Review: Shogun, "The Abyss of Life"
Seppuku seems a singularly unpleasant way to die. There are many ways to commit suicide, of course, ranging from the (hopefully) peaceful to the outright horrific, but seppuku distinguishes itself by both the visceral nature of its self-inflicted violence and by the context in which it is performed. It is not the sort of thing you dabble with while in a depressive funk. It is, in its way, the ultimate expression of one’s will against one’s instincts: to stare the desire to survive and persist straight in the eye and choose otherwise. As we see in “The Abyss of Life,” seppuku can also represent a sacrifice of self to a greater purpose. It’s easy to mock concepts like “honor” and “loyalty” because history is littered with examples of the failures of both. But those failures don’t diminish the fundamental power that comes from committing one’s self to a cause completely, or giving all to a future you will never live to see.
That’s the power driving “Life,” a tur…
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