This review may contain spoilers
This is an absolutely stunning wonderful beautiful movie. I was interested in the movie due to the "intriguing" title which made it sound like a zombie film. Never would I know that the scary sounding title was such a beautiful line before watching the movie. After watching the movie, to me, this line encompasses more emotions than "I love you", "I need you", or any single sentence which expresses emotions. It left a very deep impression in me and just for this, the movie has succeeded.The movie has a sad ending which is not a spoiler because it is a fact that the female lead is going to die soon. It was a fact that I was constantly reminded over and over again in the course of the movie that there was not going to be any miracle. Despite knowing that the female lead was going to die, I gradually became attached to her role and started wishing for her not to die, just like the male lead. The movie did a great job in allowing the audience to like her character in a gradual manner. All these feelings were required for the twist in the movie to be impactful. It drove a message which was mentioned before across which everyone had forgotten including the male lead and ourselves.
It made me reflect upon my attitude towards life. It made me think about my relationship with other people. It made me love life more.
The main actors are young but well suited for the roles. The male lead (Kitamura Takumi) had a beautiful soothing voice. It was a joy hearing him speak. The female lead (Hamabe Minami) might be 'irritating' the male lead all the time but she never once came across as 'annoying' to me. I love the relationship between the female lead and male lead. I would not classify it as pure friendship or love. Was it budding love? Was it just two humans coming close together? It would be too stereotypical to categorise their relationship into anything that we have known. And I shall brood over it myself. I have thought about it so much that I read the book. The book did make the relationship seem more obvious, and it described some of the thought processes better as well. It is worth reading the book for sure.
I had rewatched the movie twice and read the book once in a span of a week. It made me experience withdrawal effects after finishing the movie which was very rare. The second time I rewatched it, it felt slightly different from the first time I watched it. Absolutely amazing movie.
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What is Jianghu? This is Jianghu.
It didn't occur to me that the concept of Jianghu (江湖) is unique to the Chinese culture until recently when my friend asked us "what is Jianghu?" and I realised I had difficulty explaining it.Indeed, what is Jianghu? It's not a venue, it's not a society/clubs/gangs, it's not a country, so what is it?
When people mentioned "Jianghu", we all knew what it meant - it is "somewhere" where people with martial arts ability from different walks of life meet each other. They fight for all sorts of reasons but principled and they are definitely have 义气 (another term that doesn't have an equivalence in English, closest translation is loyalty/brotherhood).
The Blood of Youth depicts such a Jianghu too. It also asked this question in one of the episodes. The answer gave was "Jianghu is where your heart desires." Indeed, the Jianghu in TBOY is what all the characters desire - Xiao Se desired for people who support and love him for who he is as a person and not after his status and/or position, Lei Wu Jie desired for improving his martial arts ability, etc.
TBOY is also about youth - the fervour that the characters have, the pain from the misunderstandings that they have about their parents and loved ones, the maturity after learning from their mistakes... this is exactly what youth is, it is loud and emotional, it is painful yet the joy and happiness experienced are also exhilarating. TBOY did such an excellent job until I would want to join their Jianghu and experienced youth together.
Amazing drama and I can't wait for Season 2.
(tried watching Dashing Youth but the pacing of the drama was a bit off...)
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