La Edad de Oro de los samuráis

All Japanese history is new to me so everything exposed sounds truthful, as a starting point it was an interesting show and a more dramatic approach, mainly focused on iconic people and their motivations. Context and culture are underdeveloped in my opinion and just linked to war and conquests. It doesn't go deep on samurais persona. It could be any other soldier executing the same wars and it would be irrelevant to the show. When they faced japanese an chinese armies it felt the same, they were just more experienced warriors.

Considering there are big differences in the strategic approach of some japanese clan leaders it also doesn't go deep on why they took their approaches. It is reduced to something like "there is an opportunity to take control, i want to take control to be the lord of Japan". I think one of the things that make the show feel flat is that, the motivation is kind of always the same, and even when there is a more stable approach, it doesn't explain how that specific warlord came up with his view and his strategies. There's a few times where education is mentioned but not a lot on what are their principles or logic. In the China's invation campaign, some other great warlords/emperors of other continents were mentioned, but not if the japanese warlords had some prior knowledge about their history or if they were some motivated by them. It was an open reference, and the only concrete one was that China was always a big goal. So i would say the show is a review of wars and control shifts monstly in the XVI century. The biggest principle to feel connected to the characters is the general sence of constant war, as a defensive nature, so they eat to not be eaten. It might be that way, so that is not something i consider so much to base this rewiew.

I enjoyed the show mostly (as a war documentary I think), however I didn't like how many times battles, decisions or anything important is stated as the "ultimate", "greatest", "biggest" and a lot of other flashy words. At some point we started joking about this with my wife because we actually got confused, to the point we couldn't compare turning points or battles. Is not a history class but as an informative piece it kind of takes away the importance of some historical moments trying to expose everything as epic.

I primarily watched the first season of this documentary series for the viewing of costumes, interior design, and overall Japanese artistry / craftsmanship. The historical accuracy and narrative quality were secondary or less to me. Many reviewers criticized the historical "inaccuracies" (we don't know this and the reviewers did not provide any credentials) and injection of Western historians, but given the target audience of the series, i.e., Americans, this makes sense. When the series employed an "authentic" Japanese historian, we had to read subtitles, which greatly interrupted with the flow of background re-enactments, etc. If non-citizen historians can be trusted with world history, why not Anglo-American historians with Japan's history? Nevertheless, I give this series an 8/10 in light of all of the reviewers who screamed, "Inaccurate!"

Worth watching but bit fast paced. More details were required about other war lords... Any techniques of war not explained.

Every battle was tagged as " most critical battle of Japanese History"

Also historians were all non Japanese.. Hence no perspective of Japanese PPL and their thoughts were not included.

Hard to trust non Japanese historians..

Role of emperor was not clear. Warload himself taking decision without consulting emperor was bit strange.

Battle were not shown in detail Actors were good.. but the madness of samurai and the anguish of losses were not shown very clearly.

Over all a good watch.

This time in Japanese history is fascinating and Age of Samurai does a very good job of conveying that. The production values are very high with plenty of re-enactments that are portrayed by strong and compelling acting, but that's also part of the problem. This emphasis on entertainment means that just like in biopics, there have been quite a few liberties taken creating a plethora of historical inaccuracies. The flip side is that the 6 episodes really fly by and keep you vested in the next one.

An enjoyable series that should come with a disclaimer.

Well made re-enactments and relevant interviews. The episodes had good flow and kept an even pace. The subject matter was interesting and easy to digest. Interesting to learn about an era of samurai.