In Review: Westworld – Akane No Mai

Synopsis: Welcome to Shogun World. Meave and her group find themselves in feudal Japan.

Review: Westworld gives us a change of scene this week as Meave and her little group find themselves in the thick of things in Shogun World. Elsewhere Deloras and Teddy return to Sweetwater with the intent of using the train to locate and find her father Peter Abernathy.

The narrative is split between Westwork and Shogun World this week and we see a very similar narrative in Shogun World to what we have already seen in Westworld, but much more violent. The similarity in narratives and characters isn’t lost on Meave who spots in right away and accuses Lee Sizemore of plagiarising her story for Shogun World. The story involves a pair of Geisha who have a mother and daughter type of relationship and the Shogun wants the younger Geisha for his servant. Meave and her group find themselves in the middle of all of this and wind up helping the two Geisha launch a fight back against the oppressive Shogun and his Ninjas.

Tom Sizemore’s role in this is hilarious as he curses and cowers due to the changes in narrative within Shogun world. For example, Ninja’s turn up when they are not supposed too and the Samurai come into the town when they are not supposed too.

Also, Meave seems to have discovered a new power in herself, which basically sees her being able to somehow reprogram the other hosts by just thinking about what she wants them to do.

Back in Sweetwater Deloras is very much aware that Teddy let the prisoners go and is leading him to believe that she didn’t see what he did. Instead of letting on she lures him into a false sense of security by sharing an intimate night with him before having him forcibly reprogrammed so he will not be as nice of a guy.

Overall. This was a fantastic episode with a lot of great moments. The fact that Meave can now seemingly command the other hosts to do whatever she wants is going to make for some interesting fun in weeks to come.

Once again. We get great performances from Evan Rachel Wood and Thandie Newton in their respective roles.