Aramintai

Watch the end of episode 4, it's a surprise.

It was a common practice for women from samurai families to learn to use naginata or a spear. It's nothing special here, Mariko also was shown to be a practitioner.

Are you from the West? It may be a stereotype, but westerners who don't have any contact with East Asian people in they daily lives have trouble distinguishing East Asian faces. You just need to watch more Asian media. They all clearly have very different faces.
Also, reading about historical events the drama's based on can also help figuring out who's who among the characters.

They're not giving the protagonist much to do in the last few episodes, do they? He starts to look like a prized exotic curiosity that Toranaga keeps around and maintains in good condition. I get that he was a very minor player in irl events, but since he's the protagonist here he needs something to do besides sitting around cluelessly or fumbling yet another local custom. His actor also has that perpetually surprised naive face that doesn't help his case either.
If he was relegated to a minor character or removed altogether from the plot it would still be awesome without him, because let's be honest here - it's all about Toranaga's ascension to become a shogun and interesting political intrigues framed by a peculiar set of rules, rituals and customs of that era.
I don't recall this being a problem in the old TV series, the focus on the protagonist was much clearer there and he was more involved.

Tis synopsis reminds me of Suspicious Partner.

He was a fool and died like one.

Half-assed plot and half-hearted performance. Lots of nonsense, dumbest break-ups and very unnecessary time skip. A way below average drama.

They add foreigner actors in dramas here as cameos at the very least. No excuse here besides bias or being lazy. Just need to create an actor page and add it to this drama.

Not really. People are mostly talking about bad writing in general.

Not really, FL's acting is questionable and both leads have failed to provide believable chemistry on screen. At times it's also partly due to nonsensical dialogues during emotional scenes.

Because it's badly written?

Still not an excuse to treat a child like that. What's worse he never told anybody the reason of his behavior, so at least people wouldn't misunderstand. He basically let everybody in the house bully ML.

You gotta be kidding, right?

What's more appalling was that the crashed car was just there on the road all that time until grandpa drove over. Nobody called the ambulance, nobody cared, they just ran off. So that reporter and father can tell all the stories they like, but they're guilty as sin.

It also sounds like Honest Candidate with Ra Mi Ran.

At this point I don't even care to check.

Sad part is there's nothing else to watch atm.

This drama arguably has two of the dumbest break-ups in a row I've ever seen, followed up by a nonsensical time skip, followed by what looks to be LDR in the teaser. F*ck this dumb, erratic couple who easily drop each other several times in a month all the while whining to the others they can't live without each other. I can't even with this mess, whoever wrote this fanfic needs to get back to school, because it looks like it's written by a child.

Just as the previous part this one is set to perma 2x speed. As rushed and as all over the place as the previous one. They should have done a kdrama with 8 episodes minimum to make the story comprehensible, with enough time given to character development. But as it is, it's just a messy trainwreck that crashed at breakneck speed without any breaks.
Can't give it more than 6 and even that is very generous.

Eh, this is becoming too nonsensical. ML is frustratingly dumb, everyone's selfish in their own way so it's hard to empathize with characters, miscommunication is the main driving force of this actually very easily resolvable drama. I'm glad it's nearing its end, I'm regretting starting watching it. Too messy and dumb for my liking.

At the beginning of the episode it was especially rich to see ML being mad at FL for not telling him. When, my dude? You were in denial of this whole situation for the whole last episode, forcing FL to do the same and taking off with her to have a day without a care in the world. I mean, I've seen lots of silly break-ups for dumbest of reasons, but this has got to be somewhere at the top of the list of the most idiotic.

And I've said this before, but both of these brothers are walking red flags, FL's too good for either of them. I don't know when did she suddenly start to like ML, was it during his constant bullying of her and erratic behavior? It was jarring to see how she was pitying him all the while he acted like a douche. He's not a nice guy even to his brother. And his brother's a selfish prick who used FL's strong sense of compassion to stay in the closet and keep on floating downstream.
I dunno, one of the most unlikable cast of male characters. And FL's mediocre acting isn't making up to it.