Syowindo: Yeowangui Jib

One expects such a long series to be an Asian soap/telenovela stretching a thin story unbearably. It was a pleasant surprise to see that the script filled it with enough material to keep the interest with twists and turns and not too much time filler material... except towards the end.

The series is well made with most of the important characters well portrayed by the cast, supporting cast ... not so much. Beautifully filmed and edited. The product placement gets a bit too much.

The script isn't the most credible at times but doesn't get too soapy.

While it maintained the mystery very well despite flash forward teasers, the reveal episodes were extremely disappointing. With the main mystery solved many episodes before the last episode, the series runs out of steam and credibility and resorts to a lot of silly filler material to stretch it to the contractual length. One feels one's time wasted watching the last two episodes.

A re-edit to 12 or 14 episodes might improve it for reruns.