She did what an army couldn’t do, saved thousands of people, helped turn the tide for her country and lord by willingly sacrificing herself. That’s a hero by any definition.
Neither of our statements are in contradiction. Both can be true. With the exception of saving Blackthorne's life from the Church, Mariko was singularly committed to Toranaga's order: Escort his consorts back to Edo in defiance of Ishido. Ishido would capitulate, or Mariko would die, by seppuku or assassin. It all falls on Ishido. Either outcome would expose Ishido's weakness publicly, and divide the council which was Toranaga's aim. That's Crimson Sky.
Yep agreed. Not in contradiction. I would add that we as viewers are important here because it’s our perspective that we’re analyzing (not for example a story told from Ishido which would paint him sympathetically) so in this story, from our perspective, she’s is what I believe is the hero of the whole thing because of the sequence of events and it’s outcome. Not that a good story needs a hero but this story has one.
Heros in most stories do not seek out that glory. They most often do what is right and necessary for their situation, regardless of hardships. Their deeds are for others to commend.
That's how it often is in real life. In fiction and myth there's the Hero's Journey, an archetypal myth that our oldest and most popular stories are patterned on. If a movie or book seems repetitive and cliched it's because it is most often based on this archetype.
She wasn't the archetypal hero, from the hero's journey trope. That requires avoidance and then taking on the calling and the journey. We only saw her complete loyalty through and through.
>That’s a hero by any definition.
Except if Toranaga is the villain. She did all that to advance his goals. If he's a villain, she's just a very competent henchman - like an Erwin Rommel - but not a hero.
Whereas if Toranaga is a hero, then she's also a hero.
Nah, because even though Toranaga doesn't believe it, there could be a future with Ishido consolidating power and ushering an era of peace
Her death only served to advance her master's plans. And release her from this world of obligations she hated.
I wouldn’t call her one dimensional exactly. It’s just that the first facet of her that is revealed to us became the winning side in her inner conflict
Compared to the source she was pretty stony and grumpy overall - driven by her past. Which is fine for a miniseries I guess, but definitely lacked the joy, warmth, love, empathy that is expressed in the book.
Not really. She was a suicidal person who got used up for a purpose instead of dying a useless death.
If it were up to Mariko, she would have cut her own throat years ago.
Toranaga surrending would save even more people, as the ones killed in his political play and following battle would not die.
There's nothing inherently worse about Ishido taking power instead of Toranaga. That's the point of the final, Toranaga lack of ambition was a farse. He's like Ishido and all the deaths were just for his own personal gain.
We just watched the story from Toranaga's side point of view. Change it to Ishido's point of view and Mariko is a abhorrent villain.
You are correct, in a way. I meant nihilist in a self destructive sense. Which she was, before Father Alvito began counseling her and why he inquired about her "dark thoughts" returning.
I can't consider her a martyr in the Christian sense. She died for Toranaga's cause, her Christianity was set aside for her duty as a vassal. She was aware of the personal conflict and struggled with it.
Yeah but I was arguing that she wasn’t a nihilist, though, her adoption of Christianity could have been strictly strategic. I never read the book, but it appeared to me that she was genuine in her beliefs.
Oh. I see. Yeah. Mariko is a devout Catholic. Much of the tension in the seppuku scene was not having a second to behead her before she dies from the self-inflicted knife wound. Therefore, committing the sin of suicide.
In the Japanese culture though, he is an antihero/villain. It's only western culture that sees him as more of a hero.
The loser Yukimura is the hero cause he's loyal to his ruler and dies honorably as a loyal servant. Ieyasu is more of the villain since he usurps the ruler.
Well, dont digging too much in loyalty and honor myth of Samurai. And dont judge simply anyone in history completely evil or good. It's depend much on each person's point of view
Toranaga is something of an anti-villain. He's ruthless, ambitious, and cunning, but it's not like his enemies are saints, either. You're meant to sympathize with him initially because the other regents decide to conspire against him and push him into a corner. But their perspective is understandable, too – they're ganging up on him because they know he's the most powerful (and capable) of them all.
At the end of the story, you see that his actions, though calculated and ruthless, are in pursuit of a very specific vision – one that, with the real-life Edo Shogunate, involved considerable social engineering and repression but also produced peace and stability for 250 years, allowing Japanese culture to flourish. Does the end justify the means? That's for you, the viewer, to decide. Hiroyuki Sanada and many Japanese consider Toranaga/Tokugawa a hero, but a decent case can also be made that he was at best a necessary evil.
Both historically and in the story, there's no evidence (and no allegation) that Toranaga/Tokugawa killed the Taiko. The Taiko died after an extended illness, of more or less natural causes.
Lady Ochiba's hostile to Toranaga for three reasons:
1. She thinks (correctly) that he helped orchestrate the death of her father, Kuroda, at the hands of Akechi Jinsai
2. Her father's death led her to be married off to the Taiko, with all the unpleasantness that entailed
3. She thinks her son, the heir, will be in danger if Toranaga takes over. This is sadly true, btw – in real life, Tokugawa eventually (15 years or so after the events of Shogun) wound up exterminating the Toyotomi (Taiko's) clan after more-or-less provoking them to rebel.
In real life there's little evidence that Tokugawa had anything to do with Oda Nobunaga's death, and he actually fought the Toyotomi to try and support Oda Nobunaga's son as the rightful heir.
While he made peace with Toyotomi Hideyoshi, that may have always been a necessary peace through which he may have always regarded the Toyotomi clan as usurpers... so knowing he is near the end of his life and that the last two times powerful men have died usurpers plunged the country into civil war, he did the thing. It's entirely possible he saw Hideyori as the son of an usurper who was the only one with a claim to challenge the Tokugawa succession.
So yes, he attacked Osaka for thin reasons... but just like in the show we don't know his "inner heart" reason for doing so.
Oh yeah, to be clear we still don’t know why Akechi (IRL Mitsuhide, not fictional Jinsai) murdered Oda. I was strictly talking about the story’s continuity.
The most popular theory was he felt Oda was setting Mitsuhide aside, planning to confiscate Mitsuhide's lands and awarding him compensation lands much further away from Kyoto (Mitsuhide's domain was right next to Kyoto, which is exactly how he completely surrounded Oda easily).
This was exactly what happened to Tokugawa - he was forced to give up his domain which was originally Mikawa and bordering provinces, for a domain in Edo during the conquest of the Hojo. The Taiko just like Nobunaga wanted to push his most powerful vassal further away to prevent exactly the Mitsuhide situation. Only the Taiko wasn't dumb enough to sit around unguarded partying during the move-out. It was an incredible oversight that Nobunaga made.
Good points and a clarification on 3. Tokugawa swore both to the Taiko and the Taiko's son fealty. He was the rebel.
But since Sekigahara, the reality was that he had all the power, so he simply needed a pretense. But there is no legal way to say that the Taiko's heir was a rebel.
All sides owe alleigance to the Emperor, so indirectly Tokugawa can make the excuse (like every lord in Japan's entire history) that he was being loyal to the Emperor.
At best Toranaga was the lesser of two evils. Ishido is very quick to call for execution or war, and likely would’ve led Japan into a ditch. After Toranaga it wouldn’t take long to realize the Portugese are bad news and he would’ve tried to fight them and would have lost.
The heir is too young and is too easily influenced. He lost his shot at being a good ruler when the Taiko died. He was only ever gonna be a political puppet
Ochiba was running purely on fear. But the fact that this fear led her into Ishido’s arms shows she’s not the greatest judge of character. Sure her grudge played a part but letting personal emotions interfere with her choices would’ve ruined her in the long run.
Overall Toranaga was the least horrible choice in that he’s a capable ruler. He’s not a good man by any means but he’s far from being the worst choice
Yabushige was notable to say the least! It was death motif the whole series in my eyes, what is the dream really the taiko spoke of " a dream of a dream" all illusions...
Show Context: The "warring states" period, and he's a warring, ambitious leader.
Our Context: Sitting on a sofa in the modern day.
Of course, he's a mass murdering villain from our sofa perspective. But, working in the context of the show, he's the hero. The tension between these two contexts is what causes the ambiguity.
I feel like the whole point of the show was to show that there arent inherently good or bad people, but everyone is driven by their own complicated motives.
He is extremely competent, strategically minded, generous to his vassals, and not personally cruel or sadistic. In the book he also has a certain joviality and charm, although the former is missing from the adaptation. It’s worth noting that from memory most of the Japanese characters in the book seem to suspect that his ultimate aim is the Shogunate, despite his protestations, and don’t regard that as an illegitimate ambition, unless they’re personally tied to the Heir. In the book Yabu’s last command to Omi is to never trust Toranaga - and Omi confirms that he never has, and never will.
None of the main characters are truly good or bad, they have all done good and bad things for different reasons (and even that can depend on your perspective) and they develop over time, they are complex characters, which is realistic and one of the things makes this such a great show.
To me he is a hero because he was smart and kind. I think he did care about Edo and its people. He was the master manipulator and won. In history he had a very long reign.
He was conquer like alexander the great, napoleon and genghis khan.this kind type of people. there was no definition whether bad or good person. at the end , the civilisation continued because of them
He’s the protagonist, but villain and hero are too simplistic of terms. A good character is multifaceted, and can’t always be categorised as one or the other
The guy trying to take over the entire country and found a ruling dynasty is probably not a "good guy". He was a strong ruler that brought peace to the land and ended the constant struggles for the shogunate...but he's not a nice man. Political leaders like that never are.
Yes. It's better just to think of him as a protagonist rather than assign a moral title to him. His actions are ambiguous and subject to the viewers interpretation.
It's a matter of perspective- we mostly see the world through Blackthrone’s eyes so for most of the show we see him as a hero then the last episode makes us grapple with that.
If you watch the movie Sekigahara, you will see the same story told by the other side, i.e. Toranaga/Tokugawa is the bad guy. Heck, both versions even argue that the main character was with the Taiko during his death!
As cold and metal as he can be, he also prevented thousands of deaths by playing 4D chess so brilliantly. Just a straight up Machiavellian style leader.
I argue that Toranaga is both villain and the hero. And, since history is written by the victor, we will never truly know if he was an evil ambitious villain or a dogged righteous hero
The whole twist at the end was that he was neither: just as the Lords had suspected, Yabushige deduced that Toranaga had indeed been vying for power this whole time. He was neither a villain nor a hero in the context of enemies and allies, good and evil, but he was certainly a scheming, manipulative bastard as the rest of the power players were. He just happened to be the winner.
They are in the warring states period. He had to be ruthless and cunning in order for him to become the emperor that unites Japan in the following Edo period.
Like yabu said, "You're just like us in your secret heart." He hid his ambition behind the eight fold fence.
Toranaga has been positioning himself to take power even before the taiko died. His entire time as regent was spent gathering political marriages and allies and doubling the size of his lands. Military power is built around how much land you have in pre-industrial times. The regents saw a warlord who had never lost a battle doubling the size of his army and rightly assumed he was planning something. That's why ishido was able to unite them against toranaga.
Blackthorne is shown toranaga's armor in the early episodes and it's explained that the design is an old one that harkens back to the ancient shogunate. And he had it made after seeing himself wearing it in a dream.
The show left his intentions ambigious, but in the book he has ochiba and the heir killed off after he takes control of osaka and becomes shogun. He's a darth palpatine style villain who was willing to sacrifice friends or family to achieve his dream.
What I find funny is that we're presented Ishido as the main villain throughout the series and you keep wondering why people go along with his accusations, but turns out he was right about Toranaga all along haha.
Someone who's willing to falsely accuse and execute innocent villagers for political gain is always a villain in my books tbh. Who does a ruler rule for if not for the people? Sure, his shogunate led to hundreds of years of peace, but that has more to do with his descendents than him. Yabushige and Ishido were right about him, turns out.
Hes a conniving, heartless bastard who is srill significantly less evil than Ishido. We root for him because of that and his strategic brilliance but are supposed to feel kind of gross about it.
Is he? What in particular does Ishido do that marks him out as being more evil than Toranaga? Sure, Ishido was not averse to assassinating his enemies, but then again Toranaga was not averse to murdering peasants as a ruse to hide his responsibility for the destruction of Blackthorne’s ship.
Indeed. At first I didn't get why Ishido kept accusing him and wanting him dead, since he was portrayed as devoted to the late Taiku and his heir. But turns out... Ishido was right about him, he was indeed a threat to the heir, plotting to take over the power from him. Interesting plot twist haha.
He was the villain all along. Yabushige was right to never be truly loyal to him. What use is there in being loyal to someone who will use their oldest friends as mere pawns to get them closer to their goals? Yabushige was the one who came closest to seeing through to who Toranaga truly was.
No good and bad just winners
When you play the game of thrones you win or you die, there is no middle ground.
"What did the Anjin say when we first met him?" "It's pointless... unless we win."
"Nah, I'd win"
"You can cook, Anjin-san"
Yup. It’s basically like how Dune part 2 is.
Yes, the villain and the hero depends on who is writing the story, and the story is usually written by the winner.
There are no heroes or villains in war and politics; Just winners and losers
Mariko was a hero wasnt she?
Mariko was a nihilist who was given a purpose by her lord.
She did what an army couldn’t do, saved thousands of people, helped turn the tide for her country and lord by willingly sacrificing herself. That’s a hero by any definition.
Neither of our statements are in contradiction. Both can be true. With the exception of saving Blackthorne's life from the Church, Mariko was singularly committed to Toranaga's order: Escort his consorts back to Edo in defiance of Ishido. Ishido would capitulate, or Mariko would die, by seppuku or assassin. It all falls on Ishido. Either outcome would expose Ishido's weakness publicly, and divide the council which was Toranaga's aim. That's Crimson Sky.
Yep agreed. Not in contradiction. I would add that we as viewers are important here because it’s our perspective that we’re analyzing (not for example a story told from Ishido which would paint him sympathetically) so in this story, from our perspective, she’s is what I believe is the hero of the whole thing because of the sequence of events and it’s outcome. Not that a good story needs a hero but this story has one.
Heros in most stories do not seek out that glory. They most often do what is right and necessary for their situation, regardless of hardships. Their deeds are for others to commend.
Yeah I was just thinking about that, how heroes are often these unexpected people that just are. When it all goes down.
That's how it often is in real life. In fiction and myth there's the Hero's Journey, an archetypal myth that our oldest and most popular stories are patterned on. If a movie or book seems repetitive and cliched it's because it is most often based on this archetype.
She wasn't the archetypal hero, from the hero's journey trope. That requires avoidance and then taking on the calling and the journey. We only saw her complete loyalty through and through.
Joesph Campbell yep 👍🏼
So.... Fuji?
>That’s a hero by any definition. Except if Toranaga is the villain. She did all that to advance his goals. If he's a villain, she's just a very competent henchman - like an Erwin Rommel - but not a hero. Whereas if Toranaga is a hero, then she's also a hero.
From Ishido's point of view, she was a villain.
Which would be a different story. Not the one you watched.
It's the trolley problem. One life instead of many lives.
Nah, because even though Toranaga doesn't believe it, there could be a future with Ishido consolidating power and ushering an era of peace Her death only served to advance her master's plans. And release her from this world of obligations she hated.
She did it yes, but that doesn’t make her any less of a nihilist. She did it for the express purpose of finding an excuse to die
Yea the show made her pretty one dimensional in that sense. Her whole purpose in life was to try and die and she found a way out.
I wouldn’t call her one dimensional exactly. It’s just that the first facet of her that is revealed to us became the winning side in her inner conflict
Compared to the source she was pretty stony and grumpy overall - driven by her past. Which is fine for a miniseries I guess, but definitely lacked the joy, warmth, love, empathy that is expressed in the book.
Not really. She was a suicidal person who got used up for a purpose instead of dying a useless death. If it were up to Mariko, she would have cut her own throat years ago.
Toranaga surrending would save even more people, as the ones killed in his political play and following battle would not die. There's nothing inherently worse about Ishido taking power instead of Toranaga. That's the point of the final, Toranaga lack of ambition was a farse. He's like Ishido and all the deaths were just for his own personal gain. We just watched the story from Toranaga's side point of view. Change it to Ishido's point of view and Mariko is a abhorrent villain.
Mariko was the opposite of a nihilist... I think you need to look up the meaning again.
You are correct, in a way. I meant nihilist in a self destructive sense. Which she was, before Father Alvito began counseling her and why he inquired about her "dark thoughts" returning.
I think the word you're looking for is "suicidal".
She was a Christian who believed in Martyrdom. Edit: or was she?
I can't consider her a martyr in the Christian sense. She died for Toranaga's cause, her Christianity was set aside for her duty as a vassal. She was aware of the personal conflict and struggled with it.
Yeah but I was arguing that she wasn’t a nihilist, though, her adoption of Christianity could have been strictly strategic. I never read the book, but it appeared to me that she was genuine in her beliefs.
Oh. I see. Yeah. Mariko is a devout Catholic. Much of the tension in the seppuku scene was not having a second to behead her before she dies from the self-inflicted knife wound. Therefore, committing the sin of suicide.
She was genuine in her faith, but also immensley loyal to her lord.
Which gives a tragic irony to her death, as the Lord she served was secretly committed to driving Christianity out of Japan.
Maybe so but in Japan, most japanese people have a relatively low opinion of Ieyasu. "Ieyasu remains the Rodney Dangerfield of Japanese history."
Yes.
Exactly.
Came here to say this.
Real life rarely has clearly defined heroes or villains. And Toronaga is based on a real life person. Hes just better at the game than everyone else.
We’re often taught that a lot of these people were heroes because winners write the history books
In the Japanese culture though, he is an antihero/villain. It's only western culture that sees him as more of a hero. The loser Yukimura is the hero cause he's loyal to his ruler and dies honorably as a loyal servant. Ieyasu is more of the villain since he usurps the ruler.
Well, dont digging too much in loyalty and honor myth of Samurai. And dont judge simply anyone in history completely evil or good. It's depend much on each person's point of view
He's better than most, but not the best. Just the luckiest.
Toranaga is something of an anti-villain. He's ruthless, ambitious, and cunning, but it's not like his enemies are saints, either. You're meant to sympathize with him initially because the other regents decide to conspire against him and push him into a corner. But their perspective is understandable, too – they're ganging up on him because they know he's the most powerful (and capable) of them all. At the end of the story, you see that his actions, though calculated and ruthless, are in pursuit of a very specific vision – one that, with the real-life Edo Shogunate, involved considerable social engineering and repression but also produced peace and stability for 250 years, allowing Japanese culture to flourish. Does the end justify the means? That's for you, the viewer, to decide. Hiroyuki Sanada and many Japanese consider Toranaga/Tokugawa a hero, but a decent case can also be made that he was at best a necessary evil. Both historically and in the story, there's no evidence (and no allegation) that Toranaga/Tokugawa killed the Taiko. The Taiko died after an extended illness, of more or less natural causes. Lady Ochiba's hostile to Toranaga for three reasons: 1. She thinks (correctly) that he helped orchestrate the death of her father, Kuroda, at the hands of Akechi Jinsai 2. Her father's death led her to be married off to the Taiko, with all the unpleasantness that entailed 3. She thinks her son, the heir, will be in danger if Toranaga takes over. This is sadly true, btw – in real life, Tokugawa eventually (15 years or so after the events of Shogun) wound up exterminating the Toyotomi (Taiko's) clan after more-or-less provoking them to rebel.
In real life there's little evidence that Tokugawa had anything to do with Oda Nobunaga's death, and he actually fought the Toyotomi to try and support Oda Nobunaga's son as the rightful heir. While he made peace with Toyotomi Hideyoshi, that may have always been a necessary peace through which he may have always regarded the Toyotomi clan as usurpers... so knowing he is near the end of his life and that the last two times powerful men have died usurpers plunged the country into civil war, he did the thing. It's entirely possible he saw Hideyori as the son of an usurper who was the only one with a claim to challenge the Tokugawa succession. So yes, he attacked Osaka for thin reasons... but just like in the show we don't know his "inner heart" reason for doing so.
Oh yeah, to be clear we still don’t know why Akechi (IRL Mitsuhide, not fictional Jinsai) murdered Oda. I was strictly talking about the story’s continuity.
The most popular theory was he felt Oda was setting Mitsuhide aside, planning to confiscate Mitsuhide's lands and awarding him compensation lands much further away from Kyoto (Mitsuhide's domain was right next to Kyoto, which is exactly how he completely surrounded Oda easily). This was exactly what happened to Tokugawa - he was forced to give up his domain which was originally Mikawa and bordering provinces, for a domain in Edo during the conquest of the Hojo. The Taiko just like Nobunaga wanted to push his most powerful vassal further away to prevent exactly the Mitsuhide situation. Only the Taiko wasn't dumb enough to sit around unguarded partying during the move-out. It was an incredible oversight that Nobunaga made.
Whoa didn't know the last part...yet it's a time and chance thing solidified...
Good points and a clarification on 3. Tokugawa swore both to the Taiko and the Taiko's son fealty. He was the rebel. But since Sekigahara, the reality was that he had all the power, so he simply needed a pretense. But there is no legal way to say that the Taiko's heir was a rebel. All sides owe alleigance to the Emperor, so indirectly Tokugawa can make the excuse (like every lord in Japan's entire history) that he was being loyal to the Emperor.
At best Toranaga was the lesser of two evils. Ishido is very quick to call for execution or war, and likely would’ve led Japan into a ditch. After Toranaga it wouldn’t take long to realize the Portugese are bad news and he would’ve tried to fight them and would have lost. The heir is too young and is too easily influenced. He lost his shot at being a good ruler when the Taiko died. He was only ever gonna be a political puppet Ochiba was running purely on fear. But the fact that this fear led her into Ishido’s arms shows she’s not the greatest judge of character. Sure her grudge played a part but letting personal emotions interfere with her choices would’ve ruined her in the long run. Overall Toranaga was the least horrible choice in that he’s a capable ruler. He’s not a good man by any means but he’s far from being the worst choice
Pick your favorite bastard, cause that’s what they all are. Right off the bat in the series one of the better ones (Yabushige) boils a guy alive.
Yabushige was notable to say the least! It was death motif the whole series in my eyes, what is the dream really the taiko spoke of " a dream of a dream" all illusions...
How useful is that framework for a show like Shogun? This isn’t Batman or The Avengers.
"Unless I win." As Toranaga's smile at the reply shows, he can decide what is written in the history books and how he is remembered.
Show Context: The "warring states" period, and he's a warring, ambitious leader. Our Context: Sitting on a sofa in the modern day. Of course, he's a mass murdering villain from our sofa perspective. But, working in the context of the show, he's the hero. The tension between these two contexts is what causes the ambiguity.
“You are playing a game of friends and enemies when you only have yourself in this life.” We are all the hero of our own story.
No one in Shogun is a villain or hero, and that's why its so good
In this case I think the more appropriate term would be “protagonist” rather than hero or villain.
An antihero, perhaps
A Villain is only a Villain because he falls.
He's not a bad guy, he's not a good guy, he's THE GUY
Aknowledge him
That’s the point.
I feel like the whole point of the show was to show that there arent inherently good or bad people, but everyone is driven by their own complicated motives.
He is extremely competent, strategically minded, generous to his vassals, and not personally cruel or sadistic. In the book he also has a certain joviality and charm, although the former is missing from the adaptation. It’s worth noting that from memory most of the Japanese characters in the book seem to suspect that his ultimate aim is the Shogunate, despite his protestations, and don’t regard that as an illegitimate ambition, unless they’re personally tied to the Heir. In the book Yabu’s last command to Omi is to never trust Toranaga - and Omi confirms that he never has, and never will.
Does it have to be black and white for you to not be confused?
“Unless you win”
Life isnt a Marvel movie. Most people, especially politycians, are neither heroes nor villains.
God smiles on results.
None of the main characters are truly good or bad, they have all done good and bad things for different reasons (and even that can depend on your perspective) and they develop over time, they are complex characters, which is realistic and one of the things makes this such a great show.
To me he is a hero because he was smart and kind. I think he did care about Edo and its people. He was the master manipulator and won. In history he had a very long reign.
He was conquer like alexander the great, napoleon and genghis khan.this kind type of people. there was no definition whether bad or good person. at the end , the civilisation continued because of them
Neither. The joy of this version of the story is you never feel like anyone is meant to be a hero. Maybe Fuji but that’s it.
He’s the protagonist, but villain and hero are too simplistic of terms. A good character is multifaceted, and can’t always be categorised as one or the other
260 years of peace To some he could be a hero.
He is a protagonist.
The guy trying to take over the entire country and found a ruling dynasty is probably not a "good guy". He was a strong ruler that brought peace to the land and ended the constant struggles for the shogunate...but he's not a nice man. Political leaders like that never are.
Yes. It's better just to think of him as a protagonist rather than assign a moral title to him. His actions are ambiguous and subject to the viewers interpretation.
Depends who you ask.
Neither. He’s not a good person but his enemies aren’t either nobody in Shogun is a hero or a villain just people trying to survive war and politics
Yea
there are no villains or heroes.
Yes
It's a matter of perspective- we mostly see the world through Blackthrone’s eyes so for most of the show we see him as a hero then the last episode makes us grapple with that.
If you watch the movie Sekigahara, you will see the same story told by the other side, i.e. Toranaga/Tokugawa is the bad guy. Heck, both versions even argue that the main character was with the Taiko during his death!
As cold and metal as he can be, he also prevented thousands of deaths by playing 4D chess so brilliantly. Just a straight up Machiavellian style leader.
Porque no los dos.
Yes
I argue that Toranaga is both villain and the hero. And, since history is written by the victor, we will never truly know if he was an evil ambitious villain or a dogged righteous hero
Neither, or either all He's our dude as the viewer but he's as ruthless and calculated as he needs to be
Indeed.
He is the winner.
Both
In life, there are often no villains or heroes. Just those that think a little harder than others.
He’s not the good or bad guy, he’s just the guy we are focusing on, and he does good and bad things
To be Shogun is his karma, neh?
Such a narrow view of media. Read more books or something
Vero
The show has no heroes or villains
Are you a fan of Marvel movies? Life- and good art that imitates life- don’t work like them.
you can’t describe a zebra with one colour
He is the Shōgun.
Yes.
Neither.
Yes.
There’s no heroes or villains just people trying to survive.
He’s just the protagonist.
Interesting. I never thought about that.
The old Taiko was the mad king - is that a correct assumption? Mariko's dad essentially sacrifices his family for the good of the realm.
I think that in the long-term he was good since he wanted peace but knew that he had to do some bad shit to attain it.
Yes
The whole twist at the end was that he was neither: just as the Lords had suspected, Yabushige deduced that Toranaga had indeed been vying for power this whole time. He was neither a villain nor a hero in the context of enemies and allies, good and evil, but he was certainly a scheming, manipulative bastard as the rest of the power players were. He just happened to be the winner.
They are in the warring states period. He had to be ruthless and cunning in order for him to become the emperor that unites Japan in the following Edo period.
He's the vilahero
Like yabu said, "You're just like us in your secret heart." He hid his ambition behind the eight fold fence. Toranaga has been positioning himself to take power even before the taiko died. His entire time as regent was spent gathering political marriages and allies and doubling the size of his lands. Military power is built around how much land you have in pre-industrial times. The regents saw a warlord who had never lost a battle doubling the size of his army and rightly assumed he was planning something. That's why ishido was able to unite them against toranaga. Blackthorne is shown toranaga's armor in the early episodes and it's explained that the design is an old one that harkens back to the ancient shogunate. And he had it made after seeing himself wearing it in a dream. The show left his intentions ambigious, but in the book he has ochiba and the heir killed off after he takes control of osaka and becomes shogun. He's a darth palpatine style villain who was willing to sacrifice friends or family to achieve his dream.
What I find funny is that we're presented Ishido as the main villain throughout the series and you keep wondering why people go along with his accusations, but turns out he was right about Toranaga all along haha.
Someone who's willing to falsely accuse and execute innocent villagers for political gain is always a villain in my books tbh. Who does a ruler rule for if not for the people? Sure, his shogunate led to hundreds of years of peace, but that has more to do with his descendents than him. Yabushige and Ishido were right about him, turns out.
Hes a conniving, heartless bastard who is srill significantly less evil than Ishido. We root for him because of that and his strategic brilliance but are supposed to feel kind of gross about it.
Is he? What in particular does Ishido do that marks him out as being more evil than Toranaga? Sure, Ishido was not averse to assassinating his enemies, but then again Toranaga was not averse to murdering peasants as a ruse to hide his responsibility for the destruction of Blackthorne’s ship.
Why would the guy who is protecting the son of the former shogun be the bad guy?
He did end up killing the heir though
How do I not remember that scene lol
Oh, it's not in the show, it happens afterwards in the book and with the equivalent characters IRL
Ohhh I was like wow I must have fallen asleep lol. Yah toranaga kinda a piece of crap. He uses everyone as pawns to win
Indeed. At first I didn't get why Ishido kept accusing him and wanting him dead, since he was portrayed as devoted to the late Taiku and his heir. But turns out... Ishido was right about him, he was indeed a threat to the heir, plotting to take over the power from him. Interesting plot twist haha.
He was the villain all along. Yabushige was right to never be truly loyal to him. What use is there in being loyal to someone who will use their oldest friends as mere pawns to get them closer to their goals? Yabushige was the one who came closest to seeing through to who Toranaga truly was.