Date Masamune: the samurai who inspired Darth Vader (2016)
nipponrama.com
nipponrama.com
And it sounds like a product placement piece to advertise Bandai figurines...
> A complex character who has experienced many tragedies that have brought him into a spiral of revenge, much like Anakin Skywalker actually.
Lol but seriously this guy sees connections everywhere
Agreed. There are similarities, but nothing to directly tie them together.
If you get The Making of Star Wars[1] book there's tons of detail on the development of the characters, including Darth Vader.
I think this connection is largely coincidental.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Making-Star-Wars-Definitive-Original/...
Strangely? You are the one who brought this whole subject up…
"That's no moon"
Minor nit. At the time of writing, Lucas had no intention of making Star Wars more than a single film. That came after production started. I forget my source for this but I think it’s either Robert McKee or Blake Snyder. And there’s some confusion around this due to a backdated screenplay with the Episode IV title.
Light sabres were the battery holder for a photographic flash gun.
I wonder what other Japanese culture influences on Lucas are yet to be uncovered.
It turns out to have been modelled after the samurai armor of the Sanada clan, whose battle-crest was the rokumonsen, or six mon coins. The Japanese at the time had a Greek-like burial practice of burying coins with their dead so their spirits can pay passage to the afterlife -- one coin to pass through each of the six Buddhist afterlife realms to get to heaven. So when the Sanada clan rode into your territory and you saw that six-coin crest, the message was: death is coming for you.
I posted a shot for shot comparison on my Twitter:
But that scene is too similar to be an accident and it wouldn't be the only lookalike scene in SW.
The samurai from the article looks much more similar. But still, it was normal enough that it's not easy to guess.
https://ghostoftsushima.fandom.com/wiki/Samurai_Clan_Armor?f...
https://nipponrama.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/date-masam...
and the "Feudal Japan Darth Vader" figurine isn't too dissimilar from the un-upgraded version of the same helmet from Ghost: https://ghostoftsushima.fandom.com/wiki/Samurai_Clan_Armor?f...
"DID YOU KNOW that Vader's helmet is styled after samurai helmets?"
I mean jesus christ, you'd have to be born under a rock to not know that Star Wars is a cross between a spaghetti western and a samurai flick. The "light saber" is the ultimate version of the "samura swords can cut through anything and slice bullets!" weeb trope.
And WWII movies (633 Squadron and The Dam Busters, most prominently) and a splash of sword-and-sorcery fiction (the "magic exists but is rare to the point of being near-mythical and not really thaaaaat powerful" thing is some straight Conan shit, as are some other elements and flavors in the setting—from the stories, that is, not the movies, which came too late to influence Star Wars, though, fittingly, James Earl Jones is in both).
Star Wars' greatest contribution to cinema—and it's a big one—is pioneering the multi-genre pastiche. That thing Tarantino does? Like, his whole career basically? Star Wars cleared the way for that. Proved it could work and result in a good film, proved it could make money. The most successful later entries understand that formula and lean hard into the genre-mashup and freely ripping off other works thing. Mandalorian's full of that, for instance (to the point that you can make a meta-game of watching it, playing "name what they ripped off")
https://www.lionsroar.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/yoda-ri...