Hello, you're watching AvenueX and today let's talk about the recently finished airing chinese period drama.
Shao Nian Ge Xing, Blood of Youth.
This is a 40 episodes web drama that has recently finished airing on the platform youku.
It is produced by the platform youku plus three different production companies
among which there is a company called Zhong Ying Nian Nian,
which also produced the animation version of this story back in 2018.
The drama version is directed by Yin Tao, who has also directed these dramas.
There was a novel called Shao Nian Ge Xing, it got adapted into an animation series.
The company that produced the animation series also did this drama version
where they did get the original author back to write the script.
And this drama version is led by Li Hongyi, Ao Ruipeng, Lin Boyang, Liu Xueyi, Li Xinze, Dai Yanni
It took about 4 months for this drama to finish shooting from October 2021 to January 2022
if you have watched the animation before, well this drama is pretty close
to the animation and to the original story as well.
If you're not familiar, it is about a group of young people.
late teens, early 20s, very young. going into Jiang Hu in this Wu Xia slash Xian Xia world,
creating their generation's of the Jiang Hu story.
So it will involve a bit of the older generation, their father, their teachers generation's story.
It will mix a little bit of the Jiang Hu and the court, the politics,
the fictional world setting's emperor, as one of our male lead is a prince.
And then in terms of the Jiang Hu world, the Wu Xia world that the drama describes
it is sitting in between realistic Wu Xia and complete fantasy of Xian Xia
So people have crazy skills that definitely defines basic physics,
but then they're not gods, so they can't really be immortal,
i'll give it a 1.5 gold mine rating for this drama,
some parts they did really well and I highly appreciate and I can totally see
the dedication that many of the people on this crew have put into the production.
So even though it's not a high rating drama here, for AvenueX
i would say I actually have a very good feeling about it.
Now let me do the usual thing of breaking it down to two parts.
First talking about the positive things and then the problems
on the positive end, Number one, although it is 40 episodes long, overall,
it's acutally not a super watered down or draggy drama
and it does have a lot of things and a lot of characters going on
to fill up the minutes, when I was watching it.
that's the thing that worried most is this is gonna start to get really boring.
They're gonna fill like 5 episodes with nothing happening.
And I gonna have to 4 times speed through it
well during the watching of this thing. although occasionally I still speed it up a bit overall
and such a not bad for a period drama adapted from a novel.
The second positive thing I will say about this drama is
they put money on the actual storytelling,
not paying super popular actors with ridiculous fees and crushing
on the part of a production where you should be spending money.
As I am not familiar with the original ip
i've never watched the animation story.
I come into the story completely unaware of any of those characters names,
background stories, where the whole thing is going, zero knowledge,
I have to say initially, it was pretty shocking in terms of how they present the fighting sequences,
crazy CGI
if you watch a lot of say Japanese man asia many many years ago,
and then leading up to now, if you're very familiar with the whole anime world,
it's so familiar that whole manga animation feeling of somebody,
I have a name for my particular fighting skills.
And when I do it, there's a set of music that will happen.
There's a designed color scheme.
when you have a live action and real people doing it
can take a bit time for you to get used to it.
It's actually within its own genre, a really well done type of Wu Xia/Xian Xia thing
and I think for the audiences right, you have to give it the freedom and give it the license
of creation to say okay so i'll go into your world,
i'll accept people can fight like that in your world.
Once you are okay with that setting, this drama is pretty meaty
at the beginning. It was hard for me, gradually I got used to it,
although I still feel like with a human sword and just like swing it
and you can cut 18 level pagoda down in the middle into three parts
is definitely over the top.
I think they probably put most of the production budget into set design,
into post production, into cg, it's definitely something that worth this
in the current environment.
Then the third positive point is something i've already mentioned
at the very beginning of this review,
which is I can totally tell the people who are making the drama, the crew, the actors,
everybody who's on camera and off camera,
they put a lot of work, heart, dedication, passion into this project.
You really can sense it.
Even though i'd say there are so much space for improvement,
younger generation of roles, the main roads, our two male lead played by Li Hongyi and Ao ruipeng
and then the two girls who show up most played by Lin Boyang and Dai yanni
And then you have lesser important but more experienced actors playing the role
of wu xing and Da Shi Xiong, Liu Xueyi and Li Xinze
their acting level is, let's say pass
adding on top the older generation of actors who are so much more experienced,
they show up and it saves the day.
For example, He Zhonghua, such an experienced actor in wu xia world,
he just needs stand there and he's right. such as Dong Yongdai
this great actor who's actually played a lot of serious dramas, serious roles,
almost reprised his role in Nirvana in fire, the emperor,
with those older actors sitting there, it just keeps the quality, pulls the acting quality,
holding it and not letting it crash.
So I still say it's on a positive end because I can tell they really wanna do a good job and tell a good story.
And none of those younger actors are the super popular,
highly expensive peopl, without those halos and special treatment.
that fandoms tend to give the top traffic actors in china.
They really just don't have that much space,
also to just play the boss, showing off and not caring about what the world thinks
they really have to say, we still have to do a standard good enough job to
not get hated and destroy our career in the future.
You can feel that there's a lot of energy,
a lot of care, kind of did try their best type of thing going on.
These are the positive things.
And these are definitely the reasons that kept me through 40 episodes of this drama.
Now let's move on to the negative part and why this drama is only a 1.5
first a very basic thing, this is a heavily dubbed drama apart from a couple of older actors.
And they're all dubbed by people who are way too familiar to my ears.
This drama particularly bad, in the first episode, when we see the 2 male leads showing up,
for Ao Ruipeng his voice doubber's voice is not that familiar to me.
So for me it was okay, but the moment oh my god,
the moment Li Hongyi's role opened his mouth , I'm like Gu Jiangshan (谷江山）
So in my brain, I see Zhou Zishu from (Word of Honor)
as long as his role is talking, and i'm not looking at the screen.
For example, I turned away to pick something, in my head I see zhou zi shu.
And then when I look at the screen, ZZS' face can fade away,
but then because Li Hongyi, it's my opinion okay to my brain.
He looks very similar to the actor Cheng Yi, at certain angle
extreme similarity, not all the angles but certain angle.
So when I look at the person it looks like a different actor.
When I look away my brain gives me a different actor.
and he's the male lead, he has the most sreen time, imagine my pain
not to mention Qiao Shiyu（乔诗语）, is the female lead, who dubbs 90% of Dilraba's dramas
And yeah I see her face too, then Wei Chao（魏超） dubs Tang Lian, who is also
just a voice that even if he only just sigh,
I can hear its Wei Chao's sigh not any human's sign of the world.
Then Liu Xueyi, Dubbed by A Jie (阿杰）
literally 90% of Ren Jialun's dramas are dubbed by this guy.
I will never be able to not let it bother me.
My brain is set, this wiring is here, right?I have to reincarnate
and have a different physical body to not have this problem.
Second thing. I kind of already said in the positive part
girls and guys' acting, let's just say,leaves a lot to be desired,
particularly for the leading actor Li Hongyi who plays Xiao Se,
He really is having pretty much only a couple of facial expressions.
He held it throughout the 40 episodes.
It just manages to do not crash and I think for the particular character he plays
because the personality that this person has, therefore,
that type of acting can still not really fall completely short of making sense for his role.
But if it's anything more challenging, his acting is not gonna be able to hold it.
In comparison, i'd say Liu Xueyi and Li Xinze made it much easier for me to
follow their role and getting you know who they are as characters.
Problem comes with that is Liu Xueyi honestly honestly is just too old for his role,
even though he is the better actor among the younger actors,
there's only that much you can compensate with your performance
when your character's ages genuinely too far away from your real age.
And you are the type of person who happens to just not look very young.
He's in his 30s. He plays this role who is barely like 16,17 year old.
I had to pretty much convince myself for the first 15 episodes or so,
12 episodes or so,
(he's 17) x 4
So for a 17 character to say that and to act like that to the other characters,
it makes sense. Ignore the fact that Liu Xueyi's face looks like he's a 30 year old guy.
So in an ideal world, if we can keep the Liu Xueyi's good looking face and his acting
and then still have him aging in the right arrange, that would be ideal forWu Xin
Then the last thing, I think the biggest problem while I was watching the drama is
I do have to do a lot of self convincing,
particularly when it concerns the court part, imperial part, the emperor,the princes,
and how the court is structured, who has the power,
the five eunuches that has so much power.
I have to do this, right?
Because it's so, again, child's play,
it probably is like less of a child's play than say Fu Tu Yuan's level of court politics,
which is like, what am I watching?
This one is slightly better but barely barely.
So again, I have to really do a lot of convincing on my part to believe.
First is the whole royal family, imperial family is Xiao family named.
yeah does that remind you of something?
Then there's like the Lang Ya Wang (琅琊王） name which
although you know lang ya bang is for different things,
it just constantly remind you of that.
Then all the things about there was a rebellion of a good prince， in Nirvana.
It's the son of the emperor, in this drama, it's the brother of the emperor
who dies and his whole family dies.
And the prince who wants to stand up for this uncle in Blood of Youth
gets kind of expelled, that's likes pretty much Xiao JIngyan of NIF 1
yeah. So you see a lot of similarities,
so you can't help remembering what happened in the other drama,
not to mention the emperor is the same actor, right?
But then all the politics, it really feels like you're just looking at primary school kids playing house
pretending you know i'm emperor, I'm this and that, i'm gonna usurp your throne
and then by the point like the the whole army comes to the palace
about to take the throne, within a couple of lines and couple of like exchange of conversations.
It's all dealt with, Done!
The rebellion people just like left.and everything went back to normal
and all the bad prince, the bad people got rid of you know easily
male lead gets what he wants and even like he can get the throne, I don't like it.
I'll just give it to my brother.
And the brother is like, i'm not gonna chase you after you and trying to murder you,
because I believe you're a good person. I'm a good person too.
And then we're gonna change our parents generation's problems.
Yeah, they probably live in the world where
having a throne actually is not so big a thing.
I have to convince myself basically,
it's not any more unbelievable than the fact that you can cut an architecture down with one sword
given that what type of ip this is, I guess nobody actually hoped this drama to do well
or be appreciated in any way, but as it airs and start to get traction,
people realized, oh it's actually much better than we thought.
At the end of the day, I think it is the very genuine candid passion
of the people making a drama that really got leaked through
so that we forgive some of the things they didn't do very well.
And within today's drama land's operation standard,
you only have that much resources,
you only have that type of environment of doing dramas of such.
It's unreasonable to expect such dramas to suddenly break the ceiling
thinking about this particular genre of drama.
The Wu Xia/ Xian Xia -ish drama based on an ip
what Blood of Youth has managed to do is already good enough.
So that should conclude my review on the drama Blood of Youth
It's probably Yin Tao's better work, if you credit a drama mostly to the director
it's better than that one, that one at least okay?
we can argue if it's better than that one.
But then for these two, oh oh oh this one is the good student in the class.
Thank you for watching AvenueX
I'll see you in my next video,
meanwhile live long and happy drama watching.