Something very interesting happened between the time I did stream this pilot from Amazon Prime for the first time, and eight months later, that I'm checking it out again. In the weeks following the premiere, writer Agness Kaku complained about that many of the japanese signs in the show were utter non-sense, like the word "Respect" written all over the place, an ad for "Viper Pharmacy" hanging in a place of honor in the Aikido dojo, the fact that naming San Francisco's International Airport as "Hiroito" and the bus station as "Imperial" violates Japanese naming customs and Joel de la Fuente delivering a line that was apparently written using Google Translate ("Yes, let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky. Ta, my good suspect!"). Well, the producers made a different cut, that's the one available for streaming now: the scene with the badly translated line was cut entirely, and several signs on the street (and the one in the dojo) were digitally changed for something more realistic. The Hiroito International Airport and bus station stayed, oddly. Also the Blade Runner homage in the Sunrise Cafe was cut short, and the pilot now has a different narrative, adding more bits here and there, and a whole different ending, with more scenes mashed up to add exposition and increase the story's relationship with the I Ching (as in the source material). Isn't a bad cut at all, and it feels different, probably better than the original.
Review by Carlos TeranBlockedParent2015-11-08T17:40:46Z
Something very interesting happened between the time I did stream this pilot from Amazon Prime for the first time, and eight months later, that I'm checking it out again. In the weeks following the premiere, writer Agness Kaku complained about that many of the japanese signs in the show were utter non-sense, like the word "Respect" written all over the place, an ad for "Viper Pharmacy" hanging in a place of honor in the Aikido dojo, the fact that naming San Francisco's International Airport as "Hiroito" and the bus station as "Imperial" violates Japanese naming customs and Joel de la Fuente delivering a line that was apparently written using Google Translate ("Yes, let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky. Ta, my good suspect!"). Well, the producers made a different cut, that's the one available for streaming now: the scene with the badly translated line was cut entirely, and several signs on the street (and the one in the dojo) were digitally changed for something more realistic. The Hiroito International Airport and bus station stayed, oddly. Also the Blade Runner homage in the Sunrise Cafe was cut short, and the pilot now has a different narrative, adding more bits here and there, and a whole different ending, with more scenes mashed up to add exposition and increase the story's relationship with the I Ching (as in the source material). Isn't a bad cut at all, and it feels different, probably better than the original.