Netflix productions tend to be more miss than hit but their documentaries are usually pretty decent, Age of Samurai very much ended up not being among them.
The show is presented through a bit cheap-looking but ok-ish reenactments (that honestly don't look much like japanese landscapes) filled with a myriad of historical inaccuracies, and a series of annoying talking heads, none of whom seem to be able to pronounce the word Samurai correctly. It's a bit of a nitpick really, but to me it's a telltale sign none of these supposed authorities on japanese military history even speak any Japanese. Their expert opinion thus mostly consists of old cliches that you already think you know about these mysterious Samurai of the exotic orient and very little of historical facts. There's one japanese historian who occassionally pops up and clearly knows his stuff, but he is unfortunately used very sparingly. His more nuanced and informed way of divulging information clashes wildly with the tone of the rest of the "documentary".
It's depressing really. The real Samurai, the real history, are so much more interesting, multi-faceted and gripping than the awful outdated cliches presented here. This has about the same historical accuracy as an episode of Naruto and feels like it was made decades ago, long before the wealth of translated research we have available now. You're better off reading the wikipedia articles or virtually any book on the subject, ideally not the ones by Stephen Turnbull though who shows up here as well to express his expert opinion of a 12 year old who has just watched his first Samurai movie and wants to tell you all about the cool stuff he saw.
Apart from the lacking accuracy of information it also offers surprisingly little thereof in a very drawn out and unengaging fashion to boot, despite its best attempts to entertain with its overly dramatic reenactments.
The only source of entertainment this show gave me is someone put the line "The episodes were filmed on a hill" into the imdb trivia section. Hats off sir or ma'am, spot on, that's my kind of dry sarcastic humour.
The show is presented through a bit cheap-looking but ok-ish reenactments (that honestly don't look much like japanese landscapes) filled with a myriad of historical inaccuracies, and a series of annoying talking heads, none of whom seem to be able to pronounce the word Samurai correctly. It's a bit of a nitpick really, but to me it's a telltale sign none of these supposed authorities on japanese military history even speak any Japanese. Their expert opinion thus mostly consists of old cliches that you already think you know about these mysterious Samurai of the exotic orient and very little of historical facts. There's one japanese historian who occassionally pops up and clearly knows his stuff, but he is unfortunately used very sparingly. His more nuanced and informed way of divulging information clashes wildly with the tone of the rest of the "documentary".
It's depressing really. The real Samurai, the real history, are so much more interesting, multi-faceted and gripping than the awful outdated cliches presented here. This has about the same historical accuracy as an episode of Naruto and feels like it was made decades ago, long before the wealth of translated research we have available now. You're better off reading the wikipedia articles or virtually any book on the subject, ideally not the ones by Stephen Turnbull though who shows up here as well to express his expert opinion of a 12 year old who has just watched his first Samurai movie and wants to tell you all about the cool stuff he saw.
Apart from the lacking accuracy of information it also offers surprisingly little thereof in a very drawn out and unengaging fashion to boot, despite its best attempts to entertain with its overly dramatic reenactments.
The only source of entertainment this show gave me is someone put the line "The episodes were filmed on a hill" into the imdb trivia section. Hats off sir or ma'am, spot on, that's my kind of dry sarcastic humour.