Comments by "Ronin Dave" (@RoninDave) on "Age Of Samurai: Battle For Japan - Netflix Review Episode 1" video.

  1. I think the production crew largely didn't know much about Japanese history so much of what the talking-head historians were saying to them (and probably ended up on the editing room floor) went over their heads. They went with what they knew and what they thought their audience knew which isn't much. So a lot of things that could have really pushed the docuseries into interesting territories was missed.
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  2. With dramas I generally roll my eyes at all the armchair historians pointing out the obvious historical inaccuracies big and small (kilts in Bravehearts, wrong shields in Gladiator. etc...) but a historical drama you expect better. I can even give a pass to inaccuracies with costumes if they just didn't have all the set pieces but actual historical details that are blatantly wrong and fabricated are not so forgivable. First episode states Okehamaza was a night battle and shows (fortunately doesn't actually say) that Toyotomi Hideyoshi killed Imagawa Yoshimoto. People might try to brush that off as artistic license which would be fine for a drama but not for a "historical" documentary. Imagine if another country did a documentary on a piece of your country's history that was so well known by even the lowest educated in your country and got the basic details wrong, you wouldn't take it seriously. A Japanese person once they got over the visual inaccuracies would be scratching their head at Okehazama being treated as a night battle when they grew up hearing it was in the afternoon after a thunderstorm. Granted, the actual details are murky and the accounts rather apocryphal (the timely thunderstorm in particular) but a documentary should address this if it were a misconception (and night battles weren't so unconventional - hello, Battle of Kawagoe? Hell, the Hogen no Ran). And Toyotomi (forget he wasn't called that at the time but whatever) killing Imagawa? Might as well have Lincoln riding into battle at Gettysburg and executing Stonewall Jackson on the battlefield (like they did with Ishida at Sekigahara). I give them a "C" for effort but it's obvious this was for a largely American audience with only the faintest of knowledge of the history and for many whom "katanas F'ing rule!" However, I hope they use the momentum of the series to make better and more detailed documentaries that don't squish more than half-a-century worth of events.
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  3. Yeah, when I first heard of it I thought the same thing which if a drama I could forgive certain details for artistic license but a documentary? Maybe it started that way - the B-roll stuff - then they scrapped it for cost reasons and brought in the talking heads.
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