Great premise, poorly carried out, but still worth a watch.
I was excited to watch "Rugal" in that the premise of AI enhanced robotic warriors, is interesting, terrifying, and imminently relevant to today's world. Plus, there is Choi Jin Hyuk as the male lead! But the story really didn't focus on the risks and rewards of AI enhanced humans, it had huge plot holes and there were so many problems with consistency and continuity that it became frustrating to follow. The actors did the best they could with lame dialogue. The fight scenes, though too fast and choppily edited, were still exciting and fun to watch. Choi Jin Hyuk was good in his role as the protagonist. Just being picky here, but the stylist who created his "flower boy, robot warrior" hair style for the last few episodes needs a reality check. That hair was really annoying! Park Sung Woong, also good, was particularly plagued by bad writing and he played-up the evil antagonist to such an extent that his character became amusingly campy. Not sure that was the intended effect, but he was fun to watch. The end was satisfying but a bit lame, and again not well written--many scenes were reminiscences via flashbacks, which in my opinion is lazy and boring. But despite the problems, this series is still worth watching. There are hints at a sequel and if one is planned, I would definitely watch it if a new scriptwriter is hired. You just have to be willing to make leaps of faith in the plot development (or nondevelopment).
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