Japan has a rich history that goes back thousands of years. At this point in time they are a serious and formidable power. They are not being oppressed.
@@samwallaceart288 It's exactly how it is in this show, everyone is acting on their own interests and trying to take advantage of the other in a way. And it is like that in history to a good extent too
Portugal and Netherlands send people to trade with Japan in the 16th and 17th century- Colonising. Japan in the 16th century tried to invade Korea and China proper- They just do things differently there.
Your understanding of history will be much improved if you stop thinking of all interactions as "oppressor vs. oppressed". Japan, at this time, was a serious regional power that few could stand against.
Precisely this ^. At the time this series is set, Spain and Portugal have had major colonial empires for around a century, but their intentions in Japan were trade and proselytism. Meanwhile, neither England nor the Netherlands have engaged in colonialism in any meaningful sense and are desperately trying to fight off Spanish imperialism at home, their arrival in Japan being to expand their own trade networks and to undermine the Spanish/Portugese. On the other hand, Japan, having just recently been unified under Nobunaga and Hideyoshi had immediately decided that the natural next step was to do an imperialism and launch a murderous and entirely unprovoked invasion of Korea that resulted in something like one million Korean deaths. The "Europeans = colonialist and imperialist oppressors/non-Europeans = victims of Europeans" model of world history is just not applicable in this time and place.
Japan is naive not because they're powerless, but because they're a purposely isolationist power-cult whose archipelago is a natural fortress against invasion. There's a reason no nation has successfully invaded them. Even modern America was like 'nah fuck that' and went nuclear instead
@@wafflekopf9429 And the failed invasion to Korea from Japan plays a part on the story too, since Toranaga didnt send troops over there (Korea) unlike the other leaders, and that is the reason why they are wary and united against him, and see it as Toranaga preparing/trying something in Japan)
@@wafflekopf9429 Nice to see that all the top comments here have seen how ridiculous they are being. (much as they seem like nice girls overtaken by a biased and simplistic worldview
It is a little funny watching as the Japanese do horrible things to others and themselves and it being brushed off as okay but the europeans view point looking at it and thinking by god these people are mad is seen as somehow bad. When two cultures so distant from one another meet for the first time it is inevtiable that neither can see the others side. What I think is great about Shogun is this show is very subtle, it shows you the wrongs both cultures have but also the beauty of learning and coming to understand to a degree.
Dude just had fish guts poured on him and saw one of the Japanese slice their own villagers head off for speaking to him and she has a problem with the english dude calling them savages. But the English dude does essentially nothing and the Japanese call him a savage barbarian off the rip... crickets. It's funny that she thinks of this as colonialist oppressor vs opressed situation (where obviously the asian people that aren't white/european must be the victims right?) when atleast in this time of history i'm pretty sure Portugal and the Netherlands (who John was hired by) were just in Japan to trade, maybe portugal were interested in a little proselytism. Don't ask what Portugal might have been traded by the Japanese in the 16th century.
At this point in time in the show, Japan had just tried and failed to invade Korea on their way to an attempt at conquering China. EVERY country/power has attempted to "colonise" others, it's not just Europeans doing it. By all means, criticize it, just keep it in perspective.
100%, History is filled with things that make all of us and our causes hypocritical, no one seems to want to learn from any of it, we as a species keep on being an ever revolving circle in that aspect.
They were at a point in history where they were faced with “modernization” and religious loyalty to the feudalism. These officers, generals, and royalty were seen as religious icons, with god given power.
Gets angry if they call the locals savages - zero problem whatsoever about the Japanese calling them barbarians and other derogatory remarks etc - double standards eh?
What madness? Like, I don't know... killing a small child because their parent spoke out of turn? Or boiling someone alive for shits and giggles? Or beheading a peasant on the street for not moving fast enough?
I find it interesting that everytime Blackthorne calls the Japanese 'savages' we get the classic Ariana stankface but when the Japanese call Blackthorne a 'barbarian' there's absolutely no reaction from her at all. It's almost like she's prejudged the situation and the Dutch and English Protestants are the villains and the Japanese and Catholics are the good guys (even though in reality it's far more nuanced than that). 🤔...🤣
@@onepolishman8734 Ya even at this point the Japanese had already tried and failed to conquer Korea. There are no real good guys here, only shades of gray.
@@OwnYourBaldSpotIt’s so funny how “colonizers” has become a liberal buzzword used by idiots to describe anyone white and European. Japanese were colonizers and some of the most SAVAGE people to have ever existed. They have committed some of the worst atrocities in the history of mankind. Liberals don’t like history though so they just think “whites are evil and everyone else are victims”
The bias against Blackthorne is insane, people from 400 years ago are going to seem intolerable by today's standards sure, but it's as though no one else in the show can do any wrong. He's not the most eloquent or polite person but I think he deserves some slack considering his limited perspective and what he's been through up to this point. As for his hatred of the Catholics you need to put it in the historical context of the Inquisition, the torturing, the burnings at the stake, the things that led to the then recent Protestant reformation, and here he is on the other side of the world still dealing with them.
I've never heard any suggestion that the Protestant reformation was in response to the Inquisition -- do you have any pointers to something about that? (The protestants were just as keen on torturing, burning at the stake, boiling people, etc, so.... I'd be surprised, but only a little, as folks are often hypocrites.)
38:44 learn some history girl middle east/west asia and north Africa were all Christians lands and all conquered by Muslims fastly and violently... im a Kurd even some of our cities get violently conquered such as Diyarbekir (Amed) etc and our people were not Christians... later Muslims made their way into Europe they tried conquer Europe from multiple fronts such as from Constatinople (Istanbul) and north Africa etc however Constantinople the biggest Christian city at the time was one of their main goal bcz founder of Islam prophet Muhammed famously said this “Verily, you shall conquer Constantinople. What a wonderful army will that army be, and what a wonderful commander will that conqueror be.”This is the famous “conquest hadith,” but their first attempts failed however they made an succesfull conquering in north African front with entering Spain and Portugal (Iberian peninsula) then France and Italy but they couldnt get any further due to sheer resistance and they ruled Iberian peninsula for 700 years and ofc indigenous Iberians werent happy with all of this they launched reconquista my point is crusades didnt come out of nowhere it was response to Islamic world and you did confused crusaders with reconquistadors it was reconquistadors who take back Iberian peninsula and later found the 'new world' and conquered new world not crusaders... by the way sorry for my bad English
Wait are you annoyed that they don't like the crusades? The crusades weren't one thing, and they weren't done to free or help anyone, and they included a lot of really awful shit. Properly disliking the crusades does not diminish any other terrible things that were done around the world by other groups. (And the reconquista was suuuper super super super bad, regardless of how prior governance functioned... it does not need apologetics.)
@@_iarna_ The point is they don't know a single thing of the nuance that you apparently do, yet have the biggest opinions on them. Maybe you are new to the channel, but they display a very shallow understanding of politics outside of their very narrow (and i would argue extremely biased) understanding of american politics. So that nuanced conversation you might want to have, they simply are not equipped to have.
@@aidanfarris8658 Sure, historical ignorance certainly isn't a uniquely American phenomenon, but the combination of (ignorance of world history + application of US historical assumptions to another country's history + strong opinions about that country's history) that Ariana is displaying here tends to be peculiar to the USA. It's a shame because her other videos seem to be mostly pretty good.
@@wafflekopf9429 One of the things I found funny is the idea that the Industrial Revolution is one of their least favorite periods in history. Alongside the Crusades. The irony of a person in the 21st century making that comment through internet media is about as funny as anything I've heard in a long time. That and the idea that _The Last Samurai_ , an Orientalist film with a big dose of white-savior helping, is one of their favorite films.
I think calling Blackthorne not special having navigated to the other side of the world is.a bit odd. unless you don’t value courage, intelligence, fortitude, resilience etc etc
I always found it ridiculous that they kept calling the europeans barbarians while boiling a guy alive in a giant cooking pot and executing a baby!! along with the father.
Why though? If that's what your culture and creeds stipulate, it's going to become as accepted as crosses or other symbols denoting faith. All that it signifies, in Japanese (yabanjin) or most other language, is an uncivilized person, and cultural quirks and specifics ultimately are what determine whether you're a "wild beast" or not. So much so that it's pretty common to rank even the worst mass murderers above foreigners, as long as they vaguely follow established societal rules.
When watching a period piece or reading about history it's pretty important to understand the context of the time. So to the people there the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism is going to be significant for them. It's also important to know that none of that will be of any importance to the Japanese. They will have their own set of concerns. The older tv version of this followed more of the Angin Portuguese plot while this one does not. Also, Blackthorn keeps calling them savages while the Japanese keep calling him a Barbarian.
Her reactions are odd. Blackthorne calls Yabushige a 'savage' and she gets annoyed...even though she's just seen Yabushige order a man to be boiled alive. 🙄
to me its just the way certain flakey people just dont acknowledge that order came from power, and power is violence.. in alll its flavours, colonialization, domination over tribes, endless violence in history is a river that gave us and them - all of us being lucky descendants - this bubble called ''civilization''.. a bubble that is bringing diminishing returns as its raising weak entitlement of postmodern armchair bravado
To be fair it's just plain dumb to be in such a fucked state/situation and have any kind of sass, bro grabbed his crotch to get his disrespect towards a group of armed men through the language barrier, but Blackthrone is smart so he wisened up quickly. EDIT: bruh I watched the video it's obvious that they get both sides yall are just using too much hindsight.
It's funny, they're so stuck in the modern American "white man bad" way of looking a the world, that they can't see that the show isn't trying to say that one way of looking at things is superior to another. The point is just to understand the different ways that different cultures see the world, whether that's Anglo protestant individualism, Catholic collectivism or Japanese Shinto/Buddhist social order.
I don't think she hates him. I think she is just flustered by him just making a bad situation worse at every turn. Like he is a prisoner and then he antagonizes them and without knowing anything about the Japanese just assumes they are savages when in reality he is the one sailing to make war.
@@red2977 he wasn’t sailing to make war on the Japanese. They boiled an innocent man alive, pissed on him, beheaded an innocent man in front of him. She called him and his crew “trash bags”. There’s no nuance to her take on the English in this episode. Before anything even happened she kept shitting on him. Bizarrely aggressive from the jump and, as other commenters have pointed out, completely ignorant of history altogether.
@@LacoSinfonia Just to be clear, his crew is Dutch. The English you hear him speak to them is actually Dutch, and the English you hear him speak to the Japanese or the Portuguese is Portuguese. Technically speaking, Anjin never actually speaks English in the series.
Dude I swear there is something Arianna has against John or just the English in general. The fleet john was apart of could've been raiding evil time traveling nazis and she still would've hated him lmfao. Weird double standard where she is okay with Portugal, Spain, AND Catholicism but not England or Protestantism.
Japan is one of the few Asian countries to _never_ have been colonized. Even the Great Khans couldn't crack it. Geographically, Japan is a giant fortress, whose inhabitants were raised with a military cult mentality of reporting and isolating outsiders on-sight. Their permission of Portuguese missionaries and traders was strictly a business arrangement and the traders were only allowed within limited port areas on business-only privileges. Later on they retracted these privileges, and it was only a threat of naval bombardment from the US that made them open back up again. And even then, it was only on limited conditions. The Europification of Japan during the Meiji Restoration wasn't coerced, it was mutual. Japan's modernization right before The Pacific War wasn't Europeans "colonizing" them. Unlike French Indochina, Manchuria, the Philippines, or Singapore, no European nation owned _any_ Japanese soil. Quite the contrary, the Meiji Restoration was Japan intentionally downloading every Western technology they could get their hands on so that they could one day colonize Asia themselves with the big boys. Starting on the border islands between Russia and Japan, Japan successfully defeated the Russians in battle, with the naval technology they learned overseas then perfected. Bolstered by this, Japan realized they could easily cripple the European colonies in Asia and claim them for their own, becoming the one Asian superpower. Their main target was Singapore, which is the bottleneck between Japan and the Indian Ocean ergo their route to Europe. As an afterthought, they sent an extra attack to cripple Pearl Harbor so that America wouldn't be able to intervene. America's fervent response to Pearl Harbor triggering the Pacific War was a complete surprise to the Japanese. They expected the isolationist Americans to back off. America had to fight very hard to push Japan back to its home turf, and insodoing the Japanese themselves purposely killed a lot of local natives as cannon fodder and slave labor to say the least. After the war, once Emperor Hirohito personally begged his own people to accept the humiliation of surrender, Japan did something smart; they landed into the fact that China got overrun by Soviets, and leveraged the situation to get every benefit they could from the Americans; by giving up their nation as an American fortress against the Communists, they got preferencial treatment in foreign affairs, financial grants, American protection from any Chinese retaliation, amnesty for their long list of war crimes and genocides (including letting their human-experiment perpetrators off the hook), and easy foreign exchange and integration for their citizens. Japanese citizens moving to the US keep their Japanese names, they're not pressured to change it like the Chinese immigrants. There's a lot I like about Japan and America, but calling them "colonized" is categorically wrong and an insult to the rest of Asia that were. Japan isn't the oppressed Na'vi, they're Vegeta deciding to team up.
Morality is influenced by political outcomes. The English pilot was just merely trying to survive. Your 21st century American ideals of "oppressor white man vs oppressed minority" is ridiculous and please do more research.
The way you guys rooted for the guy who boiled someone alive more than the english guy just because he called them savages lmao. If I just saw someone cut down in the street for standing in the way, and another man boiled alive for nothing I too would call them savage. This is his introduction to them, how else is he supposed to view them? The fact that they're both considered "very sick men" is wild when the worst thing the english guy has done is call them savage, while the small-time lord boiled someone alive for hours just because he likes it. The idea that the english are the bad guys for going after portuguese ports is also dubious at best, but since you said you don't know this part of history well I won't hold it against you. But it said in his ledger that Englands purpose in going after their bases was to open trade to the east, that should say something about what the portuguese are doing there.
You guys really got to study a little more history. The Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese did soooo much long before the english ever did. Hell, most people have no idea the Portuguese started the atlantic slave trade and accounted for the VAST majority of people taken from Africa to the Americas and Caribbean.
They cover that in school with things like the Dutch Trading Company etc but soo much more weight gets put on England, since the colonies were English.
As a European i feel like a ton of Americans are quite uneducated when it comes to history outside of ww2 and America. While we study and read way more about the entire world and don't focus on our countries. I've always liked Ariana and her takes but yeah she comes off a bit ignorant for sure, I hope she chills out a bit next time and reads up on the history of Europe and Japan. It's a complex story with no right or wrong sides, just like all of human history where everyone thinks their side is true and righteous. It's totally fine to not know everything but if you don't it's usually not very smart to be discussing details of topics you are unfamiliar with, which many Americans tend to do and it is a bit annoying to hear for us Europeans/Asians who actually know this period.
It's like each European country reigned supreme at some point in the past 500 years, the British were just the best at doing the whole Empire thing and did it most recently so they get all the blame.
This is historical fiction, and most of the cast are loosely based off real historical figures, though all their names have been changed. The previous taiko, Hideyoshi, had an heir too young to rule, so a council of 5 regents was established to keep the peace until he came of age. In real history, Tokugawa Ieyasu (the basis for Lord Toranaga in this show) betrayed the council, made an excuse to go to war with the heir, slaughtered the heir and his family, and took over Japan, after which point he ushered in a strict caste system, closed off Japan's borders completely for the next 2 centuries to keep outsiders away, and enacted various laws that kept all other lords and peoples poor and busy so they couldn't rise up to challenge his rule. He succeeded at maintaining his rule so decisively that Japan had an era of peace called the Edo period (Edo is Ieyasu/Toranaga's hometown and eventually became modern day Tokyo). Eventually, after 2 centuries of his bloodline's rule and drastic isolationism, Japan had become severely far behind other competitive countries in technology and trade, and then ushered in the Meiji Restoration, a period of starting to fix the problems Ieyasu caused the country, and moving closer to modern day Japan. Obviously the show's Toranaga is pretty different from Ieyasu, but he does of course feature one of Ieyasu's most famous traits, which is his pension for complex and clever political trickery and deception. John Blackthorne in this show is very loosely based off of a historical English sailor who became a samurai under Ieyasu's lordship. Personally, as a student of history, I think media about ignorant white people coming into contact with foreign cultures can overcorrect a bit with their portrayal of how much this Japanese culture has to teach the white man. Let's not pretend like Japan after a hundred years of brutal civil war and unrest was without it's own cultural problems and points of valid criticism. Or more accurately, that ANY culture is above being wrought with problems and valid criticism.
Well, i love KoH, but it is a very current year biased perspective still, painting Gui de Lusignan as a murderous madman for example. Even at the end, with Saladin alowing everyone to leave. Obviously they want to paint him as a "good" or at least "better" guy, mind you, in reality he allowed people who could pay for their freedom to pay and leave, but many where left behind to be slaves to them, so he didnt allow everyone to leave. I mean, by those times standarts that was still a rather "benevolent" thing, but nowhere near as what its painted in the movie.
The commentary in this video depicts the consequense of being exposed to the american "education" system especially in regards to the way they fail to teach objective history and historical geopolitics.
With these two being among my most favorite reactors, I’m going to be optimistic and hope they actually read these comments, quickly do some research on the period of time and history, regroup, adjust, and spare us all from another dismally ignorant review of episode 2.
lol my god these 2 know literally nothing about history at all, and are clueless about what is happening in this story as a result. And won't learn it either because they already have preconceived notions of what is happening. None of which is true or actually happening. Brutal. This reaction series won't go well at all.
It’s always so interesting watching everyone puff up in a historical holier than though display in the comments. One of the best parts of being human is being able to learn new things! And also holding a responsibility to create a space to teach others something new!!! Also I said I love watching historically based period pieces recently because it’s allowing me to learn new things! But how disappointing and dissatisfying to want to be immersed in a new experience and hear what others know only to be met with comments like yours. Truly lame and then you wonder why people “know literally nothing about history” it’s because you’re ruining the experience of learning.
@@MapleDivine "you’re ruining the experience of learning"....the person "ruining the experience of learning" is your react partner who spent the entire episode complaining about European colonizers, which both was not happening in the actual story or real life. I don't expect anyone to learn anything if she's going to be in your ear the whole time ranting about something that again....is not actually happening in both the story or real life in this time period. My comments and the hundreds of others wouldn't be so harsh if we all didn't see the inevitable result of this reaction series. Pointlessness if she's going to spend every episode ranting and raving about things that are not actually happening on the screen.
"Modern NPC"... My guy, you're getting triggered over reaction video on UA-cam and then you wrote it down for everyone to see. You are the loser in this story.
I think instead of getting annoyed by the catholic vs protestant conflict... rather look at the many comparable idiotic conflicts we still have today?... Ethnic/Gender/political... We are not much better than the people back then, except that now we are idiots with fortnite and toilet paper😂
It's easily forgotten that yon dude was ultimately boiled to death because the Jesuit priest was demanding the Anjin be murdered... Priests demanding murder... nice 😉
Also Ariana's comment on the Industrial Revolution is possibly the dumbest thing ever. I really hope she's joking but I've got a bad feeling she's not. 😳
Not "the Protestant, Catholic, crusading-type wars..." bit immediately before? I mean, not knowing anything about European history is fine if you're not interested in it but how in the Dunning-Kruger is it possible to know so little about something while having such strong opinions about it?
@@wafflekopf9429 They were both awesomely stupid but based on what Ariana had said previously I kinda expected the 'Crusade' comment whereas the Industrial Revolution thing completely wrong footed me.
Maybe you two should react to a history documentary so you could actually learn about history instead of bothering the world with your completely distorted and incorrect view of history. The fact you know so little about well known world history makes me wonder if either even graduated high school...
American school systems really only prioritize US and european history and even with European history its only specific time periods/countries etc. I don't think I learned anything in school about Japan outside of the WW2 era, pretty much nothing about china and other countries in the region. All my knowledge I had to seek out history books to learn or actually spending time in those countries.
if that chick on the right is gonna act as we in the latino community say, "all pique," over literal history im gonna have fun cringing at her reactions every single time. like, yeah we get it, it makes no sense to you, it doesnt make sense anyone to anyone else either. also i would love to see her having the same reactions to like the different muslim sects and how they all hate each other even to this day, at least most christians dont really gaf anymore.
The weebish wokery in this reaction video might be tolerable were it not for the fact that they completely disregard (even condone) the nihilistic cruelty of the Sengoku period. This is a tumultuous moment in Japanese history which presaged the long peace & prosperity of the Edo era. They're really not getting this show.
@@boogaloobalooI love both Maple and Adrianna but her comment on the Crusades struck me the same way. The Crusades were a necessary defensive counter to Muslim incursions in Europe and the damage their piracy caused in the Mediterranean after Rome's fall and the end of Pax Romana.
The creators of the show decided to replace all the Portuguese with English to make the show more accessible to a wider audience; otherwise, the entire show would have required subtitles. But historically speaking, all the spoken English is meant to be Portuguese.
Regarding the language, when you hear English they are actually speaking Portuguese. The Portuguese currently have exclusive access to Japan and of course the only languages they have taught the Japanese are Portuguese and Latin. At present, no Japanese can speak or read or write any other European language. Also the Japanese only know one form of Christianity, and that is Catholicism. They know nothing of Protestantism. When Blackthorne stomped on the Catholic priest's cross, the Japanese thought that meant Blackthorne hated all Christians. That was why Lord Yabushige took an interest in him.
7:30 I love that Maple mentions the camera filter, as I too found it to be a compelling artistic/stylistic choice, and she had some great ideas about what that choice may represent. I also really like the way they present the subtitles (color, typeface, etc). It _feels_ very complementary to the overall style, not merely a formality of presenting dialogue to an English audience. It has a suitable vintage presentation. Great choices for this story.
It feels like an ode to the old Samurai movies and I absolutely love it. The screen edge distortion draws more attention to the center of the screen and the speakers in the scenes the same way the old Samurai and Western movies* would punch in on the eyes and faces in the intense moments. 10/10 cinematography.
"Is this the first time they've seen white people?" Only a minute or two after the opening card explained how thoroughly ingrained the Portuguese trading presence was in Japan is absolute confirmation of all the complaints in the comments here 😂 I normally really enjoy this channel, even if I don't always agree with the girls, but man, I hope this gets better. Y'all can be better than this, sheesh. Hopefully the show opens their eyes to the complexities and nuance of the environment at this point in history.
5:37 btw Europeans never saw themselves as white or should i say they never had concept of 'white' race this concept is an American concept dont look at into history or moden world with this view... European concept is ethnicity based like majority of the world and it is still the concept in majority of Europe even H*tler and N*azis didnt had an concept of 'white' race their concept of race was Germanic, Slavic etc so their concepts based on either culture, language family or region never skin color for example Slavs who are as 'white' as Germans themselves seen as subhumans by the N*zis so there is that
In 1758, Carl Linnaeus proposed what he considered to be natural taxonomic categories of the human species. He distinguished between Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens europaeus, and he later added four geographical subdivisions of humans: white Europeans, red Americans, yellow Asians and black Africans
Lol its wasnt americans . god damn u just cant keep our dicks out ur mouth for a second can u , the dude was Swedish and there are accounts of this dating further back in time to greece and rome .
Thank you for this comment! As a Swede I've never heard anyone describe someone as white in my entire life outside the internet, and it annoys me to no end because there is no such thing as being white. We just say "he's German" "he's Greek" "she's Italian" etc. I think we focus more on region/religion than their skin color while Americans are more about skintones..
"This isn't medieval" .. Yes, it is. Japan's Medieval period. However that period ends in a couple of years after the show is set when a certain some one becomes Shogun.
I think the point of the first few episodes is to show how alien both groups think the other are. They haven’t met before; everything is strange. They both think the other is backwards and have weird superstitions - why commit sepukku, why not bathe? That scene where they’re at opposite ends of the ladder, calling each barbarians is an example of this. But hopefully over the course of the show you’ll get to see that perspective change and morph to take on aspects of the “other.”
Rickets was common among children in London who grew up in industrial areas where they almost never got sunlight because of all the buildings. During Arianas favorite revolution :D
The almost clock-like precision of the 3 second rotation of "episode full screen, episode in box w/slow screen zoom," actually started making me motion sick. I didn't even get to the stuff everybody seems to be complaining about. Note to ladies, and I'm not trying to be mean: When watching something that is not set in current time, try to open up to the fact that things were different in the past. Not suggesting you try to believe that those ways were better, but try to accept that life was not like it is today.
Ariana ignoring the killing of a child because his father embarrassed someone, the boiling of a stranger alive because they look different and the beheading of a commoner because of a slight inconvenience is peak "its okay because they don't know better".
There is a little historical ignorance and assumption being made but still love the reactions! Like Mable said she wants to look things up now. Which is the point! sparks a curiosity of history! Also the show is really fucking good. Japanese history is long and deep. In the 1600 Japan was no push over. They tried to Invade Korea twice
I honestly don't watch the video expecting them to know anything about Japanese history during this time period. Its not really covered in American schools so unless somebody goes out of their way to study it they won't have an idea. This is fine though because the show can spark an interest in Japanese history. The show isn't 100% historically accurate but it gets a lot of the broad strokes of history right.
In 2007 I got to spend a month in Japan for work. By the time I only had a week or so left I realuzed that I had unlocked a new existential fear ... that I'll die without having ever gone back 😢 To anyone reading this, if you get the chance to go; do it. Do it or you'll regret it forever 🥰
Scurvy is vitamin C deficiency. Our bodies don't make it, so we need to ingest it in our diet. The body will eventually start consuming itself to recover emergency reserves, such as those used in scar tissue. This can lead to old wounds and cuts reopening or new ones not healing.
Then you add to it starvation and dehydration which leads to the body being incapable of producing saliva and the gums begin to rot and infections occur. A truly horrific way to expire.
This is a big plotline for the show The terror (based on real events too). It's scary what happens when the ships run out of lemons and they are stuck in the oceans or ice for years..
I don't know if Maple or Arianna read UA-cam comments but I had to stand up for carrier pigeons. While we view them as rats today they used to serve a very vital function. We (humans) bread them for centuries to carry messages and we did so in a way that forced them to rely on us for every aspect of their lives. We did it for so long that it engrained us as their caretakers in their DNA. SO the reason you see pigeons flocking to human centers to this day is because they used to rely on us for everything. Once the invention of the telephone happened we stopped interacting with them, however they didn't have any other way to care for themselves as all of what they were was based on humans. As time has gone on they have become scavengers around human centers because they don't understand how to actually take care of themselves anymore and engrained in themselves is that we are important to them and they don't even know why anymore.
Hey guys, I know you mentioned not liking the Protestant vs catholic talk but it’s pretty integral to understanding character motivations throughout the series. This division in the church is a huge part of the reason the U.S. even exists. There are countless videos on UA-cam I’d recommend watching to build a baseline on why it’s so important
"She conceals herself against the sun, and conserves her energy" this is metaphorical and literal as falcons will hide in shaded areas to conserve energy that the heat will take from them but it also refers to Toranaga hiding his true intentions and waiting for his moment to take power.
There is alegory going on here but very little metaphor. Hiding in the sun is a common bird of prey tactic that is emulated by fighter pilots. Prey can't see an attacker against the sun.
Some curiosities here! Since you guys refferenced The Last Samurai in the end. Maybe you noticed, but Lord Toranaga is interpreted by Hiroyuki Sanada, who also played Ujio in the Last Samurai, another kickass character. In here not only he is playing Toranaga but also produces the series, and he dedicated an insane amount of work to make this series super accurate to the moment of history this was: The tail end of the Sengoku Jidai - a fascinating, epic and brutal time of Japan's history. Toranaga himself is inspired by the real life Tokugawa Ieyasu, as are most of the characters in the series are also mimicking real crucial personalities of the period. He was a massive character in the history of Japan and major influence in how it evolved through the following centuries (No spoiler). For Arianna: A Shogun was the military de facto ruler of all Japan. At this time in history the Emperor was more of a symbolic figurehead with limited influence, although still playing a role (more so in the earlier years of the Sengoku Jidai). As you advance in the series you will also see who the Taiko was (based on Toyotomi Hideyoshi). And for a broader historical context, in the 1600's, every kingdom/empire on Earth was absolutely brutal in their own ways. The Protestant-Catholic wars in Europe (which were about dominion, power, control of monarchies and greed, not so much about creed/faith), The forging of those bigger European Empires, and even Japan itself had invaded Korea years prior being absolutely brutal with hundreds of thousands dead, not to mention the Sengoku Jidai itself was a savage civil war period in which all the daimyo (heads of Japanese clans) would war amongst themselves ravaging the whole country. Also, if you're interested in having deep dives into the series, FX did podcasts of each episode in which the cast and crew comment on all of this. Very cool stuff this whole series!
It's Anamorphic lenses. Very popular right now. Gives that soft roll off around the edges of the frame as well as the traditional spherical bokeh affect being oval with Anamorphic.
I really hope Arianna (and Maple, but mostly Arianna) do some research and learn more about the actual history of this period and region before watching more of this, because it getting kinda painful to listen to the bad takes/naive comments at this point to the extent it's overpowering the enjoyment of the rest of the reaction
I’m so glad you’re watching this! I expected it to be decent, but it blew my expectations away. In addition to Hiroyuki Sanada (Toranaga) being handsome (as you say), in his role as a producer for this show, he wanted to take special care for historical authenticity of this fraught and fascinating period in Japanese history. Shogun is truly a hybrid UK/Japanese production, and it’s proving to be as popular in Japan as it is here. I think that’s so cool! Enjoy the ride.
Glad I didn't watch these until I finished the series. I've really enjoyed Arianna up until this point, but the way she's just runs her goddamn yapper without knowing the first fucking thing about Japanese history during this time period, and clearly being beyond ignorant of what else was happening around the world during this time period, is annoying af. I would accuse her of not paying attention in school / college, but truthfully, she seems rather young, so they were probably pushing nonstop nonsense that doesn't even remotely line up with what was actually occurring. This reaction series would have been 1000x more enjoyable if it was Maple alone. She's thoughtful and insightful and has an intelligence about her. Arianna is too busy playing Woke Police over here. Hard effing pass on this one, guys.
I'm very excited to watch you guys react to this, because I think the storyline is right up your alley (I still think this channel had one of the better discussions on Succession I have seen online), but just for the sake of perspective, you guys need to understand that Japan has never been a colony of anybody lol I think we tend always to simplify our vision of history, conflating some narratives about who invaded whom, so just to make this part clear lol
I loved the 80s version, and this one is just amazing.... Cant wait to see what you think of this series! Pay attention to the translations - who is translating and how its very rarely actually translating everything is actually really important! I like how you cottoned on to the whole "they are talking past one another" shown. This keeps on going everywhere. Its all about people making assumptions and acting on what they imagine is being said..
Yeah, Rodrigues and father Alvito are two characters that I much more prefer from the old series. Do not get me wrong, in this one they are also fine, and have just less time to develop, as the OG series is longer, and closer to the book. Alvito made me think about Jesuits as spies :D, and their clothes then were just cool. But I get it, they could not put orange here, as it would disturb the watered down colors.
This is actually based on a novel.based on actual people and real events in actual history. Toranaga based in tokagowa iaousu( definitely spelled wrong)blackthorn based on william adams
This work was historical fiction but did so well illustrating a big difference about how feudal Japan felt about fate and how Europe did. The West rejects fate. It fights and claws its way to victory despite the odds. There are failures, but sometimes there are victories. By numbers and logic, England should never have risen to power. Colonized by Romans, Saxons, Normans and others. The water was not a strong enough barrier and they didn’t have enough land to make them an agricultural power compared to the mainland. But it resisted this view to rise. And most European countries are the same, they refused to just accept their fate. The point is to understand that this is not the same culture. It is distinctly different and should be appreciated and approached differently. Something Anjin will learn the hard way.
Seeing the talk of ships and pirates this channel REALLY needs to watch BLACK SAILS. It will leave you floored with it's excellent writing and amazing cast of characters.
I'm sure you will love this show, the quality of acting and writing is over the top. Sanada did an amazing job as an actor and producer in both his roles. Pilots learned from Falcon's "tactic", that if you are above your target with the sun over you, the target can't see you, and the sunlight will blind you.
YES... THIS SHOW ACTUALLY SHOWS HOW THEY BOTH VIEW EACH OTHER THE SAME. BLACKTHORN IS NOT WORSE THAN THEM, JAPANESE WERE NOT WORSE THAN HIM. SAME BUT DIFFERENT 2 island nations.... who built an empire and colonised.... Brilliant inventors... Both like to drink Tea... Both reserved and apologise too often..... no country on Earth that doesn't speak English is more similar to England than Japan is
Japan has a rich history that goes back thousands of years. At this point in time they are a serious and formidable power. They are not being oppressed.
I see Japan and Portugal as the pointing Spiderman meme, thinking each other are the barbarian to be taken advantage of
@@samwallaceart288 It's exactly how it is in this show, everyone is acting on their own interests and trying to take advantage of the other in a way. And it is like that in history to a good extent too
@@MW_Asura 100%. Huge respect for how this show took both halves seriously
And they not being colonized, Japans was a colonizer.
Portugal and Netherlands send people to trade with Japan in the 16th and 17th century- Colonising. Japan in the 16th century tried to invade Korea and China proper- They just do things differently there.
Your understanding of history will be much improved if you stop thinking of all interactions as "oppressor vs. oppressed". Japan, at this time, was a serious regional power that few could stand against.
Spot on. This is not live action Pocahontas.
Precisely this ^. At the time this series is set, Spain and Portugal have had major colonial empires for around a century, but their intentions in Japan were trade and proselytism. Meanwhile, neither England nor the Netherlands have engaged in colonialism in any meaningful sense and are desperately trying to fight off Spanish imperialism at home, their arrival in Japan being to expand their own trade networks and to undermine the Spanish/Portugese. On the other hand, Japan, having just recently been unified under Nobunaga and Hideyoshi had immediately decided that the natural next step was to do an imperialism and launch a murderous and entirely unprovoked invasion of Korea that resulted in something like one million Korean deaths.
The "Europeans = colonialist and imperialist oppressors/non-Europeans = victims of Europeans" model of world history is just not applicable in this time and place.
Japan is naive not because they're powerless, but because they're a purposely isolationist power-cult whose archipelago is a natural fortress against invasion.
There's a reason no nation has successfully invaded them. Even modern America was like 'nah fuck that' and went nuclear instead
@@wafflekopf9429 And the failed invasion to Korea from Japan plays a part on the story too, since Toranaga didnt send troops over there (Korea) unlike the other leaders, and that is the reason why they are wary and united against him, and see it as Toranaga preparing/trying something in Japan)
@@wafflekopf9429 Nice to see that all the top comments here have seen how ridiculous they are being. (much as they seem like nice girls overtaken by a biased and simplistic worldview
It is a little funny watching as the Japanese do horrible things to others and themselves and it being brushed off as okay but the europeans view point looking at it and thinking by god these people are mad is seen as somehow bad. When two cultures so distant from one another meet for the first time it is inevtiable that neither can see the others side. What I think is great about Shogun is this show is very subtle, it shows you the wrongs both cultures have but also the beauty of learning and coming to understand to a degree.
Fun fact. People in 1600 weren’t as forward thinking as we are today
@@GIRTHYANDITCURVES Don't pat the present on the back. You sound like one of the savages.
@@GIRTHYANDITCURVES Does Twitter go back that far? We should dig up tweets from 1600 and cancel historical figures 🤔
Dude just had fish guts poured on him and saw one of the Japanese slice their own villagers head off for speaking to him and she has a problem with the english dude calling them savages. But the English dude does essentially nothing and the Japanese call him a savage barbarian off the rip... crickets. It's funny that she thinks of this as colonialist oppressor vs opressed situation (where obviously the asian people that aren't white/european must be the victims right?) when atleast in this time of history i'm pretty sure Portugal and the Netherlands (who John was hired by) were just in Japan to trade, maybe portugal were interested in a little proselytism. Don't ask what Portugal might have been traded by the Japanese in the 16th century.
revoking women voting rights doesn't seem so bad huh?
At this point in time in the show, Japan had just tried and failed to invade Korea on their way to an attempt at conquering China.
EVERY country/power has attempted to "colonise" others, it's not just Europeans doing it.
By all means, criticize it, just keep it in perspective.
But but white man bad, everything else was and is just a quiet and peaceful flower field. 😂😂
i hate when idiots only act like white men are the only ones who colonized. bruh they should read a book
100%, History is filled with things that make all of us and our causes hypocritical, no one seems to want to learn from any of it, we as a species keep on being an ever revolving circle in that aspect.
They were at a point in history where they were faced with “modernization” and religious loyalty to the feudalism. These officers, generals, and royalty were seen as religious icons, with god given power.
japan killed over 1million + people in korea in a 5 year time span leading up to when the series takes place lol.
Gets angry if they call the locals savages - zero problem whatsoever about the Japanese calling them barbarians and other derogatory remarks etc - double standards eh?
ypeepo bad
it's not that big a deal
Thank you, jesus. All i see is this posturing and pointless grandstanding.@samgradyfilm
Well double standards are expected of women
What madness? Like, I don't know... killing a small child because their parent spoke out of turn? Or boiling someone alive for shits and giggles? Or beheading a peasant on the street for not moving fast enough?
I wouldn't bother, in her rascist world view only white people can be wrong.
Admittedly he's only seen two of those things. And the former is done in England too, enemies of all of humanity pirates.
@@vincegalila7211 England has never had policy of ending ones bloodline out of shame for speaking out of turn lmao...
@@vergil8833 yeah but once again John wasn't witness to that, at this point in the story.
@@vincegalila7211 No he just witnessed a peasant getting decapitated for nothing and his friend being boiled alive...
phew, loooot of judgement here without the ability to put yourself in the timeperiod.
Man it does feel a bit condescending how they see Japan as the oppressed nation in a scenario where they absolutely dominate this region at this time.
I find it interesting that everytime Blackthorne calls the Japanese 'savages' we get the classic Ariana stankface but when the Japanese call Blackthorne a 'barbarian' there's absolutely no reaction from her at all. It's almost like she's prejudged the situation and the Dutch and English Protestants are the villains and the Japanese and Catholics are the good guys (even though in reality it's far more nuanced than that). 🤔...🤣
Don't you know? When whites are racist it's because they're evil, ignorant thugs. When any other race is racist, it's probably justified.
ITS NOT ALWAYS BLACK AND WHITEEEE. BUT YOUR HEART ALWAYS KNOWS WHATS RIGHTT!!
That's western privilege for you, evil is only evil when it's done by the correct race
You can call it "interesting"....or you can call it what it is, which is blatant ignorance and racism.
@@diablohorer Hahaha, ok fine
Ariana rolling her eyes about the comment "savage horde" what he is referring to is the Portuguese and Spanish, not the Japanese.
whats the difference?
@@OwnYourBaldSpoti definitely wouldn’t call the Japanese victims of colonialism when they literally become the most cruel colonial power in the east
@@onepolishman8734 Ya even at this point the Japanese had already tried and failed to conquer Korea. There are no real good guys here, only shades of gray.
@@OwnYourBaldSpotIt’s so funny how “colonizers” has become a liberal buzzword used by idiots to describe anyone white and European. Japanese were colonizers and some of the most SAVAGE people to have ever existed. They have committed some of the worst atrocities in the history of mankind. Liberals don’t like history though so they just think “whites are evil and everyone else are victims”
@@onepolishman8734 Korea has entered the chat.
The bias against Blackthorne is insane, people from 400 years ago are going to seem intolerable by today's standards sure, but it's as though no one else in the show can do any wrong. He's not the most eloquent or polite person but I think he deserves some slack considering his limited perspective and what he's been through up to this point. As for his hatred of the Catholics you need to put it in the historical context of the Inquisition, the torturing, the burnings at the stake, the things that led to the then recent Protestant reformation, and here he is on the other side of the world still dealing with them.
I've never heard any suggestion that the Protestant reformation was in response to the Inquisition -- do you have any pointers to something about that? (The protestants were just as keen on torturing, burning at the stake, boiling people, etc, so.... I'd be surprised, but only a little, as folks are often hypocrites.)
38:44 learn some history girl middle east/west asia and north Africa were all Christians lands and all conquered by Muslims fastly and violently... im a Kurd even some of our cities get violently conquered such as Diyarbekir (Amed) etc and our people were not Christians... later Muslims made their way into Europe they tried conquer Europe from multiple fronts such as from Constatinople (Istanbul) and north Africa etc however Constantinople the biggest Christian city at the time was one of their main goal bcz founder of Islam prophet Muhammed famously said this “Verily, you shall conquer Constantinople. What a wonderful army will that army be, and what a wonderful commander will that conqueror be.”This is the famous “conquest hadith,” but their first attempts failed however they made an succesfull conquering in north African front with entering Spain and Portugal (Iberian peninsula) then France and Italy but they couldnt get any further due to sheer resistance and they ruled Iberian peninsula for 700 years and ofc indigenous Iberians werent happy with all of this they launched reconquista my point is crusades didnt come out of nowhere it was response to Islamic world and you did confused crusaders with reconquistadors it was reconquistadors who take back Iberian peninsula and later found the 'new world' and conquered new world not crusaders...
by the way sorry for my bad English
Wait are you annoyed that they don't like the crusades? The crusades weren't one thing, and they weren't done to free or help anyone, and they included a lot of really awful shit. Properly disliking the crusades does not diminish any other terrible things that were done around the world by other groups. (And the reconquista was suuuper super super super bad, regardless of how prior governance functioned... it does not need apologetics.)
@@_iarna_ i hope you and the girl will keep this energy for Islamic expansion as well but i doubt it
@@_iarna_ The point is they don't know a single thing of the nuance that you apparently do, yet have the biggest opinions on them. Maybe you are new to the channel, but they display a very shallow understanding of politics outside of their very narrow (and i would argue extremely biased) understanding of american politics. So that nuanced conversation you might want to have, they simply are not equipped to have.
Telling people to learn history and yet here you are being islamophobe. lmao
F kurd turd
Ariana knowing so little about history and having such strong opinions is peak America.
I only needed this comment to convince myself to not watch this lol
saying its American to say this isnt true or fair. So many are ignorant to history. its not an American thing alone....
Yep.
@@aidanfarris8658 Sure, historical ignorance certainly isn't a uniquely American phenomenon, but the combination of (ignorance of world history + application of US historical assumptions to another country's history + strong opinions about that country's history) that Ariana is displaying here tends to be peculiar to the USA. It's a shame because her other videos seem to be mostly pretty good.
@@wafflekopf9429 One of the things I found funny is the idea that the Industrial Revolution is one of their least favorite periods in history. Alongside the Crusades. The irony of a person in the 21st century making that comment through internet media is about as funny as anything I've heard in a long time. That and the idea that _The Last Samurai_ , an Orientalist film with a big dose of white-savior helping, is one of their favorite films.
I think calling Blackthorne not special having navigated to the other side of the world is.a bit odd. unless you don’t value courage, intelligence, fortitude, resilience etc etc
I always found it ridiculous that they kept calling the europeans barbarians while boiling a guy alive in a giant cooking pot and executing a baby!! along with the father.
Why though? If that's what your culture and creeds stipulate, it's going to become as accepted as crosses or other symbols denoting faith. All that it signifies, in Japanese (yabanjin) or most other language, is an uncivilized person, and cultural quirks and specifics ultimately are what determine whether you're a "wild beast" or not. So much so that it's pretty common to rank even the worst mass murderers above foreigners, as long as they vaguely follow established societal rules.
that baby had it coming!
When watching a period piece or reading about history it's pretty important to understand the context of the time. So to the people there the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism is going to be significant for them. It's also important to know that none of that will be of any importance to the Japanese. They will have their own set of concerns. The older tv version of this followed more of the Angin Portuguese plot while this one does not.
Also, Blackthorn keeps calling them savages while the Japanese keep calling him a Barbarian.
Lol ariana just not understanding anything going on but having serious opinions is hilarious.
Yeah, the combination of historical ignorance and thoughtless orientalism in this reaction is kinda rough.
Her reactions are odd. Blackthorne calls Yabushige a 'savage' and she gets annoyed...even though she's just seen Yabushige order a man to be boiled alive. 🙄
to me its just the way certain flakey people just dont acknowledge that order came from power, and power is violence.. in alll its flavours, colonialization, domination over tribes, endless violence in history is a river that gave us and them - all of us being lucky descendants - this bubble called ''civilization''..
a bubble that is bringing diminishing returns as its raising weak entitlement of postmodern armchair bravado
@@eddhardy1054 "Gotta honor different traditions" or something like that.
@@spacemonkeyentertainment6413yup this Fandom is full of dumb bucks
It is incredible how the very point of the setup for the show is completely lost on them.
Take a shot every time Ariana says “the way” 😂😂
Fr its like she developed tourettes and thats her tick its every other sentence she used to be the smart one
It’s interesting how they see the Anjin as the ignorant one. During the show they learn of each other’s weaknesses
To be fair it's just plain dumb to be in such a fucked state/situation and have any kind of sass, bro grabbed his crotch to get his disrespect towards a group of armed men through the language barrier, but Blackthrone is smart so he wisened up quickly.
EDIT: bruh I watched the video it's obvious that they get both sides yall are just using too much hindsight.
It's funny, they're so stuck in the modern American "white man bad" way of looking a the world, that they can't see that the show isn't trying to say that one way of looking at things is superior to another. The point is just to understand the different ways that different cultures see the world, whether that's Anglo protestant individualism, Catholic collectivism or Japanese Shinto/Buddhist social order.
Take a shot every time Ariana says “The Way”. You’ll be dead.
Crazy judgemental, guys. They are all the same. Take a beat and understand things a little better first, maybe.
Nothing more painful to watch than a person who acts like her shit don't stink. Gonna watch someone with a more level head.
Japan wasn’t colonized.
Also the hate against the Anjin by Arianna is wild. What’s the deal?
I don't think she hates him. I think she is just flustered by him just making a bad situation worse at every turn. Like he is a prisoner and then he antagonizes them and without knowing anything about the Japanese just assumes they are savages when in reality he is the one sailing to make war.
Cause Shes a woke girl that hates whites
@@red2977 he wasn’t sailing to make war on the Japanese. They boiled an innocent man alive, pissed on him, beheaded an innocent man in front of him. She called him and his crew “trash bags”. There’s no nuance to her take on the English in this episode. Before anything even happened she kept shitting on him. Bizarrely aggressive from the jump and, as other commenters have pointed out, completely ignorant of history altogether.
@@LacoSinfonia Just to be clear, his crew is Dutch. The English you hear him speak to them is actually Dutch, and the English you hear him speak to the Japanese or the Portuguese is Portuguese. Technically speaking, Anjin never actually speaks English in the series.
@@megamonster1234 ok.
The show is pointing out that all sides are prejudice against each other not just John..
without a doubt they are all prejudiced not just one side. The Japanese are incredibly prejudiced towards all foreigners.
She can't see past white man bad.
it’s a show and everyone is on board with it. i think it’s okay to not take offense every time the word savage gets said
Of course, because the point here (which ladies seem to miss) is that both sides see themselves as "savages".
Dude I swear there is something Arianna has against John or just the English in general. The fleet john was apart of could've been raiding evil time traveling nazis and she still would've hated him lmfao. Weird double standard where she is okay with Portugal, Spain, AND Catholicism but not England or Protestantism.
you're the one who seems triggered
After this ep, we need a _"The way..."_ counter for Arianna 🙃
Japan is one of the few Asian countries to _never_ have been colonized. Even the Great Khans couldn't crack it.
Geographically, Japan is a giant fortress, whose inhabitants were raised with a military cult mentality of reporting and isolating outsiders on-sight.
Their permission of Portuguese missionaries and traders was strictly a business arrangement and the traders were only allowed within limited port areas on business-only privileges.
Later on they retracted these privileges, and it was only a threat of naval bombardment from the US that made them open back up again. And even then, it was only on limited conditions.
The Europification of Japan during the Meiji Restoration wasn't coerced, it was mutual.
Japan's modernization right before The Pacific War wasn't Europeans "colonizing" them.
Unlike French Indochina, Manchuria, the Philippines, or Singapore, no European nation owned _any_ Japanese soil.
Quite the contrary, the Meiji Restoration was Japan intentionally downloading every Western technology they could get their hands on so that they could one day colonize Asia themselves with the big boys.
Starting on the border islands between Russia and Japan, Japan successfully defeated the Russians in battle, with the naval technology they learned overseas then perfected.
Bolstered by this, Japan realized they could easily cripple the European colonies in Asia and claim them for their own, becoming the one Asian superpower.
Their main target was Singapore, which is the bottleneck between Japan and the Indian Ocean ergo their route to Europe.
As an afterthought, they sent an extra attack to cripple Pearl Harbor so that America wouldn't be able to intervene.
America's fervent response to Pearl Harbor triggering the Pacific War was a complete surprise to the Japanese. They expected the isolationist Americans to back off.
America had to fight very hard to push Japan back to its home turf, and insodoing the Japanese themselves purposely killed a lot of local natives as cannon fodder and slave labor to say the least.
After the war, once Emperor Hirohito personally begged his own people to accept the humiliation of surrender, Japan did something smart; they landed into the fact that China got overrun by Soviets, and leveraged the situation to get every benefit they could from the Americans; by giving up their nation as an American fortress against the Communists, they got preferencial treatment in foreign affairs, financial grants, American protection from any Chinese retaliation, amnesty for their long list of war crimes and genocides (including letting their human-experiment perpetrators off the hook), and easy foreign exchange and integration for their citizens. Japanese citizens moving to the US keep their Japanese names, they're not pressured to change it like the Chinese immigrants.
There's a lot I like about Japan and America, but calling them "colonized" is categorically wrong and an insult to the rest of Asia that were.
Japan isn't the oppressed Na'vi, they're Vegeta deciding to team up.
Morality is influenced by political outcomes. The English pilot was just merely trying to survive. Your 21st century American ideals of "oppressor white man vs oppressed minority" is ridiculous and please do more research.
The way you guys rooted for the guy who boiled someone alive more than the english guy just because he called them savages lmao. If I just saw someone cut down in the street for standing in the way, and another man boiled alive for nothing I too would call them savage. This is his introduction to them, how else is he supposed to view them?
The fact that they're both considered "very sick men" is wild when the worst thing the english guy has done is call them savage, while the small-time lord boiled someone alive for hours just because he likes it.
The idea that the english are the bad guys for going after portuguese ports is also dubious at best, but since you said you don't know this part of history well I won't hold it against you. But it said in his ledger that Englands purpose in going after their bases was to open trade to the east, that should say something about what the portuguese are doing there.
You guys really got to study a little more history. The Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese did soooo much long before the english ever did. Hell, most people have no idea the Portuguese started the atlantic slave trade and accounted for the VAST majority of people taken from Africa to the Americas and Caribbean.
They cover that in school with things like the Dutch Trading Company etc but soo much more weight gets put on England, since the colonies were English.
As a European i feel like a ton of Americans are quite uneducated when it comes to history outside of ww2 and America. While we study and read way more about the entire world and don't focus on our countries.
I've always liked Ariana and her takes but yeah she comes off a bit ignorant for sure, I hope she chills out a bit next time and reads up on the history of Europe and Japan.
It's a complex story with no right or wrong sides, just like all of human history where everyone thinks their side is true and righteous.
It's totally fine to not know everything but if you don't it's usually not very smart to be discussing details of topics you are unfamiliar with, which many Americans tend to do and it is a bit annoying to hear for us Europeans/Asians who actually know this period.
It's like each European country reigned supreme at some point in the past 500 years, the British were just the best at doing the whole Empire thing and did it most recently so they get all the blame.
@@bb.buchananthen did the most to end it. Go figure.
The dutch actually had a 400 year healthy business relation. In fact the japanese and dutch were very liked by eachother.
This is historical fiction, and most of the cast are loosely based off real historical figures, though all their names have been changed. The previous taiko, Hideyoshi, had an heir too young to rule, so a council of 5 regents was established to keep the peace until he came of age. In real history, Tokugawa Ieyasu (the basis for Lord Toranaga in this show) betrayed the council, made an excuse to go to war with the heir, slaughtered the heir and his family, and took over Japan, after which point he ushered in a strict caste system, closed off Japan's borders completely for the next 2 centuries to keep outsiders away, and enacted various laws that kept all other lords and peoples poor and busy so they couldn't rise up to challenge his rule. He succeeded at maintaining his rule so decisively that Japan had an era of peace called the Edo period (Edo is Ieyasu/Toranaga's hometown and eventually became modern day Tokyo). Eventually, after 2 centuries of his bloodline's rule and drastic isolationism, Japan had become severely far behind other competitive countries in technology and trade, and then ushered in the Meiji Restoration, a period of starting to fix the problems Ieyasu caused the country, and moving closer to modern day Japan. Obviously the show's Toranaga is pretty different from Ieyasu, but he does of course feature one of Ieyasu's most famous traits, which is his pension for complex and clever political trickery and deception.
John Blackthorne in this show is very loosely based off of a historical English sailor who became a samurai under Ieyasu's lordship.
Personally, as a student of history, I think media about ignorant white people coming into contact with foreign cultures can overcorrect a bit with their portrayal of how much this Japanese culture has to teach the white man. Let's not pretend like Japan after a hundred years of brutal civil war and unrest was without it's own cultural problems and points of valid criticism. Or more accurately, that ANY culture is above being wrought with problems and valid criticism.
Arianna's next movie watch would clearly be Kingdom of Heaven, right?
Well, i love KoH, but it is a very current year biased perspective still, painting Gui de Lusignan as a murderous madman for example. Even at the end, with Saladin alowing everyone to leave. Obviously they want to paint him as a "good" or at least "better" guy, mind you, in reality he allowed people who could pay for their freedom to pay and leave, but many where left behind to be slaves to them, so he didnt allow everyone to leave. I mean, by those times standarts that was still a rather "benevolent" thing, but nowhere near as what its painted in the movie.
@@Darkja why where they there in the first place?
Do you know why there is very old islamic architecture in spain?
The commentary in this video depicts the consequense of being exposed to the american "education" system especially in regards to the way they fail to teach objective history and historical geopolitics.
this isnt from an american education system, this is from twitter/tiktok propaganda. they probably rejected their american education as "lies"
modern americans & their d***ness
With these two being among my most favorite reactors, I’m going to be optimistic and hope they actually read these comments, quickly do some research on the period of time and history, regroup, adjust, and spare us all from another dismally ignorant review of episode 2.
no, white man bad
lol my god these 2 know literally nothing about history at all, and are clueless about what is happening in this story as a result. And won't learn it either because they already have preconceived notions of what is happening. None of which is true or actually happening. Brutal. This reaction series won't go well at all.
It’s always so interesting watching everyone puff up in a historical holier than though display in the comments.
One of the best parts of being human is being able to learn new things! And also holding a responsibility to create a space to teach others something new!!! Also I said I love watching historically based period pieces recently because it’s allowing me to learn new things! But how disappointing and dissatisfying to want to be immersed in a new experience and hear what others know only to be met with comments like yours. Truly lame and then you wonder why people “know literally nothing about history” it’s because you’re ruining the experience of learning.
@@lukem1286 where was I being prejudice? I really had no formal opinion about literally anything??
@@MapleDivine "you’re ruining the experience of learning"....the person "ruining the experience of learning" is your react partner who spent the entire episode complaining about European colonizers, which both was not happening in the actual story or real life. I don't expect anyone to learn anything if she's going to be in your ear the whole time ranting about something that again....is not actually happening in both the story or real life in this time period.
My comments and the hundreds of others wouldn't be so harsh if we all didn't see the inevitable result of this reaction series. Pointlessness if she's going to spend every episode ranting and raving about things that are not actually happening on the screen.
The Way she played the modern NPC and villainized just the white guy while referencing colonization even though no one was being colonized
"Modern NPC"... My guy, you're getting triggered over reaction video on UA-cam and then you wrote it down for everyone to see. You are the loser in this story.
The sheer ignorance combined with the blatant favoritism makes this infuriating to watch. Educate yourselves. Please.
The way I'm wondering why the hell "The way I'm" is suddenly being said -every 45 seconds-
*EDIT:* every 15 seconds
Ariana been on tiktok wayy too much recently
spongey tiktok brain.
I was assuming it was for a bet
No seriously can someone explain why she said that.
I think instead of getting annoyed by the catholic vs protestant conflict... rather look at the many comparable idiotic conflicts we still have today?... Ethnic/Gender/political... We are not much better than the people back then, except that now we are idiots with fortnite and toilet paper😂
It's easily forgotten that yon dude was ultimately boiled to death because the Jesuit priest was demanding the Anjin be murdered... Priests demanding murder... nice 😉
Cuz they haven't been honest with the Japanese people and they would be screwed if the Japanese found out what they really have been up to.
Also Ariana's comment on the Industrial Revolution is possibly the dumbest thing ever. I really hope she's joking but I've got a bad feeling she's not. 😳
Not "the Protestant, Catholic, crusading-type wars..." bit immediately before? I mean, not knowing anything about European history is fine if you're not interested in it but how in the Dunning-Kruger is it possible to know so little about something while having such strong opinions about it?
@@wafflekopf9429 They were both awesomely stupid but based on what Ariana had said previously I kinda expected the 'Crusade' comment whereas the Industrial Revolution thing completely wrong footed me.
To fill you in on where Edo is. It's Tokyo before becoming Tokyo.
Tokyō is literally the "East Capitol" to the OG "Capitol City" that is Kyōto.
Edo was its original name.
Also Ōsaka is "Big Port"
@@samwallaceart288I didn’t know that. Thanks for the lesson.
Most historically literate zoomer women:
Maybe you two should react to a history documentary so you could actually learn about history instead of bothering the world with your completely distorted and incorrect view of history.
The fact you know so little about well known world history makes me wonder if either even graduated high school...
American school systems really only prioritize US and european history and even with European history its only specific time periods/countries etc. I don't think I learned anything in school about Japan outside of the WW2 era, pretty much nothing about china and other countries in the region. All my knowledge I had to seek out history books to learn or actually spending time in those countries.
@@red2977u just didnt pay attention because we did learn about this in school
@@curiousshaman2723 maybe your school system was different. I know it wasn't taught in my school.
They should watch Bill wurtz The entire history of Japan!
pretty sure one is an army dependa or was
The way every sentence begins with "The Way".
if that chick on the right is gonna act as we in the latino community say, "all pique," over literal history im gonna have fun cringing at her reactions every single time. like, yeah we get it, it makes no sense to you, it doesnt make sense anyone to anyone else either. also i would love to see her having the same reactions to like the different muslim sects and how they all hate each other even to this day, at least most christians dont really gaf anymore.
The weebish wokery in this reaction video might be tolerable were it not for the fact that they completely disregard (even condone) the nihilistic cruelty of the Sengoku period. This is a tumultuous moment in Japanese history which presaged the long peace & prosperity of the Edo era. They're really not getting this show.
That's because the sum total of their knowledge of Japan and world history effectively condenses down to 1945 was wrong and White Christians bad.
@@boogaloobalooI love both Maple and Adrianna but her comment on the Crusades struck me the same way.
The Crusades were a necessary defensive counter to Muslim incursions in Europe and the damage their piracy caused in the Mediterranean after Rome's fall and the end of Pax Romana.
The creators of the show decided to replace all the Portuguese with English to make the show more accessible to a wider audience; otherwise, the entire show would have required subtitles. But historically speaking, all the spoken English is meant to be Portuguese.
Well, there is some dutch and latin going on as well.
Yea that might be confusing to some when he asks the interpreters to speak portugese and then they bust out in English.
The way I just realized Arianna says "the way I" a lot lmao
They way the blo0nde reactor can't start a sentence without the words "The way..." is the most annoying verbal t6ic i i have ever encountered.
Regarding the language, when you hear English they are actually speaking Portuguese. The Portuguese currently have exclusive access to Japan and of course the only languages they have taught the Japanese are Portuguese and Latin. At present, no Japanese can speak or read or write any other European language. Also the Japanese only know one form of Christianity, and that is Catholicism. They know nothing of Protestantism. When Blackthorne stomped on the Catholic priest's cross, the Japanese thought that meant Blackthorne hated all Christians. That was why Lord Yabushige took an interest in him.
13:39 - everyone says the same thing at the sight of Mariko. "She's beautiful." Including me. 😂
anna sawai is literally breathtaking 🥹
I don't disagree, but Fuji is the stunner for me.
@@hyprmyndFuji is the real queen of the show if you ask me..
The way Arianna needs a the way counter this episode
"Why tell a dead man the future?"
That line from Yabushige only resonates as hard as it should, on a rewatch.
rewatch? I guess if you have a poor memory
@joelwillis2043 I think you mean, " Don't have a photographic memory."
One, seemingly insignificant line, weeks apart.
@@joelwillis2043 Please finish the show first before typing anything further.
@@PeterPing I have, there are several bookends in the show. They almost hit you over the head with them.
7:30 I love that Maple mentions the camera filter, as I too found it to be a compelling artistic/stylistic choice, and she had some great ideas about what that choice may represent. I also really like the way they present the subtitles (color, typeface, etc). It _feels_ very complementary to the overall style, not merely a formality of presenting dialogue to an English audience. It has a suitable vintage presentation. Great choices for this story.
It feels like an ode to the old Samurai movies and I absolutely love it. The screen edge distortion draws more attention to the center of the screen and the speakers in the scenes the same way the old Samurai and Western movies* would punch in on the eyes and faces in the intense moments. 10/10 cinematography.
im amazed you guys even understand 1/4 of whats happening in the show since you never shut up and just talk through the entire thing.
"Is this the first time they've seen white people?" Only a minute or two after the opening card explained how thoroughly ingrained the Portuguese trading presence was in Japan is absolute confirmation of all the complaints in the comments here 😂
I normally really enjoy this channel, even if I don't always agree with the girls, but man, I hope this gets better. Y'all can be better than this, sheesh.
Hopefully the show opens their eyes to the complexities and nuance of the environment at this point in history.
Pretty much all historical. Toranaga Yoshii is based on Tokugawa Ieyasu and how he came to power.
5:37 btw Europeans never saw themselves as white or should i say they never had concept of 'white' race this concept is an American concept dont look at into history or moden world with this view... European concept is ethnicity based like majority of the world and it is still the concept in majority of Europe even H*tler and N*azis didnt had an concept of 'white' race their concept of race was Germanic, Slavic etc so their concepts based on either culture, language family or region never skin color for example Slavs who are as 'white' as Germans themselves seen as subhumans by the N*zis so there is that
In 1758, Carl Linnaeus proposed what he considered to be natural taxonomic categories of the human species. He distinguished between Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens europaeus, and he later added four geographical subdivisions of humans: white Europeans, red Americans, yellow Asians and black Africans
Lol its wasnt americans . god damn u just cant keep our dicks out ur mouth for a second can u , the dude was Swedish and there are accounts of this dating further back in time to greece and rome .
Thank you for this comment! As a Swede I've never heard anyone describe someone as white in my entire life outside the internet, and it annoys me to no end because there is no such thing as being white.
We just say "he's German" "he's Greek" "she's Italian" etc.
I think we focus more on region/religion than their skin color while Americans are more about skintones..
@@curiousshaman2723 is he one person or is he entire of Europe?
The way I
"This isn't medieval" .. Yes, it is. Japan's Medieval period. However that period ends in a couple of years after the show is set when a certain some one becomes Shogun.
I think the point of the first few episodes is to show how alien both groups think the other are. They haven’t met before; everything is strange. They both think the other is backwards and have weird superstitions - why commit sepukku, why not bathe? That scene where they’re at opposite ends of the ladder, calling each barbarians is an example of this.
But hopefully over the course of the show you’ll get to see that perspective change and morph to take on aspects of the “other.”
Im not getting why you're so against Blacktorn. If the roles were reversed, it would be the same
Rickets was common among children in London who grew up in industrial areas where they almost never got sunlight because of all the buildings.
During Arianas favorite revolution :D
This was a terrible, terrible reaction.
These two airheads
The almost clock-like precision of the 3 second rotation of "episode full screen, episode in box w/slow screen zoom," actually started making me motion sick. I didn't even get to the stuff everybody seems to be complaining about.
Note to ladies, and I'm not trying to be mean: When watching something that is not set in current time, try to open up to the fact that things were different in the past. Not suggesting you try to believe that those ways were better, but try to accept that life was not like it is today.
Ariana ignoring the killing of a child because his father embarrassed someone, the boiling of a stranger alive because they look different and the beheading of a commoner because of a slight inconvenience is peak "its okay because they don't know better".
There is a little historical ignorance and assumption being made but still love the reactions! Like Mable said she wants to look things up now. Which is the point! sparks a curiosity of history! Also the show is really fucking good. Japanese history is long and deep. In the 1600 Japan was no push over. They tried to Invade Korea twice
I honestly don't watch the video expecting them to know anything about Japanese history during this time period. Its not really covered in American schools so unless somebody goes out of their way to study it they won't have an idea. This is fine though because the show can spark an interest in Japanese history. The show isn't 100% historically accurate but it gets a lot of the broad strokes of history right.
Trying very hard to ignore Arianna giving herself a goatee and mustache at 7:10 with her water bottle
😂😂😂😂😂😂
I KNOW MY NEXT COSPLAY
Woman on the right is so obnoxious.
In 2007 I got to spend a month in Japan for work. By the time I only had a week or so left I realuzed that I had unlocked a new existential fear ... that I'll die without having ever gone back 😢
To anyone reading this, if you get the chance to go; do it. Do it or you'll regret it forever 🥰
Scurvy is vitamin C deficiency. Our bodies don't make it, so we need to ingest it in our diet. The body will eventually start consuming itself to recover emergency reserves, such as those used in scar tissue. This can lead to old wounds and cuts reopening or new ones not healing.
Then you add to it starvation and dehydration which leads to the body being incapable of producing saliva and the gums begin to rot and infections occur. A truly horrific way to expire.
This is a big plotline for the show The terror (based on real events too).
It's scary what happens when the ships run out of lemons and they are stuck in the oceans or ice for years..
I need to watch the series again. So many little things have meaning now. "Let her hands be the last to hold ....", "Why tell a dead man the future."
This series is based on a book that is loosely based on real events which makes it more engaging of a story.
I don't know if Maple or Arianna read UA-cam comments but I had to stand up for carrier pigeons. While we view them as rats today they used to serve a very vital function. We (humans) bread them for centuries to carry messages and we did so in a way that forced them to rely on us for every aspect of their lives. We did it for so long that it engrained us as their caretakers in their DNA. SO the reason you see pigeons flocking to human centers to this day is because they used to rely on us for everything. Once the invention of the telephone happened we stopped interacting with them, however they didn't have any other way to care for themselves as all of what they were was based on humans. As time has gone on they have become scavengers around human centers because they don't understand how to actually take care of themselves anymore and engrained in themselves is that we are important to them and they don't even know why anymore.
Hey guys, I know you mentioned not liking the Protestant vs catholic talk but it’s pretty integral to understanding character motivations throughout the series. This division in the church is a huge part of the reason the U.S. even exists. There are countless videos on UA-cam I’d recommend watching to build a baseline on why it’s so important
"She conceals herself against the sun, and conserves her energy" this is metaphorical and literal as falcons will hide in shaded areas to conserve energy that the heat will take from them but it also refers to Toranaga hiding his true intentions and waiting for his moment to take power.
There is alegory going on here but very little metaphor.
Hiding in the sun is a common bird of prey tactic that is emulated by fighter pilots.
Prey can't see an attacker against the sun.
you will realized ''who'' Toranaga alludes this metaphor later in the series
Some curiosities here! Since you guys refferenced The Last Samurai in the end.
Maybe you noticed, but Lord Toranaga is interpreted by Hiroyuki Sanada, who also played Ujio in the Last Samurai, another kickass character.
In here not only he is playing Toranaga but also produces the series, and he dedicated an insane amount of work to make this series super accurate to the moment of history this was: The tail end of the Sengoku Jidai - a fascinating, epic and brutal time of Japan's history.
Toranaga himself is inspired by the real life Tokugawa Ieyasu, as are most of the characters in the series are also mimicking real crucial personalities of the period. He was a massive character in the history of Japan and major influence in how it evolved through the following centuries (No spoiler).
For Arianna: A Shogun was the military de facto ruler of all Japan. At this time in history the Emperor was more of a symbolic figurehead with limited influence, although still playing a role (more so in the earlier years of the Sengoku Jidai). As you advance in the series you will also see who the Taiko was (based on Toyotomi Hideyoshi).
And for a broader historical context, in the 1600's, every kingdom/empire on Earth was absolutely brutal in their own ways. The Protestant-Catholic wars in Europe (which were about dominion, power, control of monarchies and greed, not so much about creed/faith), The forging of those bigger European Empires, and even Japan itself had invaded Korea years prior being absolutely brutal with hundreds of thousands dead, not to mention the Sengoku Jidai itself was a savage civil war period in which all the daimyo (heads of Japanese clans) would war amongst themselves ravaging the whole country.
Also, if you're interested in having deep dives into the series, FX did podcasts of each episode in which the cast and crew comment on all of this. Very cool stuff this whole series!
It's Anamorphic lenses. Very popular right now. Gives that soft roll off around the edges of the frame as well as the traditional spherical bokeh affect being oval with Anamorphic.
I love that dreamy vibe these lenses give off! Works very well.
“The way I”
Do you know da way
I really hope Arianna (and Maple, but mostly Arianna) do some research and learn more about the actual history of this period and region before watching more of this, because it getting kinda painful to listen to the bad takes/naive comments at this point to the extent it's overpowering the enjoyment of the rest of the reaction
I’m so glad you’re watching this! I expected it to be decent, but it blew my expectations away. In addition to Hiroyuki Sanada (Toranaga) being handsome (as you say), in his role as a producer for this show, he wanted to take special care for historical authenticity of this fraught and fascinating period in Japanese history. Shogun is truly a hybrid UK/Japanese production, and it’s proving to be as popular in Japan as it is here. I think that’s so cool! Enjoy the ride.
Glad I didn't watch these until I finished the series.
I've really enjoyed Arianna up until this point, but the way she's just runs her goddamn yapper without knowing the first fucking thing about Japanese history during this time period, and clearly being beyond ignorant of what else was happening around the world during this time period, is annoying af.
I would accuse her of not paying attention in school / college, but truthfully, she seems rather young, so they were probably pushing nonstop nonsense that doesn't even remotely line up with what was actually occurring. This reaction series would have been 1000x more enjoyable if it was Maple alone. She's thoughtful and insightful and has an intelligence about her. Arianna is too busy playing Woke Police over here. Hard effing pass on this one, guys.
Best written series so far this year. Enjoy the ride but pay close attention! Based on the first Englishman to reach Japan.
Have u seen the gentlemen show its pretty good as well
Yabushige is always smiling and he's my favorite character
“What are you doing in my waters, Anjin? Have you ever drank sake from a shoe?” - Old Gregg Yabushige
This show is beautiful all the way through, from the scenery, the set designs, the costumes and the acting.
I'm very excited to watch you guys react to this, because I think the storyline is right up your alley (I still think this channel had one of the better discussions on Succession I have seen online), but just for the sake of perspective, you guys need to understand that Japan has never been a colony of anybody lol I think we tend always to simplify our vision of history, conflating some narratives about who invaded whom, so just to make this part clear lol
Damn this is gonna be a tough watch
I loved the 80s version, and this one is just amazing.... Cant wait to see what you think of this series!
Pay attention to the translations - who is translating and how its very rarely actually translating everything is actually really important! I like how you cottoned on to the whole "they are talking past one another" shown. This keeps on going everywhere. Its all about people making assumptions and acting on what they imagine is being said..
Watch the original 1980 Shōgun if you want to see Rodriguez be played by Gimli 😅
Rodrigues, damn it! He is Portuguese not Spanish!
@@davidribeiro1064 Actually he's Spanish working for the Portugese. Says so when introducing himself at 26:54.
@@vederianl9723 not in the book he is not.
Yeah, Rodrigues and father Alvito are two characters that I much more prefer from the old series. Do not get me wrong, in this one they are also fine, and have just less time to develop, as the OG series is longer, and closer to the book. Alvito made me think about Jesuits as spies :D, and their clothes then were just cool. But I get it, they could not put orange here, as it would disturb the watered down colors.
This is actually based on a novel.based on actual people and real events in actual history. Toranaga based in tokagowa iaousu( definitely spelled wrong)blackthorn based on william adams
This work was historical fiction but did so well illustrating a big difference about how feudal Japan felt about fate and how Europe did. The West rejects fate. It fights and claws its way to victory despite the odds. There are failures, but sometimes there are victories.
By numbers and logic, England should never have risen to power. Colonized by Romans, Saxons, Normans and others. The water was not a strong enough barrier and they didn’t have enough land to make them an agricultural power compared to the mainland. But it resisted this view to rise. And most European countries are the same, they refused to just accept their fate.
The point is to understand that this is not the same culture. It is distinctly different and should be appreciated and approached differently. Something Anjin will learn the hard way.
Seeing the talk of ships and pirates this channel REALLY needs to watch BLACK SAILS. It will leave you floored with it's excellent writing and amazing cast of characters.
Barbarian has lost its severity as a word, whereas "savage" hasnt. Grow up, all of you
I'm sure you will love this show, the quality of acting and writing is over the top. Sanada did an amazing job as an actor and producer in both his roles.
Pilots learned from Falcon's "tactic", that if you are above your target with the sun over you, the target can't see you, and the sunlight will blind you.
4:55 reading the list of symptoms I was immediately worried for myself
YES... THIS SHOW ACTUALLY SHOWS HOW THEY BOTH VIEW EACH OTHER THE SAME. BLACKTHORN IS NOT WORSE THAN THEM, JAPANESE WERE NOT WORSE THAN HIM. SAME BUT DIFFERENT
2 island nations.... who built an empire and colonised.... Brilliant inventors... Both like to drink Tea... Both reserved and apologise too often..... no country on Earth that doesn't speak English is more similar to England than Japan is