Samurai drama airs 1,000 times but plot thins

[John Lindsey]

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/...20031217b4.htm

The popular samurai TV drama "Mito Komon," which debuted in 1969, has become the nation's first such program to air 1,000 episodes.

Flanked by his retainers, Mito Komon, the main character in the samurai TV drama of the same name, routinely gets in a showdown with corrupt officials in the long-running series.

The one-hour program, which airs at 8 p.m. Mondays on TBS and its affiliates, celebrated the milestone Monday with a special three-hour episode.

The main character in the drama is Tokugawa Mitsukuni, also known as Mito Komon, one of Tokugawa Ieyasu's grandsons and lord of the province of Mito, now the capital of Ibaraki Prefecture.

Accompanied by his two faithful guards, Kaku and Suke, as well as his servant Hachibei, Mito Komon wanders the countryside, helping those he finds oppressed by corrupt officials or evil landlords.

A violent struggle typically ensues near the end of each show, at which point one of his attendants flashes Komon's "inro," a lacquered case bearing the Tokugawa crest, thus revealing his true identity. Realizing they are facing someone who wields incredible power, the evildoers drop to their knees.

[Jock Armstrong]

The baddie all poop their pantaloons on cue, which begs the question, why not show it before the ruckus?????

[Exorcist_Fist]

Simple.

He and his guards whoop on people, but don't kill them. Once they have demonstrated they can take all the baddies, then they show the seal, and the baddies drop because they have seen the error of their ways and know that if they keep fighting after they have seen the seal, that they will lose and be killed for fighting against the shogun.

If they showed the seal first, the baddies would still think that they could easily kill them and get away with it, and then the martially superior Mito Komon and his gang would have to just slaughter them for showing disloyalty to the shogun.