I write this column between disappointment and amazement, just a few hours have passed since the broadcast of the penultimate episode of Shogun And no one stopped me on the street to talk about her. The greengrocer insisted on boasting about the freshness of the spinach he had just received instead of questioning the reasons for the animosity between Lady Ochiba and Toronaga; my tax advisor wasted our little time on the trifles of the papers I hand in late every quarter when all I wanted to talk about was Mariko’s dignity. I leaned on the bar of a bar expecting a flood of opinions about the strange neighbourhood that the clergy and prostitutes will form in Edo, but incomprehensibly everyone seemed to be more interested in the cruel fate of the Spanish teams in the Champions League.
There’s barely a week left to say goodbye to the sibylline Yabushige and I don’t see flags at half-mast in the TV stores. I’ve already decorated mine with a black crepe. I don’t know how I’m going to face the last episode if I haven’t been able to digest the sixth yet. The ladies of the willow world, prodigiously written by Maegan Houang, contains the most sexual sequence of the season, although there is nothing in it of what we canonically understand as sex, Mariko and the Anjin do not even touch their lips, there is no nudity, their bodies, anchored to the tatami do not touch, there is barely a furtive touch of hands between them, but if there were a ranking Of the hottest moments of the year, no one would take her off the podium. That sex that wasn’t defines what she is Shogun: subtle, dramatic, self-absorbed.
There is a lot of substance in the Disney+ series: war, politics, faith, wonder, but above all there is a deep respect for the viewers. It is not complacent, it does not want us to like it at all costs or lower the bar to make us feel smarter, it does not allow furtive glances at the mobile phone because nothing really important is verbalized and, like all the series that made us fall in love with television fiction, it does well with the pause, the weekly broadcast allows us to savour its multiple layers with peace of mind. At a time when the platforms devalue their catalogues by cramming them with Reality TV about mediocre and truculent characters true crime, jewels like Shogun They remind us that this is what we expected from them when we subscribed. How could I not be mourning her already?
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