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Word of Honor chinese drama review
Completed
Word of Honor
0 people found this review helpful
by 50FiftillidideeBrain
Nov 8, 2025
36 of 36 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 6.0
Story 6.5
Acting/Cast 7.5
Music 7.0
Rewatch Value 3.0

⚙⛓ Games Ghosts Guys & Fierce Glaze ⛓⚙ °6° °high average°

20 years ago, Rong Xuan was killed at Mt Qingya. The fabled Armory he left behind would make anybody invincible, but it can't be opened without the glazed armor trinket. That Lyminster was smashed into half a dozen pieces and distributed around the martial arts sects. To open the Armory, one would have to collect all the pieces, /find/ the Armory, and unlock the door. So, e'erbody and their uncle Bai is looking for the pieces, including Prince Jin. He's been secretly training assassins and planning a revolt. They're killing e/o over rumors.

We watch Shu (Zhang Zhe Han, who starred in and directed August, is our ML, Zhou Zi Shu)
tell the royals that he can be their sword but he only has talent for fighting. He cannot help rule. He asks for a quiet death - alone in his hometown. He's already inserted 6 of the 7 nails, you see, to prevent him from ever being used as a weapon of mass destruction again. By inserting them over a period of months, he'll retain half of his martial arts and most of his reason for most of the 3 years until his death. The viewer is left with so many questions. Who is this guy? Why is he loyal to this King? Why did he go on a 10-year Journey past the point of no return? Why did he kill everybody he loves? “Whey-shima?” And why, oh why, did he don a face mask, disguise himself as a beggar, and proceed to live the life of a bum, drinking in the streets? That's what he was up to when Xing & Xiang first lay eyes on him.

⛔Mini spolier: The Window of Heaven leader (Norman Chui) will not submit to Prince Jin. The prince demands that Shu kill his Shifu and the sect leaders or he would kill them anyway, and wipe out the 81 remaining disciples along with them. Shu carried out Jin's evil orders. He saw no other way to save the lives of his followers. Instead of a quick death, Shu inserted the nails of seven torments in his Shifu. The nails slowly take the senses, reason, and then life itself over the course of 3 years. His final move: Punish himself with the nails of seven torments and go live as a bum while he waits to die. That's how Xing stumbles over him. Thus, they meet.⛔

WoH is a 2021 release that is rated 8.6 on MDL. The directors are Gary Sing (Eagles and Youngster), Jones Ma (The World of Fantasy), & Li Hong Yu (Please Don’t Spoil Me). Screenwriters Xiao Chu & Qi Ming worked on Miss Ye in Wonderland, and this was based on the original work by Priest, who also brought us Justice in the Dark. It is 1 season consisting of 36 45-minute episodes, and ep1 is not an easy one. WoH has been associated with the masterpiece, the Untamed-8.6. They're both based on novels involving BL stories in a typical Chinese fantasy template, but that's where the similarities end. TU is a five-star Michelin meal while WoH is Panda Express. The depth of the 2 leads’ devotion, in TU, is breathtaking. WoH is too sprawling. It wanders and is unfocused. Slow paced things are fine, however this teeters on dragging. The bond between the two MLs is not established well. WoH is an outline when held up to the rich tapestry of TU. It is lightweight, and flirty, and never leaves the shallow end. TU is so complex that I couldn't rate it a 10 because it is confusing, but that's actually a good problem. I'm looking forward to the day that I watch TU again because I expect to be rewarded with more insight in the second go-round. No one could ever accuse WoH of being complex.

Zhou Ye (I loved her in Everyone Loves Me-7.4) is Gu “Xiang,” and Gong Jun (Begin Again) plays her master, Wen Ke ‘Xing”. Xing recognizes Shu as a “variable” and takes him back to Mirror Lake Manor. About Xiang: She's so dang cute. She's partially comic relief, and she handles it well. About Xing: He acts like he's 35,000 ft up in the air, looking down on everything. He's good natured, but he's a touch snide and condescending. Is he joking or mocking? It's a bit of a hybrid. Every now and then he gets a glint in his eyes that's downright scary, and we'll see that he can be utterly menacing. This is not a guy that one wants to anger. Yet, he claims his nickname is “Philanthropist Man.”

One of the martial arts sects in the mix is actually a group of ghosts. Chen Zi Han plays
Tragicomic Ghost or Xi Sang Gui. She is gorgeous, and her first credited work was from 1988, so she's been around for a while. Her look is the most beautiful of the show. Some of her highest rated pieces are A Happy Life, A Dream within a Dream, & New Life Begins. In Ghost Valley, Hanged Ghost has stolen the chief Devil's piece of the glazed armor! He demands EVERYONE work on retrieving the rest of it as well as eliminating Hanged Ghost. The one who is successful will be the leader of The 10 Devils. Ghost Valley's first target for searching is the Mirror Lake Manor. Their raid and razing of the place wakes up Shu and Xing. The Ghosts Prevail.

Shu gets rooked into escorting the youngest son of the manor, and sole survivor, to the safety of his uncle's nearby alliance. Xing knows there's something interesting and mysterious about Shu, so he tries to get them all together as a traveling party. Shu refuses, at first. Nevertheless, they keep running into eachother on the road and Xing’s fascination only grows. They each suspect the other is looking for the glazed armor. At the end of ep10 we learn more about who Xing is. It's doubtful that Shu is unaware or would be completely surprised. Both of these travelers have been very short on curiosity and very long on observation. They each know they're dealing with a martial arts master. Probably a master among the masters. Neither one of them is simple. Neither one of them is completely good, and neither one is completely evil either. They're complex people.

Sun Xi Lun (A Love So Beautiful, Looking Up) plays Zhang Cheng “Ling,” the young master of Mirror Lake Manor who has now been orphaned. His family's sect, of the world-renowned 5 Lakes Alliance, was wiped out in a single night. Xing ends up assisting Shu in escorting him to the closest family he has. This kid is a bit of a wimp. He's practically effeminate. It doesn't make sense that the child of a high level martial arts sect wouldn't know how to take or land a punch. Shu & Xing deliver this kid to his relatives. They aren't the warmest bunch. His uncles are only thinking about how they can use him to their advantage, and one of them arranges for him to marry his daughter. The sect doesn't accept him because he's behind in his martial arts (the show made it clear why that would be, so they are bullying him and he's miserable. Xiang visits him so she's aware of this.

I knew Huang You Ming looked familiar as Ye Bai Yi. When I looked him up I realized I've seen him in Song of Youth-7.2, Boss & Me-7, & Love, Redemption-10, and Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace (which I abandoned at a perfect ending at ep 49. Up until that point, it's outstanding, but then I learned only heartbreak was coming and I decided to put that on hold till I was ready for it). He plays the kind of guy who is not up to any good, usually. Here, he's an ancient master (He was Shu's master's master). Xing can't stand him, however. These two end up spatting constantly. Their comedic timing is exceptional, so it's amusing. When he shows up, things begin to get a little more interesting. The show borderline drags until the late teen episodes. As it approaches episode 20 it becomes more tolerable.

I go into shows cold, most times I don't even read the synopsis, because even when I do, the opinions generated by doing so rarely align with the show itself. By now I've loved too many shows that wouldn't have appealed to me based on the synopsis alone. WoH is based on a BL novel which isn't my dopamine factory. I'm watching it for its value as a fantasy piece only, and it feels gutted. When factoring in Heaven Official's Blessing-8.8 and Legend of Exorcism-8.8, which are shows of striking beauty and better romantic moments, I'm 3-for-4 in liking the BL pieces I've seen. I just don't like WoH. I do appreciate the significance of fighting against heavy government censorship and oppression. Many fans of this show clearly place a high premium on what it represents.

As for romance, it's surfacey, just like the rest of the show. Xing is a brash flirter, and he never lets up. Shu is stoic - he's miserable, actually. He's probably the type to fall hard, once his resistance is whittled down. (With him, everything is forever). The secondary couple is cute. Xiang was just using Cao in the beginning. He's too easy and naive! At some point, she realizes not only how much he'll miss her when she's gone, but also how much he'll be taken advantage of when she's not there to protect him. That really p!$$es her off. She then takes her anger out on him. That ain't fair! 😅

“Are they even human? The righteous clans of the martial arts world? The difference between them and the Ghost Valley is that one is blatantly evil, while the other is wearing a cover of benevolence, justice, and morality. As soon as they see flesh, they can't wait to tear off their human skin and start barking and biting! How exciting.” Shu looked the villain in the opening. Slowly, the viewer realizes that he is not an evil person. Whatever he did, there must have been good reasons, whether it was the right decision or not. Around the halfway mark we see that another character, who posed as someone kind and decent, has actually been pulling the strings in the background with nothing short of evil genius. He is a mass murderer. He murdered his own. It seems that he's being held up in contrast to Shu.

I wouldn't go as far as saying WoH isn't worth watching. Arguably, WoH is worth watching just to see the loud-mouthed, snide, red haired dwarf. Maybe it's just me, but he really tickled my fancy. The Longyuan Cabinet kid also tickled my fancy. There's plenty of great elements. They just failed to tie it together well.

What else is there to like? Scorpion Sect, Five Lakes Alliance, Window of Heaven… The Chinese are just better at naming things. So many elements are familiar, but unique. I am enthralled with the elegance and artistry of Chinese features. There's a cadence that seems to hail directly from ancient times. The acting is always superb. Turning a Chinese fantasy piece is usually like walking through the looking glass. It's a complete immersion into a magical land. The sect that got my blood stirred the most is Longyuan Cabinet. They devised all the fancy booby traps, machinery and thinganaobs. It was they who designed the World's Armory. Their leader has a disease that keeps him in the size of a child and wheelchair-bound. He's pasty and extremely arrogant. He's absolutely a delightful character to watch, and the kid’s acting is excellent. The costumes are gorgeous. The women are gorgeous. The men are, too.

The filming and artistry is excellent. In ep22 they crank up the action with some rousing fights. It's fun to see how Ling's training is paying off. They've been working him relentlessly - on just footwork - and none of the bad guys can land a strike. They're helping out an orphan, and it turns out one of them was an orphan who was not helped out and it had wide reaching negative effects. We see poison coursing through Shu's veins and the special effects are pretty good. China has come a long way in that arena. I've seen laughable special effects in shows that are otherwise, some of the best things I've ever seen. Hollywood is the opposite: Glorious special effects, but empty and soulless content. I'll take the shows with souls, please. Paper medallions fall like snow. They are weapons that kill and we see many embedded in the trees. Cool. The beggar sect are fearsome and well organized fighters.

The martial arts are thrilling, tbf. Knowing this is a Danmei novel is messing with my head, though. As Shu is fighting 75, or so, beggars, Xing feels no need to get involved. He sits at a table with a cup of wine and yells out encouragements, such as: “Your soft sword is too soft.” (Seu was smacking down foes with a wet towel). Then Xing yells “Get out your weapon.” These lines have to be /intentional/ double-entendres, don't they? Then, there's all that flute playing… “I did not expect this man to blow this type of flute.” 😜😜😜 That's straight out of the g@y joke book!

The ending is pretty good. The wrap-up is too brief, but the last couple episodes are better than what came before. I'm left with the impression, given WoH's popularity, that this will appeal to those for whom BL is a particular passion more than the general.public at large.



QUOTES🗣

I was strong in will but weak in power.

Reasons are no more than excuses in a nice disguise.


IMHO〰🖍


📣6 📝6.8 🎭7.6 💓5 🦋5 🎨8 🎵/🔊7 🔚8 🤗3 ▪ 🌞4⚡6 😅2 😭5 😱3 😯3 🤢4 🤔4 💤4.5

The music is truly lovely

Age 14+ D@mn, Throat slashing, sexual content. Rated: Everyone


Re-📺? No


⚡/🔮
Ancient Love Poetry-8.6 21,
Douluo continent-9.1 21,
Eternal love-8.3 17,
Eternal Love Of dream-7.4 20,
Handsome siblings-8.7,
Heavenly SWORD-9,
House of Flying Daggers-8.5,
Legend of the two sisters in chaos-7.7 20 the ending is bittersweet,
Love and Redemption-10,
Love Between Fairy & Devil-8.9,
Once upon a time in Linglian Mountain-7.5,
Overlord-8.4,
The Princess Royal-8.3,
The Princess Weiyoung-8,
The Rebel Princess-8.5,
The Rise of Phoenixes-9,
Ruyi's Royal love in the palace ‘18 (episodes 1 - 49 are a 9.3,
The Sword and the Brocade-8.6 ‘21 (in the style of ancient Chinese opera),
Under the Power-8.6,
The Untamed-8.6 19,
Who Rules The World-7.5 22,

Netflix's Marco Polo-8

In order of ~lite & trite~ to ~heavy & serious~ you may also like:

🌐💓 -
C🇨🇳:
A Little Thing Called First Love 8.5;
Find Yourself 8.9;
The Romance of Tiger and Rose 9.8;
The Sleepless Princess 9.1;
Wait, My Youth-8.4


🇰🇷:
My Only Love Song 8.7 excellent comedy;
Mr. Queen 8.5;
My Sassy Girl 8.5;
The King's Affection 8.3;
Mr. Sunshine 9
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