Prequel to the surprise 2022 dark horse, The Blood of Youth (少年歌行), this drama follows the older generation from that drama, depicting their youth. Youku saw the success from The Blood of Youth and quickly greenlit this drama, which is also based off of an existing novel and man hua (animated series). I hadn’t been following this universe so I had to re-read my review of The Blood of Youth to refresh my memory on these characters. However, that spoils the fates of these characters, so re-read or refresh at your own risk!

We rarely see martial arts dramas so squarely focused on Jiang Hu (the world of martial arts) these days so this is a breath of fresh air amongst the sea of period romance dramas. In general, this drama inherits much of the positives and negatives from The Blood of Youth. I’m 14 episodes in and while it’s an entertaining watch, I’m still waiting for the “so what”. The Blood of Youth also had this problem but really caught its stride in the latter half of the drama. I’m hoping this one will too. There’s a big cast of characters that need a few episodes to get acquainted with but the drama moves briskly to introduce the characters and the main crux of the story.

This drama hasn’t received much buzz online but surprisingly has breached the 10,000 mark on Youku. Hou Ming Hao is certainly getting more screentime with this drama, Young Babylon, and last year’s Back from the Brink. 

Final Thoughts

This prequel suffers from what most prequels suffer from, stuffing a lot of content to answer for all the events in the sequel. 

I was perfectly fine with watching an adventure with Bai Li Dong Jun, Ye Ding Zhi, and Si Kong Chang Feng and that’s what I got in the first half of the drama. In the second half of the drama, it seemed like the screenwriters suddenly realized that they somehow needed to get all the characters in place for their final “form” to set the stage for Blood of Youth and time moves so fast that it seemed more like vignettes of scenes. I do like that we got some answers for characters in Blood of Youth, but it all felt very rushed.

This is also a drama where the director or editor were the ones making questionable decisions. For example, in some horse riding scenes with Bai Li Dong Jun, it looks extremely fake as we only get an upper body shot and pretty bad greenscreen in the back. But looking at behind the scenes videos, the actor Hou Ming Hao is clearly riding an actual horse and performing certain stunts himself. These were all cut in the final edit! The director also chose to focus on the CGI aspects of martials rather than ACTUAL martial arts. The actors themselves have already filmed actual stunts, which again were shown in the behind the scenes footage, but the end result is just a CGI fest.

Overall, the drama doesn’t live up to the hype of its successor. The drama also finished airing without making much of a splash as it had to complete with the Olympics. However, the poor pacing and overall blandness of the drama really didn’t help its cause. There’s already another drama currently filming starring Gong Jun that is set in this universe so we’ll be seeing more of this type of Jiang Hu.

What I liked

• Fleshed Out World: We’re placed back into a fully fleshed world that has several royal families, political factions, Jiang Hu, and all the politicking and scheming that comes with it. Characters have different agendas and not all of their motivations are clear from the beginning. It’s fun to watch as we follow our heroes head off on their journey into Jiang Hu

• Unique Characters!: We’re back into the world of Jiang Hu where basically everyone has a nickname. These nicknames truly highlight the individuality of these characters, from The Eight Gentlemen of Bei Li, to the members of An He, to the mysterious forces of Tian Wai Tian. My favorite is Lei Meng Sha where he’s nicknamed a talker. It does get rather tedious remembering the different nicknames and names of people, but there’s enough references to get comfortable after a few episodes.

• Turn towards darkness: Even though we never saw Ye Ding Zhi in Blood of Youth, he was the instigator for many of the subsequent events in that story. I enjoyed the natural progression of Ye Xing Zhi’s turn towards darkness and ultimate demise. His story made sense in the context of his family, his master, and the martial arts that he learned. He actually struggled between choosing between the light and the dark and that made him a more compelling character.

• Impressive CGI: The CGI throughout the drama is pretty darn great and does well to enhance this world of Jiang Hu. There are several scenes where the it’s a visual treat to watch all the parts come together. 

• Costumes and Props: The swords! It’s great to see how intricately designed each of the swords are, which accentuates why specific swords are more prized than others. The costumes are obviously very detailed for each character that highlight the individual. I have some squabbles which I will talk about in the next section. 

Cathy