Review: AGE OF SAMURAI: BATTLE FOR JAPAN Sharpens The Documentary Format
The Samurai are a well know group of warriors, but Netflix brings out a full and in-depth look into how their rise to power came to be, going from servant to supreme in a new documentary series, Age of Samurai: Battle For Japan. While I wish there was some more time focused on samurai culture, armor, and general traditions, it is still a great documentary with extremely intense reenactments that show what it was like in Japan during the 15th and 16th centuries.
As I mentioned, this documentary focuses on historical battles and figures that shaped the political face of Japan for over 150 years. Inside the history of the war generals of Japan, we see the rise of samurai and how they slowly became a fundamental point of power and respect in Japanese culture. Each episode follows various leaders and their subordinates warmongering and rise/fall of power. I wish that there was more focus on people’s perspective of samurai, the samurai’s culture, and the physical/mental and spiritual parts of the samurai. We see a number of these parts inadvertently through the stories being told. But other than that what made a samurai who he was was really only addressed a few times in this documentary. It’s still terribly engaging and full of information, just not the information that I expected from its title and advertisements.
The presentation for the series is a lot more brutal than I expected. When watching a documentary, I normally expect to see some war, some dramatic looks from people dressed in time-appropriate clothing, and so on. However, there are a lot of people and a lot of beautifully made outfits, and a lot more death and destruction showed on the screen than I thought there would be. It was more like watching an intense, informational movie than just a bunch of historians talking with some cool pictures. Also, whatever budget they had, they did very well with it. The costuming is fantastic, the gory, special effects are surprisingly good and the acting is really solid giving the characters a lot of emotional depth and realism.
The biggest problem with the documentary is that I felt that the run time on each episode was a little long mostly because the actual writing and commentaries are informational but sometimes very repetitive. When you’ve heard the same two or three guys say that a battle is “one of the most important battles in Japanese history” for the fourth or fifth time, the phrase loses its impact and just drags the episodes on a little too long.
All in all, for those who are history buffs, enjoy ancient Japanese or samurai culture even in the slightest, this is a great documentary with lots of loads of awesome information and excellent reenactments. The only thing is you may just want to watch it at a slightly faster speed to hurry over those slightly longer run times.
