Aramintai

Agreed, it's a solid 9 so far. Typical MDL rating.
On IMDB it's 9.2 atm.

Come on 🙄, yes yes, we know, the glasses guy is evil and involved in everything since ages ago. But 4 more episodes to nail him? After episode 12 they've really started dragging the plot out. Skippity, skip, skip...
And of course WTOD was involved, what other cliche they haven't tried here yet? Amnesia?

They're actually speaking Portuguese, but it was made for English audiences with English speaking actors so it's in English. Just pretend it's on auto dub.

He already was a CEO of that company and he didn't buy that apartment in the end. But I was talking more about the attitude which has changed.

Agreed. No real mysteries left and the leads are already together and got past the dumb obligatory break-up phase. Now they're just forcing drama to fill up the time. Does the glasses guy really require 4 more episodes to send him to jail? Or FL's brother to finally get a job? I don't really care either way...

I've been trying to figure out why this show became boring in the last few episodes. It has become a typical procedural that are dime a dozen every year. And how did that happen? I think it's because ML simply became a real cop and stopped chaebol-ing and fooling around all the time.
Now it's trying to be all serious with your typical unsolved murder of a family member that will drive the lead character to seek out the truth. FL has an unsolved case of her own too of course that is also related to her family member.

It's awesome, you should watch it.

I think it's possible. Most of the TV shows are now ordered by streaming services which are global corporations. The question is whether they've technical capabilities as advanced as American ones. From what I've seen high budget TV series from SK are getting pretty close.

Another thing of note is whether the script is good enough to pitch it internationally, which attracts more money. Shogun is based on a best-seller, globally famous novel. With plots like these you're guaranteed a hit if the writers aren't hacks with delusions of grandeur of rewriting the original script to make it "better". Original scripts are an unknown risk though, so it's a harder sell. Afaik, the only recent period drama from SK with high production quality and global acclaim was Kingdom - about Joseon era with zombies.

I think him and the other guy have a bad case of fake friendship and they're just using each other. And he has bad tendencies. I felt that he started to want that girl because the other guy liked her - he wants to take stuff from him because he himself is incompetent buffoon with low self-esteem.

Watch the movie Silence from 2016. It sort of continues the plot of Shogun just a few decades after and tells the fate of Christians when Japan started closing borders and isolating itself.

Just watch the movie Silence from 2016. Suffice it to say, it wasn't to last.

It 100% was. If you see a car logo in kdrama - PPL. If it is removed - nobody paid for it.

Yea, at the very least give him a Tesla or something, at least it looks like a normal car.

Sigh, blame the Nazi for ruining that symbol for the rest of the world. It's an old religious symbol in various cultures across the world. And it is especially in use by religions originating from India, specifically Buddhism. That building in the drama was a Buddhist monastery.
Nazis just took it as their own when they started that Aryan race propaganda bs. Funny, how the closest to original Aryans in Europe were actually gypsies they persecuted along with Jews.

The plot seems very light, but ML sure did blow it out of proportions.
And something's not right here, it's not gripping.
The grandpa was miscast, he should return playing policemen.
The gay brother is a coward who's about to get his life and artistic career ruined because he doesn't have the balls to confess to his grandpa.
ML is borderline obsessive and shortsightedly lost sight of himself while trying to put his brother where he doesn't belong.
FL is ok, but she's acting too natural even when she's acting, if you know what I mean.

I may give this a try later if there won't be this love triangle, for Lee Jae Wook's sake.

It's based on true events though. There will be the Battle of Sekigahara and Toranaga/Tokugawa will become a shogun, the moves and chess pieces that will lead him to that goal are simply fictionalized to an extent to give a more gripping story. But the plotting players were all there. Even that leper samurai, even though he wasn't part of the Council of Five.
And Blackthorne's/William Adams's story is told quite true to the real historical events as well - he arrived to Japan at that time, was in Tokugawa's court, was made honorary samurai, did built ships for him and was made to stay in Japan until his death.
The only character that is heavily fictionalized to provide romance in this plot is Mariko, though her real counterpart also was a Christian and played a significant role in Mitsunari's defeat (or rather, her death at his orders).

Contemplating watching it, but it looks like there's a typical "woman playing two men against each other/hoes before bros" trope? Is that correct?

But One Piece's source material was Japanese. Shogun's is not, but it is about Japan. In any case, who cares? Main thing is they were prioritizing quality and authenticity in its production. Big budget productions are mostly managed by global companies nowadays anyways. And even many a smaller scale drama have migrated to global streaming services like Netflix.
And I'd rather watch this than yet another cheaply made locally baked period drama with insane number of episodes.

I’ve watched behind the scenes and everyone seemed so dedicated to make it the best possible drama. Especially the main actor who plays Toranaga, everybody else basically flocked around him after hearing he wanted to play that role. I’ve also read they’ve restarted production several times to match the quality standards.

I think this novel and plot are the most known among the Western audiences, so bringing on screen this “window into Japan” again is great. From another perspective, a Japanese novel titled Silence was made into a great thought provoking movie in 2016 - I think it’s complimentary to Shogun and I recommend watching it if you haven’t already.