Nightmare Fuel / Shōgun (2024)

While both Clavell's original novel and the 1980 miniseries were notable for its shocking violence, the improvement in special effects and loosening in content restrictions make the 2024 adaptation far more violent and frightening than the previous adaptation.

---

"Anjin"

• The conditions on the Erasmus before it lands in Izu are bad enough that the captain's decision to shoot himself becomes understandable - they have no food, no water, only two dozen men who are malnourished, and with no real hope that their mission could even be successful at this point. When it comes towards the village out of the fog, it genuinely looks like a ghost ship.
• As one of the local villagers attempts to pray for Blackthorne, his head is suddenly cut off by one of the samurai, shocking Blackthorne as much as the other villagers.
• One of Blackthorne's crew members is boiled alive by Yabushige to appease the Portuguese. While that's bad enough on its own, the rest of the scene shows that it takes hours for the man to die, complete with a shot of his skin boiling away, before he bangs his head on the pot he's in in order to end his suffering. All the while Yabushige tries to figure out the feelings of the man at death, only to be frustrated by how the man was "inarticulate" upon his death.
• When Tadayuki, one of Toranaga's samurai, steps out of line and nearly causes a fight, he ends up having to kill not only himself, but his newborn son - a sign of how severe the code of honor is taken at this time. His wife, the much put-upon Lady Fuji, also has to watch her husband commit suicide, as well as hand over her baby to be executed.

"Servants of Two Masters"

• After being placed in the Osaka prison, Blackthorne is informed that the only punishment there is execution, seeing a man being decapitated right in front of him. As Blackthorne is being taken away into a woods (possibly to die via crucifixion), he hears arrows flying around him, but cannot see anything due to the paper hood in front of him. It turns out these are bandits hired by Yabushige to free Blackthorne, after which the bandits are promptly murdered by Yabushige and his men, complete with throat slits and multiple stabbings. Even after he's been freed, Blackthorne is left in a state of shock, only able to say (in Japanese) "Thank you" and repeating Yabushige's command to say "I am a dog" while kneeling. As much as Blackthorne tries to hold onto his agency in Japan, this sequence makes clear how little control he has over his own life if he doesn't obey the people overlooking him.
• The attempted assassination on Blackthorne at the end of the episode is shocking for coming out of nowhere and its speed — within a few minutes, almost half a dozen people are dead, including the assassin herself. The assassin, a castle maid named Kayo, is precisely unnerving for being nondescript and yet very efficient in her murders (which is the Truth in Television of how Ninja were supposed to operate). She meets her match in the very Genre Savvy Toranaga (as he swapped his sleeping quarters with Blackthorne's), who effortlessly cuts her throat, forcing her to bleed out for at least a minute before falling into the garden, her blood pooling out into the sand.

"The Eight-Fold Fence"

• The way Mariko factually expounds on how, for Japanese people, they were taught as children to construct a garden for themselves in their own mind where they may — must — retreat to to get through the travails of the day. Like how the Christian peasant in the first episode got killed for praying for a prisoner or how the women, even nobles, have zero agency on who they are to be wedded to.
• The climax of the episode involves the artillery drill demonstration (which Blackthorne has been preparing the men of Izu for throughout the episode). The situation is complicated by the presence of Nebara Jozen (Ishido's right-hand man), who gave Toranaga's entourage grief last episode. While Jozen is nominally protected by Sacred Hospitality under Yabushige, Toranaga's son Nagakado (with the implied support of Yabushige's nephew Omi) instead orders the cannons fired—at Jozen and his men. Practically all of them are reduced to Pink Mist, spilled-out guts and/or Ludicrous Gibs. Jozen, unluckily, merely has his right side and arm squashed to bits, so he's still left alive and snarling in pain before Nagakado beheads him. Omi, notably, is borderline ecstatic watching the whole thing go down, while Blackthorne, Mariko and even Yabushige are utterly horrified.
  • We are also given some insight into the heads of the younger generation of samurai: Nagakado and Omi. Both of them are chomping at the bit for command and power—with Nagakado being poutily so (in a way that may eerily remind one of Joffrey Baratheon). Omi, while outwardly a dutiful nephew and retainer to his uncle, is beginning to realize he is the Hypercompetent Sidekick that can be more (what with Yabushige's flighty and ineffective attempts at being a Double Agent—plus a little sex-laden convincing by the courtesan Kiku). Their conversation about their motivations and Jozen precedes the climax, which gives no doubt that this Gorn-laden proceeding was their idea—hastening the war that might just give them what they want.

"Broken to the Fist"

• Most of Buntaro's scenes in this episode can be a Trauma Button to any viewer who witnessed or experienced Domestic Abuse. The menace of their presence, the explosion of anger and frustration, the inability to reason with them, and their seeming inability to be accountable for what they are doing—all of these are Truth in Television abusive partner behaviors that cause misery not only to their spouses, but to everyone else around them. The worst part here is Buntaro, despite claiming to be under the influence, has already shown himself to be able to shoot straight, so he remains guilty for everything.
• The culmination of the fraught dinner with Buntaro, wherein he forces Mariko to reveal her story to Blackthorne. Namely, that she's the last surviving daughter of Akechi Jinsai, a samurai who assassinated the despotic ruler before the Taiko. For his crime, not only was he made to commit seppuku, Akechi was forced to put every last member of his family to the sword beforehand. Mariko was Forced to Watch as her father killed her mother, brothers and sisters before turning his sword on himself.
• An immense (and incredibly realistic) earthquake hits Toranaga's camp, and several men are swept away as the hillside essentially melts — including Toranaga. Only the swift action of Blackthorne, Nagakado and some retainers saves him, as they're able to dig him out from being buried in the earth before he suffocates... but then they have to watch as the nearby army camp and village are struck by the same tidal wave of earth, destroying everything in its path. Blackthorne rushes back to find his home totalled, several people dead and Fuji injured, having survived by sheer luck.

"Ladies of the Willow World"

• Lady Ochiba's demeanour and mannerisms never waver from being calm and polite, while also managing to be completely unsettling.
  • The background of Ochiba (formerly Princess Ruri) gains greater horror when you consider the transition from Clavell's fiction to Truth in Television. Broadly, we are shown here that young Ruri, after enjoying the honor of being the ruler's daughter, had her world turned upside down through no fault of her own, and was essentially coerced (gently, motivated, but coercion nonetheless) into becoming the Taiko's consort because it is her only way to keep her elevated position. Give or take a few historical details, this is indeed the context in which the historical Lady Yodo became Toyotomi Hideyoshi's second wife. Her thoughts are lost to history, but we are essentially asked to see from her point of view how genuinely awful that life really has been for her.
    • One's disgust for her situation is elevated when we consider that in contrast to the dignified, almost-regretful dying Taiko we saw in Episode 2, the Taiko at the height of his powers is all but implied to be sleazy and not a consensual bedmate. Parallels can be drawn with a similar fictional royal lady: Dowager Queen Alicent Hightower as she was portrayed in House of the Dragon.
  • Ochiba encourages Ishido to take further and more heinous steps to cement his control of the Council of Regents, which culminates in Sugiyama and his household being butchered as they try to flee Osaka; Sugiyama was clearly tortured before he died, as there's a closeup of his hand that's missing several fingers.

"A Stick of Time"

• The Cold Open starts with what turns out to be a flashback to Toranaga's first battle at 12 years old, which he won. The commander he defeated (Mizoguchi) thus demanded Toranaga be his second/kaishakunin (i.e. the person to take off his head during Seppuku). While we are given a Gory Discretion Shot from young Toranaga actually decapitating the man, we are not spared from seeing Mizoguchi's guts beginning to spill out as he cuts his belly.
  • Toranaga and Hiromatsu then later reveal that, contrary to legend that he did it cleanly, he actually botched the decapitation. It took nine strikes for young Toranaga to decapitate Mizoguchi. While Toranaga bitterly laughs about it now, it makes sense that his first kill, bloody and messy as it was, has traumatized him for the rest of his life. One wonders if this was Mizoguchi's spiteful way of getting back at young Toranaga, or if this was his form of a Hard Truth Aesop for the boy general.
• Nakagado's sudden and accidental death. He spends the episode contemplating how 'beautiful' it would be to die honourably in battle. While trying to assassinate his treacherous uncle Saeki, he meets his end by slipping on Saeki's robe and falling, cracking his skull open. He spends his last moments alive wretchedly gurgling and gasping in wide-eyed torment. Even Saeki pities him, asking "Where is the beauty in this?"

"The Abyss of Life"

• The episode gives us a no-holds barred, complete Seppuku sequence, and it is committed by Old Retainer Toda Hiromatsu—in an act to remonstrate Toranaga's impending surrender. The intensity of the emotions involved (to the point that it actively distorts Toranaga and Hiromatsu's faces) only contributes to the eeriness and impending horror of Hiromatsu's death. And then we actually see it happen: no censoring involved, Hiromatsu's lifeblood draining out of his rupturing belly, Buntaro heartbrokenly screaming as he beheads his own father, and Toranaga frozen in deathly grief at witnessing his lifelong mentor die. The fact that all of this was actually put on as a show and part of a Briar Patching Thanatos Gambit not only rightfully shocks the audience, it also emphasizes to us the extent to which Toranaga is actually willing to go just to ensure victory, even if he basically had no other options left.

"Crimson Sky"

• The final scene of this episode is the sequence leading to Mariko's death. While she nominally netted a victory for Toranaga by forcing Ishido to set the hostages free, a cohort of Ninja entered their sleeping quarters, assassinated a number of those hostages and sought to kidnap Mariko and deny her victory. When she, Blackthorne, Toranaga's consorts and an unwitting Yabushige were trapped in a heavy door-locked storeroom, they realized that the Shinobi were about to blow up the doors to get to them. Mariko, realizing this is the death she had been looking for, chooses to block the doors with her body to save Blackthorne and the consorts while achieving a symbolic blow against Ishido's authority with her death. The last shot of the scene is the door exploding, Mariko engulfed by the flames and debris before the Smash to Black.