This reply is in response to a reply written in another thread which you can read: here (click me!). However, because my reply is almost entirely about Yoshitsune, and because this in large part responds to comments made by groink in this thread as well as in the other thread, I feel that it is most appropriate to post it here and not in the Tenchijin thread. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused the readers or the moderation team.
Total misread? LOL You are being
much too melodramatic about this!
First of all, I only misread
one word. How is that a total misread? I know how: if and only if that one misread had been such a serious error that it would have had a significant impact on the interpretation of your post. But second of all,
it didn't. That sort of knowledge may change my personal opinion of you, but it has no bearing on my impersonal reply to your criticisms, valid or invalid, of
Yoshitsune.
Why do you keep asserting that the lower ratings Yoshitsune received (compared with other taiga dramas in recent years) somehow
proves your point that it was a poor-quality production? And how do you even reach that conclusion!? (See end of this reply for mathematical proof that Yoshitsune competes with the very best of the last decade's taiga dramas.)
First of all, not all timeless classics start off as timeless classics. There have been many books or films in history which were lampooned and ridiculed initially only to go on to become well-loved the world over.
Second of all, while extremely good ratings and extremely weak ratings (like 95% approval or 5% approval)
can indeed be quite useful in predicting a show's superiority or inferiority to another series', generally speaking we don't see such extreme differences in scores for J-dramas and definitely not for taiga dramas!! Indeed, even the all-time lowest-scoring taiga drama was still ranked admirably above many other dramas that year. It scored poorly
for a taiga, but did well overall.
Indeed, when we start calling "24%" extremely good and "16%" embarrassingly poor, that's when we know we're starting to make stuff up as we get caught in the little details. Why? Because like any rating, viewership ratings are determined by statistical polls with percent errors. These errors are usually in the 1 to 5% range. For example, 30%(±5%) of Kantou viewers may have watched Show A, while 26%(±5%) may have watched Show B. Does this prove that Show A is better than Show B? No. And even if they'd scored 30 and 25, or 30 and 20, it still wouldn't prove anything. A 30 could be 5 points inflated and a 20 could be 5 points too shallow. Both shows could be equal. Both shows could be genuine 25's. (Same argument but adjusted for ±1% would give us a Show A which achieved 26% viewership and a Show B which achieved 24% viewership being potentially identical to one another at 25%.)
Instead of me making numbers up, let's play with our cards on the table, shall we? I'll go ahead and provide the ratings from the DramaWiki for the last 10 taiga dramas (as well part of the current one):
Genryoku Ryoran: Episode 1 = 25.0, Average = 20.2, High = 28.5
Aoi Tokogawa Sendai: Episode 1 = 22.6, Average = 18.5, High = 22.6
Hojo Tokimune: Episode 1 = 19.6, Average = 18.5, High = 21.2
Toshiie to Matsu: Episode 1 = 26.1, Average = 22.1, High = 27.6
Musashi: Average = 16.7
Shinsengumi: Episode 1 = 26.3, Average = 17.4, High = 26.3
Yoshitsune: Episode 1 =24.2, Average = 19.4, High = 26.9
Komyo ga Tsuji: Episode 1 = 19.9, Average = 20.9, High = 24.4
Fuurin Kazan: Episode 1 = 21.0, Average = 18.7, High = 22.9
Atsu-hime: Episode 1 = 20.3, Average = 24.5, High = 29.2
Tenchijin: (still airing!) Episode 1 = 24.7, Low = 20.3, High = 26.0
What does this information tell us? If we assume ±1% for the ratings' accuracy (which I think is a very fair assumption as the real percent error is likely higher, perhaps 2 to 3%), then we find that
Yoshitsune's average score is about equal to the following dramas': Genryoku Ryoran (20.2), Aoi Tokogawa Sendai (18.5), Hojo Tokimune (18.5), and Fuurin Kazan (18.7) within the first degree (±1 to
just Yoshi); and Shinsengumi (17.4) and Komyo ga Tsuji (20.9) within the second degree (±1 to Yoshi
and ±1 to them).
If we allow for no such assumptions and say that "the numbers are what they are, down to the very last decimal," then
Yoshitsune is strictly rated superior to: Aoi Tokogawa Sendai, Hojo Tokimune, Musashi, Shinsengumi, and Fuurin Kazan:
5 of the 10 most recently-completed J-dramas! That means that Yoshitsune is, strictly speaking,
in the upper 50% bracket!! It is ranked
better than
half of the taiga dramas of the last 10 years!! And yet you continue to debase it, all the while invoking these vague statistics.
If nothing else, I hope that this has proven to you and to everyone else on D-Addicts that you really shouldn't put too much faith in ratings when they are closer to each other than 5%. Ratings fall apart after that point, generally speaking. They're much more reliable when comparing grossly disparate entities. For God's sake, Yoshitsune is only 0.8% points behind Genryoku Ryoran whereas it's a full 2.0% ahead of Shinsengumi, and yet you seem to insist that it has more in common with Shinsengumi than with GenRyo. And I've no idea why! I don't care that you disliked Yoshitsune, because I understand that everyone has different tastes. But I do care that you keep replying to me with posts that deceive the forum into thinking that Yoshitsune was one of the biggest NHK ratings busts of all time when it clearly wasn't. Maybe it was one of the bigger financial failures? I don't know. All I know is, the numbers speak for themselves: Yoshitsune is strictly better than half and generally-speaking is only outclassed (i.e. >2% difference between their average viewership scores) by very few of the taiga dramas of the last decade.
And ratings be damned,
I enjoyed it
immensely. All I ask is that you try to be respectful of this difference in taste rather than constantly posting negative replies about Yoshitsune as a show, as a commercial venture for the NHK, etc.
... Ueto is in it too 
, and Takizawa Hideaki 
