It's actually one of the more exciting Taiga. Too bad the second half turned into a makjang and the reason I like Taiga is exactly that they aren't makjang! I feel that they took some notes from Korean drama, which is why it was addicting, but they also included the makjang part! Older taigas tend to not have real bad guy which is the opposite of makjang and I like it that way. It’s not as addicting, but more nuance in handling good and evil.

The thing that made it very offensive is that this drama was the blatant historical falsification. Kanbei in this drama is literally Ishida Mitsunari (the main villain) during the Korean war! The drama portrayed Mitsunari as a warmonger while Kanbei tried to stop the war. In the drama, Kanbei conspired with Konishi Yukinaga to fake diplomatic letter to stop the war. Historically, that's literally Mitsunari's role! The reason why Yukinaga sided with Mitsunari during Sekigahara was that both of them were the main opposition to the war. So much they technically self-sabotaged to the point they made enough enemies to kill them.

The portrayal of Konishi Yukinaga was another missed opportunity to explore Japanese Christian history and the Imjin War. Historically speaking, he was the one who introduced Kanbei to Christianity, not Takayama Ukon, although Ukon was the one who convinced Kanbei to be baptized. What I found to be interesting was their relationship with Hideyoshi's missionary ban. While Ukon decided to abandon everything to keep his faith, Yukinaga went in the opposite direction and became even more eager to prove his loyalty to Hideyoshi to the point he was awarded larger fief than Kanbei. This was truly an injustice because Yukinaga used to be Kanbei's protege. However, Yukinaga himself was wary of the arrangement because it signaled that Hideyoshi intended to send him to Korea. If you noticed the arrangement of the Japanese army vanguards during the Imjin war, more than half of them were Christians, led by Yukinaga and Nagamasa. There was the feeling that Hideyoshi was treating them as disposable troops, which was why Yukinaga was not happy with the war.

Speaking of Japanese Christians, it's actually quite funny. If you remember, O-ne had a christian maid called Magdalena who warned her about Mitsunari. The drama neglected to tell the audience that this Magdalena was Konishi Yukinaga's mother and her son literally conspired with Mitsunari. lol.

I think it would be interesting to explore how Japanese christians tried to survive as religious minorities, But the writer was like, "Nope! Let's falsified history and have a makjang for the second half!" I think it was truly lazy writing...