Good Grief

Doesn't he represent the estate of that murdered songstress? His cut of her royalties should be enough to cover all expenses for many years.

Right!!! They made a big deal of needing his mom's assets for him to open his firm. How is he paying that off doing pro bono work for ghosts🤣

First off, why shouldn't the English man be portrayed in a very positive light? Maybe you need to understand 3 things.

1) FACT: In the mid 1500s PORTUGUESE came with their "Black Ships" to trade & brought CATHOLICS to convert Japanese to Christianity. This is AFTER England removed itself from Rome and established the Church of ENGLAND, a Protestant religion. There is NO historical account of English trying to "COLONIZE" Japan during this Era.

2) This is based on a NOVEL by the same title: SHOGUN.
This version differs from the novel, in that it is Japanese-centric instead of centered around the main character in the Novel, John Blackthrone, an English pilot on a Dutch vessel that, 'fictionally' discovered the route that the Portuguese took to get to Japan.

3) This is based on historical FACT of the establishment of the 1600s Tokugawa Shogunate in Edo. You can research it.

In 1600, an English sailor, Wm. Adams & a Dutchman, Jan Joosten came to Japan & disclosed to the Japanese about the conflicts between Protestant and Portuguese & Spanish Catholics. The man who would be Shogun took a liking to them and TRUSTED what they told him... It's this information that lead to the Shogun eventually PERSECUTING Christians, then banning Catholicism completely and begin it's ISOLATIONIST FOREIGN POLICY until the Japanese Meiji Era.

So, YEAH, they WOULD portray an ENGLISHMAN in a good light for this drama.

I honestly do not understand this new false historical outlook to justify racism.

congrats on winning your first ever Emmy, and the first Emmy ever for a Japanese actress, for your role in Shogun!

A huge congratulations on your incredible achievements of winning the 2024 Emmy Award "Best Outstanding Actress"as the first Japanese-Asian to do so, and the 2025 Golden Globe for "Best Outstanding Actress"! Your talent and hard work are truly inspiring.

if you want some absurd,comedy and you can close an eye at some small gaps in the scenery then yeah. it won't be logical and perfect because it has to be fun. There will be slight romance as it is seen, in the end if you want to watch some light fantasy then yeah, I recommend it. I'm myself on the 4 EP for now and it's cute and funny

This is what I'm saying. Him being a lawyer is completely arbitrary at this point and only really came into play with the first ghost since he took the wife on as a client. He is far more of a detective than a lawyer.

We actually have not seen the ML properly practice law very much🤣😭Is he even good at his job? He is more of a private investigator and family therapist. He always gets possessed before we can see his qualification get put to use but it is amusing to watch as least.

This whole situation is such a nothing-burger (situation lacking in substance and blown out of proportion, compared to it’s importance, actually not very significant etc.).

And honestly, it’s all about opinions and preferences, and there are as many of those as people, so everyone will always argue about something… there should just be content made for both parties/sides of the discussion and that’s it), but since the C government got involved and people blew it up so much, there are probably going to be some more serious consequences of this all (where that could have been avoided). It was a cdrama-making/cdrama-land critique/scandal but now it’s turned into a political agenda (which is an unfortunate course of action, ridiculous development - however, not totally unexpected, I guess, via past experiences) .

Also to make it clear, literally none of this is Zhang Ling He’s fault, so I do hope he’ll not catch any serious heat from this.

Edit: not really talking about weight though, I agree that a lot of these celebrities are too skinny for their own good and healthy, and toxic industry standards should be challenged.

"And no one should use “not enough episodes” as an excuse for poor writing."

One of my biggest peeves in dramas is that too many are bloated. If you need more episodes then you've either taken on too much for the story or you need a good editor who's experienced enough to know what doesn't advance the story and ruthless enough to get rid of extra characters that take away from the trajectory of the story and filler that's there to stretch the episode count. I want every minute I'm watching to count.

Thank you for the compliment!

Same about story, acting, directing. If I'm going to invest my time in a drama I want it to keep me interested because everyone involved knows how to do their jobs. Beauty is nice, but as they say it's skin deep and dramas need to be deeper than that.

Fictional works have a real effect on the consciousness of viewers—especially young women.

I honestly agree. I love cdramas but they honestly need to work on better stories. I have a lot of problems with Pursuit of Jade. Number one being: she’s a badass general who can defeat battle hardened generals with a lifetime’s worth of experience because she’s a girl boss butcher? Give me a break. They loosely alluded to her father teaching her in the past but never do they show her training. I practiced martial arts my entire youth, I have many friends who competed internationally and others who were stunt artists. When training for a competition, you train 6 hours a day 6 days a week and 2 hours on the “rest” day. For stunt work, you have to train every single day to keep in shape. It’s honestly disrespectful to martial arts that she can defeat these generals twice her size with literally nothing but “feminism”. I also know someone who is a high ranking military officer and an incredible and successful leader. She works out every single day. Yet probably most of the male soldiers under her command could take her out in hand to hand combat. That’s just biological reality. Fan Changyu’s character is a caricature, which is a disservice to women, who actually have unique skills and can be leaders and change the world in our own way.

Oh, incredible. So China is banning plastic dolls? Will their actors finally look more human?

One thing I hope they get rid of is the awful white makeup that makes actors look like ghosts. And maybe this will give some lesser-known actors a chance at roles that "pretty" stars with little acting ability now get.