📺WESTWORLD 02.05 - Shogun World.

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After that magnificient piece of storytelling and acting last week, we get this week to catch up with the stories of Maeve and Dolores. I want to say that it goes a bit more back to normal, but we get the chance to have a good look at Shogun World, a copycat robot-entertained fantasy based in the Japanese Edo period. And it's bloody!

SPOILERS ALERT: READ ONLY IF YOU HAVE SEEN THE EPISODE!

^{Can't wait for her new single.}

QUICK RECAP

After a short prologue where the rescuers are dredging up the artifical lake from all its hosts corpses, we get back to where we left at the end of episode 3: Maeve , Hector and their human slaves being attacked by what looks like a Samurai. More precisely a ronin, but who cares? It's a welcoming addition. However, the pedant in me can't help to notice that between IndiaWorld and WestWorld there was a kind of laser frontier... Is there no such device between WestWorld and ShogunWorld? Have they walked through it without noticing? Hummm...

^{It's going to get pricky.}

The scale of the Delos entertainment park really beggars belief... They probably have bought an island big as Jamaica to host all these worlds and give to each of them enough space to breath and develop. However, the funny thing is that they cut cost in the narratives: basically, Maeve and Hector are witnessing, as soon as they arrive, their captors perform the same kind of choreographed heist as they used to do in WestWorld.

^{Shogun world without gun.}

As the narrative guy explains (I can never remember his name and I will not bother looking for it), the characters and stories have been copy/pasted from one world to another. Of course, there are cultural differences, but the "narrative bones" are the same and the feelings, all too real: Maeve finds out that her "doppel-bot" Akane nurtures a love to Sakura which equals the one she had for the daughter she is looking for. Hence, a strong bond develops between the two "Madams".

However, something even stronger is developping: engulfed into a fight against the Shogun of this world, Maeve unlocks some amazing power all of her own. She is not only able to speak Japanese by herself but also discovers that she can override her fellow hosts - even without opening her mouth! Her "new voice" is telepathic and she looks like she is going to make good use of it. I just hope it won't be a crutch for the writers everytime they get Maeve into a corner.

The writers and producers of WestWorld have really indulged themselves into some gore this time: I have no idea if the Edo period was this violent, but the final showdown has more in common with Tarantino's Kill Bill or Takashii Miike gore-fest flicks than with a Kurosawa movie. Of course, the absence of firearm in this world make the use of pins, knives, swords and lances indispensable and therefore... things get very sticky. Probably the worst body count of the whole series so far (even worse than the final of Season 1).

Meanwhile in WestWorld, more of the same between Dolores and Teddy. They arrive in Sweetwater and start repairing the train which will lead them to the Mesa. However, Dolores is done questioning her feelings any longer. She is ruthless, he is meek. She wants to fight, he wants to find some place for them both in all that beauty. Therefore, she does what Teddy had coming all along: he is going to be reset and become a pure tool in her arsenal. Supposedly. It's high time.