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The story
A survey by lifestyle info site trilltrill, which asked 300 people nationwide in their teens through sixties which NHK Taiga historical drama they’d most like to watch again after having their memory erased, became a hot topic on 5ch’s Entertainment & Sports News+ board. Third place went to ‘Ryomaden’ (32 votes), second was ‘The 13 Lords of the Shogun,’ and the #1 pick reportedly drew comments like ‘I want to feel that tension all over again.’ In the thread, the actual rankings mattered less than the parade of titles each generation dug up from memory — names like ‘Idaten,’ ‘Sanada Maru,’ ‘Kunitori Monogatari,’ and ‘The Days of Golden Sun’ came flying in, spanning from the Showa era right up to recent years.
Haven’t you ever felt, with the Taiga dramas that stuck with you most, that you’d love to experience that shock all over again — without already knowing what’s coming? The thrill of not knowing where the story is headed, the lines that pull you in before you realize it — that’s a special magic only a first viewing can offer.
This time we surveyed 300 people nationwide, ages 10s through 60s, on which Taiga drama they’d most like to watch again with their memory erased. The responses show real passion for the writing, the acting, and the plotting. Check out these results — you’re sure to find yourself nodding along!
#3: ‘Ryomaden’ (32 votes)
Source: trilltrill.jp / Original article here
What people said
Sounds like it'd actually be more fun to watch it already knowing the ending's kind of lame.
Kudo Kankuro's new show streaming on Netflix right now, 'Did You Say Something About Me?,' is hilarious — a genuine masterpiece. Wish it had aired on regular TV, but I guess today's networks just can't pull together a cast like that anymore.
Wish they'd make it available on some streaming service already.
I've only seen it in highlight specials, but Yuriko Yoshinaga was stunning.
It's scary because it's family members killing each other one after another.
The world just feels so small — the setting and cast barely move, so it's like watching the same little dollhouse stage an endless string of infighting and cannibalism. I get that it's inevitable since Mitani comes from theater, sure, but even so — something like 'Furuhata Ninzaburo,' where each case wraps up in a three-month run, you can enjoy; do the same thing on repeat for a full year and it gets old, almost nauseating. Kind of like watching crayfish or rats cannibalize each other nonstop in a cramped fish tank.
1. 'Aoi Tokugawa Sandai' (2000)
2. 'Takeda Shingen' (1988)
3. 'Dokuganryu Masamune' (1987)
4. 'Hideyoshi' (1996)
5. 'Tokugawa Yoshinobu' (1998)
A Taiga drama's got to go this far or it's boring.
Is it true there's a Taiga drama where Lord Mitsukuni randomly time-travels, starts freely using modern slang, and then — just when you think a celebrity reporter has barged onto the set — the show tries to launch into a program from a rival network?
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The Taiga drama 'Aoi Tokugawa Sandai' actually had Noriko Shoji — a famous celebrity reporter back then — appear playing a celebrity reporter.
And yes, words like 'walk-off home run,' 'privacy,' and 'meter' show up in it (modern terms that have no business in a samurai-era drama).
It felt kind of half-baked — like it wanted to nod at the 'he secretly survived' theory without actually committing to that as a creative choice.
'The 13 Lords of the Shogun' was showing up near the top on a streaming site, so I rewatched it after a while — honestly, the second time around was more fun than the first. It's styled like a comedy sketch show, but it's surprisingly deep, and the characters are clearly thought through.
'Kunitori Monogatari' was great. It has this interesting structure where the lead switches partway through from Saito Dosan to Oda Nobunaga. There's a 3-hour compilation edit, but I don't think all the original episodes survive.
With 'JIN,' memory erased or not, I guarantee I'll cry at that final letter scene lol
Kind of like 'Carnation' — it was fantastic right up until Machiko Ono's role got handed off to another actress, and it was never quite the same after.
Do you seriously think they even ran a real survey in the first place?
Takeru Satoh
Yu Aoi
Teruyuki Kagawa
Munetaka Aoki
Masaharu Fukuyama
Yusuke Iseya
Min Tanaka
Well, that's because it's the same director. He left NHK to go independent after making 'Ryomaden.'
The horse-riding scenes were CG.
The one good thing was Alice Hirose's comic-relief concubine role.
What stuck with me from 'The Days of Golden Sun' is the sawing scene (a torture method where someone is sawn to death).
'Berabou' would be great if it weren't for the weird conspiracy subplot — and resolving things with a body-double swap is a pretty cheap way to wrap things up too.
It's no match at all for Shima Iwashita and Kojiro Ishizaka in 'Kusa Moeru,' but it was decent enough in its own right.
Eiko Koike was the better Masako. Iwashita's Masako was just gloomy and did nothing but lament.
Apparently recent research suggests that Tokugawa Ieyasu's eldest son Nobuyasu and his wife weren't killed on Oda Nobunaga's orders after all — the more supported theory now is that it came from internal strife within the Tokugawa clan.
But even the recent 'What Will You Do, Ieyasu' still went with the 'Nobunaga ordered it' theory, which left me thinking, huh, really? lol
I wonder how it actually went down, though? Well, from a director's standpoint, I get it — 'Nobunaga ordered it' is just easier to dramatize in a lot of ways.
○ Correction: recent research suggests that Tokugawa Ieyasu's eldest son Nobuyasu and Ieyasu's wife were killed less because of Oda Nobunaga's orders and more likely due to internal strife within the Tokugawa clan.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
This survey polled 300 people, and because it spans six generations, each age group naturally tends to champion whichever title defined their own formative years — so the vote count reflects generational nostalgia more than a straightforward popularity contest. Where the thread really split was over how to judge the shows: ‘The 13 Lords of the Shogun’ drew both ‘it’s too scary, all that infighting and killing, I don’t want to watch it’ and ‘watching it a second time reveals real depth,’ while ‘Sanada Maru’ split opinion between praise for its first half up through Sekigahara and complaints that it lost steam in the second half. Some also pointed out that ‘a survey like this just naturally favors Koki Mitani’s works,’ a reminder that the ranking may reflect popularity skewed toward certain screenwriters or broadcast eras rather than pure quality. Episodes like ‘Aoi Tokugawa Sandai,’ which prioritized entertainment over historical accuracy, and historical facts like the circumstances of Nobuyasu’s death — where recent scholarship has shifted the interpretation — also came up, pointing to how Taiga dramas get discussed less as faithful historical reenactments and more as a mirror of each era’s own production trends.
*This article excerpts and summarizes the 5ch (Entertainment & Sports News+) thread “#2 ‘The 13 Lords of the Shogun,’ #3 ‘Ryomaden’ — 300 People’s Picks for the Taiga Drama They’d Most Want to Watch Again With Memory Erased, With #1 Saying ‘I Want to Feel That Tension Again’.”
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