First BL drama from chinese dramaland in 2021
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you're watching AvenueX where a junkie on good story telling shares her thoughts,
knowledge and occasional weird ideas on stories and how they're told.
Shan He ling, previously named Tian Ya Ke
previously named A Tale of the Wanderers.
Now, Word of Honor, is a 36 episodes web drama that's been
exclusively aired on the web platform Youku.
It is also the first Boy Love, bl adaptation from chinese dramaland in 2021.
This drama is led by Zhang Zhehan and Gong Jun
based on a novel from the web novel writer Priest who
has also written Guardian, Zhen Hun and You Fei,
Legend of Fei,
based on the first 9 episodes i've watched.
I'll give it a one gold mine rating definitely
with the possibility of raising that up.
So i'm gonna briefly introduce you to the original story first,
and then go into to talk about the drama, the good, the bad,
what I observe
Here, it contains a little bit spoiler
If you don't wanna get spoiled, come back at this time
The story's main characters are Zhou Zishu and Wen kexing.
Zhou Zishu is the founder of a kind of secret police spy
organization that serves the imperial power.
At certain point of that,
he wanted to quit this really terrible life at the price of pretty much
putting a time bomb a kind of device in the novel's setting
so that he only has a couple of years left to live
that allows him to leave the organization.
So he did that and started becoming a wanderer
of this world and running into a guy named Wen Kexing
Wen Kexing is also a character who has a really,
really terrible past.
He's secretively the leader of a pretty crazy place
called Gui Gu literally means ghost valley,
where all the bad people,
the worst kind of offenders of the jiang hu world that
won't be accepted anywhere else ended up in that place.
He is the strongest one of them all
he fought his way through
learned crazy martial arts through that all by himself ended up on the top.
But his secret agenda is actually to destroy that place
and also to revenge his parents' death.
So this is also a little bit like a road movie, 2 people meet.
They each have really terrible past trying to achieve
their own individual goals and develop friendship,
other ship that's over friendship.
So it's a BL jiang hu story.
The origin novel is one of the shortest from the author Priest.
So to make this drama,
they definitely did a lot of expansion that will lead me to talk about first.
The good things I observed based on the first 9 episodes of this drama.
The first thing I think they've done definitely right,
which resulted in currently this drama is the top one
hottest drama on weibo only after 1 week of its airing
It did a really good work of balancing the original text,
original material,
expanding it,
but still keeping the essence
nobody is written as an ooc character,
all the classic scenes that people read the novel would wanna see so far happened.
And I did a little bit digging about the screen adaptation,
script wertier and realized she is actually a book fan of Priest.
So you have a book fan script writer adapting the work.
It totally shows that this person knows the original material very, very well.
So they can play with it, what part can be worked on more,
what can be changed
What can not.
The second thing I observe from this drama
is I think they really care about the story.
I can tell they have a good overall attitude towards it.
It's not a high budget drama,
it's actually one of the lowest budgeting bl adaptations there are
among all the bl adaptation dramas.
This is one of the project that people don't have much hope for
because it's Youku's project
previous track record with Guardian, you know
When they are doing the production
they ran into some very unfortunate situations such as pandemic situation,
which totally halted the production and resulted in their original cast.
The two leads they've picked originally for this drama couldn't work for this drama
because pandemic and scheduling and delaying
they lost the two lead actors they've already decided
They also lost quite a few very major players
and for like over four or five months, Zhou Ye
The actress who played Gu Xiang is the only
one who stuck to this crew, who is like
I'm not giving it up.
Other actors have moved on to other projects,
but i'm gonna still promise you, i'm gonna do this.
Now the drama has come up.
A lot of people found that out and they're super grateful
for her, because she definitely has many offers.
She doesn't have to do this drama.
This is like, in many people's opinion, slightly below her standard
cause she has a really high starting point.
She's kind of the film actress.
She has a lot of resources,
but she stuck with this project she didn't give up.
So i'm dressed up a little bit like her.
You can tell that this drama had a lot of difficulties,
but they cared about the story,
even though kind of nothing worked for them,
they managed to deliver what I have seen so far.
I'm happy with quality drama.
Obviously it's by no means the best drama in any department,
you can pick 1 million problems from this drama.
Some of the cgi is pretty... like the underwater part is pretty laughable
they do overall a little bit too much slow motion on the fight scene
I prefer more visceral fighting,
but then I get it, cause they slow it down.
They make like those close-up, those super slow shots.
So that they show the two leads are flirting with each other.
You can also tell there's a good level of skin smoothing,
which is not to my aesthetics.
Ii prefer to look at people's real texture of skin.
I cannot turn my head away to the fact
that it's not a high quality production.
But at the same time, I feel appreciative of the effort that they put in
The third good thing about this drama is definitely this thing.
Ke Dao Le
I would say i'm not so "ke Dao Le" about this CP of
Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing played by Zhang Zhenhan and Gong Jun
Maybe it's the story itself because I read a novel and
I have to confess i am not so into the novel itself,
so that that may be the reason why when i'm watching drama,
while i'm very happy to watch it.
I am not hooked on it in the way that you get the buzz in your head.
You can't even get them out of your head.
That type of thing
definitely much less than untamed or guardian.
But I admit I can tell this happened to a lot of people,
because a lot of my reviewer friends might just ordinary
friends and drama watcher friends, they are now
crazy about this coupling
as actors.
For Zhang Zhenhan and Gong Jun
I think so far they've done a good job,
not impressively good,
but I do enjoy their back and forth on screen.
Maybe it's due to the fact that neither of them is my type.
Although I do have to say I didn't expect Gong Jun can be this good.
Previously he has been in bg dramas.
I've watched that and he's pretty wooden and
I was super unimpressed by his acting,
which is why I had low expectation of Tian Ya Ke
Now, Shang He Ling, previously like i've said not so long ago,
in my BL focused video.
Somehow.
When he's in this bl drama,
he just becomes so much more animated, his facial expressions.
The glitter in his eyes is so much more than what he looks like in bg dramas.
Don't know what's the magic here,
but he definitely has surpassed my expectation.
So i'm happy to watch him acting as the crazy peacock
who is always showing off his tails and running
around Zhou Zishu and saying all those flirtatious lines,
this drama has successfully created a on screen cp and
this is definitely essential to any BL adaptations.
If the chemistry doesn't work between the two leads, you're dead.
And what can we say?
The weird way of universe working?
Maybe that's also Youku's fate,
thinking about Guardian as a Priest novel
that lost most of its money before it started shooting,
therefore actually had to change the leading actor
and then ended up exploding
3 years later.
You have to Tian Ya Ke, which is also Priest's work, also on Youku platform
also lost both of its prospect leads
At the beginning of the production, had to find other people to fill in
and now is doing really, really well,
even though it's only the first week,
the universe works in mysterious ways
Now let's talk about the not necessarily bad things,
but i'd say things are not ideal for me.
First, based on earlier episodes,
I think the bl vibe
it is a little bit too on the nose.
People are calling it.
It's not bl adaptation.
It's literally just bl because they really
weren't trying to hide all the flirtatious-ness
all the guy-guy thing,
it pretty much is thrown onto your face
Right from the beginning when the two leads meet,
although it is pretty much like that in the book.
But I was thinking when they adapted it to the screen,
they probably will tune it down, whether it's censorship problem
or whether it's trying to break through a bigger circle
to get more audiences in if you're so on the nose.
So bl, you know, it may deter people who are not interested in it.
But no,
the script writer actually turned it up,
which is like the first time it has happened.
Let's be honest about a BL adaptation.
When they film this drama,
they actually made the lines between the two leads on many occasions.
Super explicit,
they use a lot of poetry.
Thanks to china's huge literature reservoir,
a lot of ancient poetry,
ancient language,
certain words,
certain actions that actually has a lot of reference,
meaning they just throw that or onto this drama.
So in the lines that they filmed,
this is much more explicit.
And then they dubbed it over with dubbing actors' voice that changed the lines,
but the lips are still there.
So people have already figured out what was the original lines.
It definitely wouldn't pass censorship.
And if you want me to do a video about what are actually spoken
or what are all the poetry references
leave a common below, I'll try to make it happen.
But even without the poetry thing,
the actions, interactions, the eyeing of...
it's very on the nose,
a lot of people like it, and there's nothing wrong,
no judgement about that.
I mean I enjoy watching it.
You crazy about saying that.
So I definitely do that too.
But as a person who like story,
I prefer the type of undercurrent stuff,
especially at the beginning stage,
when people don't know each other,
I prefer you leave me traces, bread crumbs to lead me
to the big feast
I love to dig sugar out of
the lines instead of having sugar
just smacked
In front of me on a plate and say, EAT IT!
I much prefer to be a more active part as an audience.
In this whole game
right now, I feel like I am.
So at ease, it' like
I don't even need to think or figure out what they're trying to do.
It's blatantly obvious which leads me to talk about the second thing,
not because the drama is not good.
It's literally because i'm worried about they've been so obvious
whether that's gonna end this drama in trouble
if it gets too popular
right now it's still kind of within limited circles popular.
But if it got too big,
I can see like people, nasty people, because this is 2021 internet,
some people will wanna destroy it for whatever reason
it did happen to a lot BL dramas previously.
Either they get taken down re-edited, put back
You see like certain chunks get cut out
All they get totally taken down and never came back again.
I don't want that to happen to the drama.
I think Priest deserve a good adaptation,
she deserves it.
Okay?
And also obviously there's competition
iQiyi, Mango, Tencent
I just hope they don't do stupid things,
because if they do that,
it impacts the entire bl adaptation genre
and it would be stupid to do it.
But just because people are powerful and rich,
doesn't mean they're not stupid.
The third thing we still need to wait and see,
which is why i'm not rating it very high.
At this point, there's still more than 2/3 of the drama to go.
And because they've added plot into it,
they've changed certain characters set up.
I don't know how it's gonna turn out.
We've been taught by Guardian.
They can totally ef-up the ending.
So far.
What i've seen is, for example,
they've changed certain character's gender.
I don't know if that plays into a huge role later into the plot.
They've also added more court politics,
although it hasn't shown up yet, but it will.
Because if you look at the title and ending song,
there are shots related to the court stuff which did not exist
in the original book
with the leaked material that you've seen so far
some of the special feature and stuff
you can tell the character.
Gong jun plays, very late in the drama is gonna get
all white haired
and that didn't happen in the novel.
So what they've done with the plot,
what have they done to make him go all white hair?
I have no idea.
I hope it's not bad ending for anyone.
So there's a lot of things that you're not sure where they are gonna go
but we only need to wait for a month, hopefully,
because it will finish airing pretty much at the end of march.
And we will find out then
And to conclude this video.
I'll tell you a little bit about.
When I was reading the novel
I was actually most attracted to a character who is super, super peripheral.
He's like the supporting x3, showing up a couple of times character
And because his story is actually mentioned in an extra chapter
of Tian Ya Ke, the novel, I was intrigued, I went searching.
And I fell in love with this character's set up.
He hasn't shown up in the drama yet,
bu he will, he's played by the actor Wei Zheming
who I just love
I adore, his the lead of Perfect and Casual and he's perfect for this role,
which is QI Ye, he is actually a Prince who has
some of the most incredible character set up in,
I'd say in Priest's novel setting
and he actually has a novel called Qi Ye
Basically one of the supporting role in the book and also in
this drama is the leading role of another Priest's novel that
probably will never be made into a drama
due to the reincarnation plot of that drama.
But this character is fascinating.
I just look at the character set up.
I'm like, I am much more interested in his story than say,
in Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing's story.
And I hope since the script writer is a fan of Priest's work
and she probably knows the story of Qi Ye
she would kindly add a little bit more
reference to Qi Ye's story in this drama.
I'd be so happy about that.
That will be the end of my first impression video on Shang He Ling
Word of Honor
Thank you for watching AvenueX
I'll see you in my next video
Meanwhile live long
and happy drama watching
and happy couple shipping