YMMV / Shōgun (2024)

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Blackthorne hanging the dead pheasant outside, neither plucked or gutted, to age before eating it is in fact both the historical and more or less current way to prepare pheasant and many other small game birds. In reality, it shouldn't have attracted flies and started to smell as quickly as it did especially when the weather is cold enough for snow.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Yabushige. Him being willing to do literally anything to come out of his predicament alive (groveling, flip-flopping, backstabbing and trying to play both sides among other things) and ultimately being loyal to nobody but himself can be seen as him being a Dirty Coward... or (from a Western perspective that might consider the traditional Japanese code of honor as being tantamount to Blue-and-Orange Morality) simply as being the Only Sane Man with an understandable instinct of self-preservation who is trapped in a situation that has a 95% likelihood of ending with his death (either in battle or by Seppuku).
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Since Episode 4, Lady Fuji (the much-put upon Broken Bird of the pilot episode) gained a steady following for revealing her Silk Hiding Steel against Omi, as well as projecting poise, dignity and an inner core whenever she is on screen. Being played by the somewhat-appropriately named Moeka Hoshi definitely helps.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Tokyo Vice, whose second season overlapped with Shogun's airing. Both series are centered around a white foreigner living in Japan and dealing with cultural clash, and showcase an authentic and respectful, yet non-romanticized view of Japanese culture in their respective time periods. Not coincidentally, both productions are helmed by the two leading Japanese actors of their generation: Ken Watanabe and Hiroyuki Sanada.
• Genius Bonus: When threatening to commit suicide so that she won't have to live on without her husband and son, Fuji places a blade against her neck and prepares to slice her jugular vein. This is the method of ritual suicide that the women of samurai families often used to avoid capture or dishonor.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In sheer contrast to the original 1980 miniseries, the Japanese audience and showbiz industry seems to have backed it fully, with both viewers rating it highly, reviewers and longtime Jidaigeki actors (like Ken Matsudaira, noted protagonist of Abarenbo Shogun) and even Hideo Kojima singing its praises. It does help that unlike the 1980 miniseries, Sanada and a host of Japanese producers and creatives were involved throughout the process to guarantee standards and accuracy.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Early in his career, Hiroyuki Sanada portrayed the first Muromachi-era Shōgun Ashikaga Takauji in the 1991 NHK Taiga Drama Taiheiki. Here he plays the facsimile to the founder of the Edo Shōgunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu, whose government is widely seen by historians as the Superior Successor for ending the Sengoku Period.
• Ho Yay:
  • While the show is largely heteronormative when it comes to sexual texts (the main three sex scenes so far have been of a man and a woman), there are a number of viewers who saw Blackthorne teaching Toranaga how to swim being quite homoerotic. This is much helped by Cosmo Jarvis being practically nude, Silver Fox Hiroyuki Sanada in a white hakama (essentially his underwear) and the whole thing being charged with the power dynamics between the two men. The fact that their relationship essentially settles on Toranaga keeping Blackthorne in Japan because, in his words, "he makes [him] laugh" in a low-key possessive fashion just begs for this observation.
  • The Reveal that Mariko and Lady Ochiba / Princess Ruri were once childhood playmates and friends up until Mariko's marriage falls here as well. Both tried to keep their friendship even as their fathers (Akechi and Kuroda) become estranged, plus Ruri tried to comfort Mariko despite her dissatisfaction with Buntaro. Many comparisons were even drawn to the other higher-profile female royal rivalry of 21st century television: Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower of House of the Dragon.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Time to watch Shogun^ExplanationAn affectionate running gag by fans of the show who, for every episode release, post this phrase on Twitter with pictures of non-Japanese people wearing kimonos, wielding katana, or otherwise appropriating Japanese culture (example), as a nod to the show's concept of an Englishman being thrust into Japanese society and learning their ways.
  • Blackthorne out here really saying "Nah, I'd win"^{Explanation (Spoilers for another media and the source material)}Shōgun (2024) came out just about 2 months after the much-acclaimed (and much-memed) second season of Jujutsu Kaisen which adapted the Cerebus Syndrome Shibuya Arc, as well as the manga's chapters 221-236 where World's Strongest Man Satoru Gojo claimed he can take on Big Bad Sukuna only to die. The phrase "Nah. I'd win" has been mocked for how it set Gojo up to a letdown. Blackthorne's actual dialogue is "Unless I win", which is actually in the original Clavell novel—and, to his credit, he technically does.
  • "This is Shogunate manifest" ^Explanation Australian viewers and those familiar have tended to compare Blackthorne's outburst about women's privacy to the notorious Democracy Manifest/Succulent Chinese Meal incident, where an unusually eloquent man wrongfully arrested became a Fountain of Memes for everything he blurted out.
  • Yabushige has a few lines of his own:
    • "I don't have time for this Christian nonsense."
    • "I assume it's proper for you to commit seppuku at once."
  • "Tell Toranaga-sama..."^ExplanationAn image of John and Mariko standing side-by-side, accompanied by a dialogue where John asks her to translate something for him and she rephrases it to be much more polite and less urgent.
  • Sad Buntaro^ExplanationBuntaro's heartbroken crying face in "The Abyss of Life" after Mariko irrevocably rejects his attempts at reconciliation (ably performed by Shinnosuke Abe) has become a go-to reaction for things the fan base wants to weep about—like the absence of Fuji in an episode or, in a harshly appropriate way, Mariko's death in "Crimson Sky".
• Moral Event Horizon: If Ishido didn't cross it by massacring Sugiyama and his family/retainers for speaking up against him, he definitely does when he completely violates Sacred Hospitality by bringing in shinobi to murder Mariko and the women she was trying to leave with, killing his own men in the process, after promising them safe passage out of Osaka just to get back at Mariko for insulting him.
• Sacred Cow: The reception to this adaptation is consistently positive, thanks to the no-effort-spared ethos of the entire production as well as the much-celebrated acting and production involvement of Hiroyuki Sanada. That's not even counting how even the other main leads and supporting cast are bringing their consistent A-grade acting for each episode.
• Spiritual Successor: Many have speculated if this second adaptation of Shogun was made in response to the popularity of Nioh, which is also based on William Adam's work in Japan as advisor to Tokugawa Ieyasu as he rose to become Shogun of Japan.

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