User reviews

A Japanese program that has a different take on a serious time in history. The subtitles are in English and no audio. A journey from feudal Japan to the Vatican with stop along the three year trip. The acting is fine and exposes their innocents.

This is a great story I just wish it was written and directed better. The costumes are really well done and the sets are pretty good for the small budget. I couldn't figure out who the bad guys were..

Fascinating time period (feudal Japan) and subject matter (Japanese missionaries voyaging to meet the pope), but done in a stereotypical, juvenile anime-like fashion.

What I mean by this is like shounen action anime or manga, you have the scholar, the happy guy, the cool guy, and the angry, subversive guy with a history of trauma. And that's the case here, except they are Christian acolytes except for the fourth guy, the unbeliever, who constantly steps out of line in a way that became maddening. You're telling me these three "magi" wise men traveled three years across turbulent seas, only for the extra fourth guy (who didn't even need to be there) to be salty at the Pope? Like, that's truly stupid.

The Amazon Prime blurb noted the acclaimed scriptwriting, but I found the dialogue wooden and the many English speaking parts overwritten and unnatural. The words were oddly chosen ("domain lord" instead of "feudal lord"?), or too collegiate instead of short, expressive, or allowing of natural pauses.

Also, some English speakers were evidently Japanese natives, as though they were Caucasian they had Japanese accents when speaking English. And others evidently did not know much Japanese when they spoke the language as it was very cumbersome to hear.

I also felt the episodes weren't succinct enough for compelling narrative drive. There were ten episodes and I stopped watching before halfway.

Reasons to watch however is some explosive action scenes, good costumes, and to watch an interesting chapter of history unfold with two very different peoples and religions. If not for the terribly written characters I would keep watching.

Junior high level acting, seriously brought back so many memories. I couldn't stop fixating on where they found these people. I understand Japanese is the primary language for this series but the English lines were spoken and acted so terribly, I couldn't get past it. Intriguing story, poor acting from English speaking characters