-->In short <-- I only recommend this to people who only care about fanservice and nothing else. PS : I posted a -->document of 21 pages<-- taking into account the issues (bad writing, bad acting, bad pacing, bad technic) of roughly 10 episodes ; just saying as I am aware of the drama's popularity. So if you are curious, check it out and disagree if you want, we'll discuss it then. Now, yes, it is nitpicking sometimes and everything doesn't have to be taken too seriously, but it doesn't change the real issues within. Before anything : The moment I saw the image on MDL, I fell in love with it. I wanted to watch it : Zorro ; that was the only thing running through me and I was excited to start it. (not to mention it is typically the type of things I enjoy) The two first episodes confirmed it and despite the presence of a few issues, I was entertained enough to close my eyes on them. Only two episodes...and then everything started to crumble. From episode 3 to 5, the drama lost itself in the turmoil of delievering fanservice and was unable to stand up again, only falling deeper and deeper. And in case some wonder, no, focusing on fanservice is not an excuse for all what's wrong within the show. As I cannot exactly spoil, I won't recap them precisely here (I have a document anyway). But I will "explore" some aspects on this review. Story : So what do we have ? A Zorro-like concept : a man with a mask, the icon of the (future) rebellion ; a lot of fictions of this genre approach that through a manicheist perspective and aren't exactly always accurate in term of historical facts. Bridal Mask is not an exception to that ; so if you want to know more about the annexion of Korea avoid it, it would bring you as much as reading heroic fantasy to try to understand Middle Age better (I feel it is necessary to point it out because I've come across a few people actually thinking they'd know more thanks to this drama). But let's come back to the manicheism. Like everything, it is the way you use something that determines if something is good or bad/well done or not. In BM, if in the first episodes it was correctly pulled, it quickly seems as though the scenarist has run out of ideas or has forgotten as how to us it or show it : it feels forced, random and each time it is done - several time per episode - an inch of credibility is lost. Unsurprisingly, it quickly becomes impossible to take the "villains" seriously, or giving them credits. This, the unability to use any tools properly, the randomness, the feeling everything is forced and dragged, every aspect of the story suffers from it : turning in circles, repetitivity, incoherences, inconsistences, plot holes, way too many sub-plots open and abandonned (sometimes even 5 minutes afterward, leading to new incoherences), painful conviniences and more. I won't start making a list, the document you can find on the page of the drama is there anyway. If you are curious and aren't too sensitive to nitpicking and innocent mockering, you can always give a look at it before continuing the review. I'll be frank, past the two first episodes, nothing is to be saved in the story. But instead of only counting them, I'll try to explain why it has come to that : the system of dramas. Most dramas are shooted "live" ; meaning : they shoot an episode a few days before it is broadcasted and only has a few days again to shoot the next one, and so on. One of the main reason of it is simple : the reception. The reception of a drama, episode per episode, is extremly important and will lead to readjustment depending of the complaints/liking of the fans. A lot of dramas have a heavy place for fanservice, it isn't exactly an issue in itself, the issue is when a fiction is led solely by fans. Most fans want to be serviced, the rest is of little mattering ; therefore following fans is the best way to ruin your story : the coherence and the consistence. Most dramas suffer from the importance of audience and fanservice, but are able to avoid falling too much into it ; and then you have cases like Bridal Mask, dramas which don't "suffer" from them, but are simply ruined by them. If you ever came across a fiction where you follow the life of a writer or scenarist, the chance is high there will be an episode dedicated to "following fans desires/advice" and the inevitable result : this type of episode are a message to fans, but also a warning to future writers/scenarists. That warning, that message, BM disregarded it, and fell into the inevitable pit. But then, it'd be too easy to only blame the 'fanservice and audience at any cost' temptation ; BM has a second issue : its lenght. 28 episodes...one hour each....28 hours...it is a lot and you better have a story able to fill in this amount of time. A lot of dramas suffer from their lenght too, but BM, once more, is a perfect example of the trouble it represents and is part of its ruins. I said it before, but the story is very repetitive. You might point out that the "episodic" structure instead of an "arc" one would explain and justify it, but, like for manicheism, there's a way to do it properly. The episodic structure requires the ability to pull each time a new variante fo the same structure, so that even if it is to some extent repetitive, it is at the same time enough "new" that it remains interesting and entertaining. BM doesn't seem to know how to use it, the "episodic" structure use the exact same situations with the exact same characters with the exact same results for over half of the episodes ; there's no variante, and apart from giving away a feeling of repetitivty and dragging the drama doesn't achieve much. Ten episodes maximum would have been more than enough to tell everything with a calm pace, giving you the opportunity to "lose" some time on less important matters or explore sub-themes. 7, if you want a well paced story (I say that in regard of the content of BM). The rest is nothing more than an inconsistent dog running all over the place to come home by the end of the day and doing the exact same running again the day after. Another issue from this live system : it has naturally an impact on the writing itself : there are two possibilities : you either have a build story beforehand or you have a very thin red line and adjust with the weeks ; in both cases, you suffer from audience and fanservice ; in the second case, the chance is high you'll suffer even more from it. Writing a script week by week isn't an easy task, if you have nothing to base yourself on (a build story) how do you want to produce something consistent or coherent ? In any case, such a rushed system cannot develop the potential of any fiction to its best, it can only harm it. Lastly, as strange as it may sound to some of you, the budget had an impact on the story. The numbers of locations can be counted on your fingers. If they could have, they'd have certainly had more and if they had more, those 28 episodes would have felt less repetitive and the scenarist would have had more opportunities to vary the story. Certainly, if the drama had been less long, that issue would have also been reduced (everything is tied together in a way or another). With such a shortage of locations, their overuse on such a long run is inevitable and the writer can only work with what he/she has at his/her disposal ; however, there remains some locations which could have been used less in favor of others ; for example, the torture chamber in the police station, which turns closer to a running gag than any potential seriousness it should have. This clear limitation on budget only increases the fact having less episodes would have improved the fiction greatly. Esthetic/Soundtrack : If there's one place where budget was well put, though, is the esthetic and the soundtrack. Most dramas don't put much money in their soundtrack, BM, however, has a worked on and varied (compared to most dramas) soundtrack ; a real pleasure to the ears and several memorable themes. However, I cannot help but wonder how much impact on the quality of the story there would have been if they had put less money into that aspect to use it to increase the locations (and therefore improve the story). The same can be said about the esthetic, the choice of costumes, the decoration, all those kind of details are a nice sight, despite the historical inaccuracies, and yet, giving less money for it and more for locations, once more the drama would have generally benefited from it. Because of that, those two positive points contain that bittersweet taste of "only if". A budget is always limited ; knowing how to use it well is important and it is more important to have a minimum of quality in each era than to boost some and ignore more mattering one which will impact the general quality negatively. As an adding, if there's no real shot issues, the montage is very often painful to watch with its flashbacks and transitions ; like everything, there are ways to use them. For the flashbacks, they are used as fillers more than to help the watcher (when they don't bring up incoherences) – another proof there’s way too many episodes for what the story has to offer - and for the transitions, it is often purely a misuse that requires going back to cinema school as it seems to forget its basics. Characters/Actors : Like most things, in the two first episodes, everything is fine and clear, there was no issue whatsoever but then episodes 3-5 arrive and throw in a huge mess and the characters don’t survive from it to. Between the sudden and unexplained personality switch from some characters, you have others which you can perceive what was trying to be done with them (mainly the two main males of the cast), but fail miserably at it : once again, when a character changes/evolves naturally, due to what has occurred around him/her or to him/her, there are ways to do it (as annoying it may sound) ; in this case they are off-screen, if you want to be nice, or purely none existent, if you are less nice, leading to incoherent and inconsistence characters (once again, proof of that in the document). And even by being nice, the inconsistency remains in almost every conversation, switching from traits to another without as close as a reason other than dragging purposes. It’s also good to notice that charas have “traits”, they are very far to have any type of psychology ; so if you are the type to enjoy your charas to have a minimum of psychology, it’d be better to avoid this, or else be prepared for headache. Which, considering they had 28 episodes, is a shame and inexcusable, they had more than time to develop their main cast properly. For the drama’s credit, the two last episodes try to give Shunji some senses again, to show us there actually was “something”, but far too late to make up the over 20 episodes inconsistency and simply too superficial to even matter in the end. Thanksfully, in a way, not all characters suffer from inconsistencies, what is saddening, though, is that the only consistent characters are underdeveloped secondary characters. As for trying to figure out what messed up the characters so much, basically for the same reasons as why the story was messed up ; it is linked, of course, so I won’t repeat what I’ve said already. For the actors, I do not know if they are good or bad actors, and sorry to say that it doesn’t matter in the slightest ; what matters is their performance in this actual show. It is the same as for the characters : inconsistent characters can only lead to a sloppy performance ; consistent characters is the best way for an actor to actually play well. Luck for some actors being unlucky to play the inconsistent one, there were times they were able to actually act well, Kang To’s crying for example, it isn’t so easy as some think to be convincing ; Shunji is sometimes good at acting crazy….but then….it is, on the opposite, far easier to play as some would think, so I cannot praise him for it. However, I can actually praise the actor for trying harder in the last episodes, but once again, too late to make up for anything. A few consistent characters don’t have the luck to be played by decent actors though ; Katsuyama for example – which explains why he pretty much is part of the decoration (and his erasing from the plot wouldn’t have any impact, ironically as I did enjoy…his look, but I do not let my hormones control myself) – is played by someone I suspect to not even be an actor ; I could have forgiven it as his fighting performance seem real, but as he’s basically never really used in the plot anyway, his presence is quite useless. Well, apart from being a nice sight, but I tend to expect more from a character than to remain a pleasant decoration. But then again, the current drama system hardly makes it able for its actors to perform at their best : overheavy schedule, lack of time, rushed shooting ; how are they supposed to play properly in those conditions ? And furthermore, how can they when the characters they are supposed to play lack consistency ? This all might annoy you, but too many people are unaware of the growing black point the drama system represent for its fictions, BM just is a perfect embodiment of most of its issue. Overall : It is simple, I enjoyed the two first episodes ; I enjoyed writing up everything wrong with the show and I was actually hesitating between 1.5 and 3.5 for the final rating of the show ; but the last 6-8 episodes were a chore and nothing pleasant to them ; not even the nice esthetic and soundtrack were enough. It is neither something I’ll ever rewatch nor something I’d actually recommend. Nothing in the show is able to save it as an average show either. Overall, it is one of those bad fictions that get popular for bad (/no) reasons.