Review: Shogun, "Broken to the Fist"
I’ve been praising Shogun from the start for its efforts to decentralize the “white savior narrative” in its storytelling. Maybe I’ve been praising it a little too much; as others have noted, the choice to treat Portuguese like English undermines some of the work (and it says something not entirely flattering about me that I didn’t even notice it). Still, the show is trying to make things more complicated, and more challenging, than it might have, and the writers and directors (and cast, of course) have demonstrated considerable skill in ensuring that the Japanese culture of the time is presented in all its complex beauty. That effort comes to a head in “Broken to the Fist,” in which unexpected developments work in tandem to once again alienate Anjin from people he’s slowly come to view as friends—or, if not friends, at least more than strangers speaking foreign tongues.
The major crisis here is the return of Mariko’s husband, Buntaro; thought dead in battle du…
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