Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan

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!"

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.

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 is a proper doc, polished too the nines. The problem with its polish is it glamourizes and dramatized the period to a Hollywood standard. I am not sure how historically accurate the scenes are. Looks like Last Samurai. But it all sells the story and you def need to stay on top of it because the names will throw you. I would love to now go and read a book about the subject for further details. I am no expert so I have to take the information as factual and thank the producers for one polished historical production. Very similar to the one on Rome which was epic!

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.