Wick: Chapter 4), Cosmo Jarvis (Calm with Horses, Lady Macbeth, & Persuasion), Anna Sawai (F9: The Fast Saga, Pachinko, & Girl/Haji) & Tadanobu Asano (Thor, Battleship, & Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan) Join our Patreon www.Patreon.com/JabyKoay for the full length reaction to this show and many others ans subscribe to our YouTube channel for the cutdowns www.youtube.com/@cinepals   SOCIAL MEDIA ~CinePals~ Twitter, Instagram, & TikTok: @TheCinePals ~Achara Kirk~ Twitter & Instagram: @AcharaKirk ~Jaby Koay~ Twitter & Instagram: @JabyKoay

Sina. Pound. All right, we are going to watch Shogun, season one, season finale or series finale, if they are sticking true to their word, and this is it. Here we go. A dream of a dream. Are you joking? It's kind of setting up that kind of ending the whole time. This entire episode.

of setting that up. Man! I mean, they told us what would happen. I guess we didn't need to see it, but a part of me just kind of did want to see it. I just wanted to see it actually go down instead of... Being told? Yeah, instead of being told.

Like, this is what I think is going to happen. Yeah. The ending of the show kind of makes me feel like the poetry that they had throughout this episode and the one before it. It's like it's really beautiful. It touches my heart in a way that I can't describe, like I can't really put words into it, but I'm immensely moved by it. It's also kind of like, I guess, open to interpretation, just kind of how you feel about it. Maybe it's not open to interpretation in the sense that, well, we know what happens.

Toronaga wins. He orchestrated all of this to win without actually having to fight a war. But along the way, we lost people. We lost people that we cared about. Yeah, I mean, every single death really mattered in this show in a way, well, except for the villagers and stuff. But every single death mattered otherwise. Even the guy near the beginning who was loyal to Toronaga,

who spoke out a turn and wasn't allowing Taranaga to do his political scheming or whatever. Yeah, Fuji's husband. Fuji's husband. Yeah. And his death came back around at the very end, which is like the last thing I was prepared to think about when he died initially. I just thought that was that. It's over.

And they bring him back in the funnel. episode it's like it's a very it's very poetic the way the show handles all the the plot points and characters and whatnot you know life and death within the show yeah there's so many things that like touched me on such a deep level like even just what mariko said and that um anjin sama adopted by the end of it which is like we live and we die you know it really is that like we we live and then one day we die hopefully our life in between those punctuation marks mean something to us, to someone, we make a difference. But it really is that simple.

But, you know, this show just made me appreciate, like, Japanese culture and history, like, so much more. I've always been a bit of a, like, Japan file. But, yeah, this show is amazing. The show definitely usurps your expectations repeatedly. I am imagining there's going to be a section of the audience that watched this, you know, with feverish anticipation for that war scene, and they're going to be sorely disappointed that it did not come. Not going to lie, a little bit of blue balls. But I actually appreciate the way they handled all this. It completely was unexpected. It very much is talking about life and death, and it's always going to blindside you, right? And the show kind of blindsides you in that way repeatedly. Like, you don't think Mariko's going to die. Especially when you are basing all of your expectations on Hollywood tropes and Hollywood plots that you're used to.

Because we're less intimately familiar with the source material. Everyone who knows the source material knew that Mariko was going to die. And also historically, the character that she, the woman that she's actually based off of, gave her life in the same manner. Okay. Yeah. Well, those people, they're an exception to the rule, right? Like, I'm talking about most people who are like new-ish to Shogun or completely new to Shogun. Yeah, yeah.

You know, it catches you off guard in multiple points in the story. You are fully expecting this full-scale war and it just doesn't come. I'm trying to articulate this as best as I can. It's just that in life, you sort of have these anticipations and expectations, whether you are someone with a lot of ambitions or small ambitions, you have certain expectations that you are anticipating will come in life at a certain point. And then suddenly you're at an older age or you get blindsided by the death of a family member or a friend. And, you know, like anything could happen along the way that you are not accounting for.

And the show demonstrates that, like, it's kind of like life. It's like these turns that it takes, it's like, yeah, that's kind of how it just goes sometimes. Yeah, natural disaster can blindside you and like just kill half your army. Yeah. That happens. And sometimes it doesn't go out with a big bang.

Sometimes it goes out with a cry. You know? Sometimes it's not a full scale of war, but, you know, something that happens behind closed doors that's sorted out in advance. Oftentimes that's how court, you know, situations get handled out of court. You know, a deal is made. Yeah. It's not as dramatic as the movies make it out to be. And so in a way, it just felt more, I guess, realistic the way it handled things.

It leaves you in a place that's like, you're not exactly 100% sure how to feel about Taranaga. And that's fascinating. He keeps his card so close to the chest. You're not exactly sure who he is, what he is, what he's about, what he feels. And you get a closer sense of it by the end, but you're not 100% sure. Right. Yeah. Like, even with Yabushiba, even with Yabushige.

Yeah. Even with Yabushige, you know, pointing it out at the end where he's like, oh, you actually wanted to be Shogun, didn't you? Like, in your deepest heart, in your heart of hearts, that's what you wanted. And he never said yes or no. But, you know, you get the sense that, you know, maybe that is what he wanted because he was struck by the words of the Anjin when he was like, yeah, it might be a small war or whatever. But what if I win? You know, like, and maybe that was something that he hadn't really thought about.

Like, in his deepest heart, he didn't think that he could win. And then it just took one silly Englishman to come along and be like, yeah, well, I don't care. You know, it's fine if I win. And it's so funny, like, how his whole demeanor, his character really changed. Like, in the beginning, he's this, like, loud, brash, white guy who comes in, and he's all, like, you know, blah. Just causing a ruckus everywhere he goes. And then later on. He gets Nihunggified.

Hardcore. He gets Japanified pretty hard. Yeah, yeah. And then he, like, he gets it, you know? The show does go counter to the rule of Chekhov's gun because it sets you up early on with these cannons, these very deadly dangerous cannons, and you see the destruction that it unleashes.

That never shows up. Yeah. I think so many of us were just waiting with baited breath for that final fight where we're going to get the cannons, we're going to get the ship, we're going to get everything. And then it was like, no,

because actually Taranaga is about doing this as peacefully as possible. So, you know? I mean, it's the most ideal outcome when you think about it at the end of the day. The fewest amount of people had to die in order to achieve this peaceful outcome.

Mariko, like, she had the most meaningful death in the entire show. Yeah. You know, it literally turned the tides. It really did. And I think, you know, it's a testament to the writing that the character was written so well that we cared about her and also to Anna Soi's performance you know she did such an incredible

job with the character that we all just had our hearts broken yeah when she died yeah it was like even just watching it in the in the recap at the beginning of the episode I was like I don't think I can handle this yeah you know I felt like I lost a friend it was nicely framed as well afterwards, that moment of mourning when, you know, the scene before Fuji says she's going to go become a nun. Like you pointed out, there was the emptiness in the frame. I really appreciate

how the show, for the most part, deals with death. It's just there are some instances where I'm like, it seems like we don't care about that because they don't have names. Like, is this a little bit odd? Like, who were the heads on the pikes? True. You know, as he entered the village. Like, who are those people? Why don't they matter?

They're villagers. Why are they being made to be an example of? Is he rooting out? people like what's going on there yeah and i feel bad for those people like did they actually do something wrong i how should i feel about that torranago was also quite brutal sometimes in when he needed to be when he needed to be you know even though he was mostly about peace he wasn't afraid to make difficult decisions and to sacrifice lives along the way but you know what i really appreciated a lot about the show was just how it's so it was so confident it was quietly confident you know what I mean like it wasn't trying to be this like oh we we're having the most shock

value even though sometimes there were moments of violence and stuff that kind of came out of the blue and it was just like whoa that was a lot yeah but you know like you like you were saying with that moment where Blackthorn and Fuji were sitting alone in the home and it was like a wide shot and you really felt the absence it's like that was perfect you didn't need to to like go to a close of them showing that they were sad. They were just sitting there quietly. And you just felt like, oh, there's a person missing. It's a very mature show in that way.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a fascinating. It's a fascinating show. There's a part of me that wonders, because I don't know the source material, right? Like, I don't know the book. Yeah. I don't know if there was a war that followed or anything like that.

Or like history too, right? Because is this not based off of like the star of the Tokugawa Shogunate? I don't know. Yeah. I don't. All I'm wondering is if a certain level of ambition was scrapped, scrapped. If a certain level of, I was going to say scraped and the scrapped, and I couldn't find the word because it just came out as script, I wonder if a certain amount of ambition was

scrapped because they weren't sure how popular the show was going to be. Like they didn't know. Kind of like with, I don't know, The Last of Us, right? They could have spent more money and had more episodes, but they weren't 100% sure if it was going to have a turnout. And then it turned out everybody showed up, including their mom. Right, yeah. You know, he just never know.

And so it's like, in hindsight, maybe there would have, you know, FX could have been like, oh, shoot, we should have put a little bit more money into it. But I think they did a nice job. What was this phrase that, what's, that Blackthorn said at the end? Anyway, good job. Good job. Yeah, excellent, excellent job. This is how you do a show, make it feel like its own thing.

For the most part, it's beautifully done. So beautifully done. The little bit on the battlefield, like, predicting one month out, it's like, it looks a little bit ropey. Oh, yeah. Just a little bit. You could definitely see the effects there, you know? I was a little bit peeved, just a smidgeon that they showed Blackthorn as an old man. That gives us some insight as to where the trajectory of his life.

But it also kind of undercuts the tension of when he's going to do anything to himself. Yeah. It's like, well, we know. We know what's going to happen. a little bit misled because he was holding onto the rosary or the cross, right? Yeah. Well, he's old, but then he lets it go in the water like the old lady in Titanic. I'm like, wait, how do you do both of those?

Is it just a new one? Well, I guess it's just a new one, right? Like, maybe it's indicative of somewhere along the way he found faith again, you know? And, like, I was deeply moved by a lot of the things that characters were saying. You're right. He finds faith again through the dude, probably. It was probably the same exact kind of cross. whatever rosary from that dude who said, oh, you know, it'd be cool if we can, like,

wouldn't Morocco smile at us now because we're made peace? Maybe he goes back to him. Maybe. But I think, oh, the thing that touched me the most was when he said to that priest, something along the lines of like, I said, I wonder if she heard me. I prayed to God, not your God or my God, but just God. And that really touched me because I think. There were so many things about this show.

They just kind of spoke to me and my experience of being someone from two different cultures and that kind of melding or clash. And so sometimes I could really relate to that awkwardness and stuff. But there's also that with religion for me where, like, on the one hand, my dad raised me to be Christian. On the other hand, my mom raised me to be Buddhist. but I was never told that either of them were wrong. It was just like they can both coexist. And so I found that really beautiful that he was like, it's just God.

I get that. My mom raised me to be Catholic and my dad raised me to be paranoid. You guys, thanks so much for hanging out. Hopefully you enjoyed that. I'm Jabby Kui. This is. Acharik. Peace out.