Reviews

Wayyy beter than I expected.

I honestly didn't expect a lot from this series. I'm not sure why but I automatically assumed it wouldn't be amazing but all the reviews really proved my first impression wrong so I ended up watching it anyways. I am honestly surprised at how good it is!! I think that the representation is amazing. The plot is original and the characters make you really attached to them. Before you watch this a trigger warning is the

The acting was amazing in this series. Both Seto Toshiki and Nakata Keisuke are talented!! I already knew Seto Toshiki and I think he is an amazing actor in each BL that I've seen him play in. As for Keisuke, I didn't know him before but he really made me hate Kusakabe Ritsu during this whole show, and I think it's a good thing when actors make you hate a character. The side characters were amazing as well and I'm sooo happy they had Idegami Baku casted!! I'm not sure about their pronouns but from what I've read it seems to be just he/him. I love how he played a character that was struggling with their gender and during the last weeks finally got the confidence to wear clothes they feel comfortable in. Tomimoto Sousho looked sooo young and he was apparently 20/21 when they filmed??? That's insane.

I got a huge attachment to the side characters. For most of the series they felt like a sort of family. Like Masumi and Ritsu adopted Yuma and then Meguru just being there. Honestly I would've put her as Yuma's crush if they didn't make it feel so weird through the show. I'm not complaining about their feelings or Meguru being trans girl/crossdresser, but rather by the way they portrayed the teenager but that is just my viewpoint as a teenager myself. I don't like how the series made him seem more stupid and stuff. Masumi was 100% correct to Ritsu when they were having an argument about the boy. Why did fucking Ritsu give a child PILLS to KHS?? Ritsu really pissed me off. Aside from Ritsu being an absolute dick, I do really like the found family vibes it had.

The plot is reallyyy original. It would've been a bit nicer if they slightly took more effort to make it look real. I do really love the message behind it though. Like spending your last week on earth and who you would pick. I think that if it wasn't their last week that they would've never ended up together. I wonder if Masumi would regret choosing to spent time with Ritsu in his last week. Ritsu is an absolute asshole. He almost killed a younger person, cheated and totally played Masumi. He was sooo toxic but from Masumi's point of view I get why he came back to him. I know many people don't understand I but I feel like Masumi just wants to have someone by his side who he feels familiarity with.

Overall this was amazing, I am extremely surprised by the quality and the amazing story. I wouldn't call this very romantic though... May this type of love never find me.

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I was only here for FirstKhao

What can I even say about Only Friends other than the fact that they absolutely do NOT live up to their title? If only they had stopped at being friends.

What kind of friend group even is this? Are you guys sure you’re friends?

ARGGHH, this drama is one continuous concentration of problems with absolutely NO BREAKS. At least we were spared the usual episode 11 trauma that stays with you for the rest of your life. Because honestly? The entire drama traumatized us instead.

I’m going to start with Mew and Top.

Their relationship actually had a pretty good foundation. I absolutely love the whole “I have a complicated past, but you’re the reason I want to leave it behind” trope. Mew, with his dearly missed little glasses and his adorable teasing, immediately won me over. And Top was just undeniably sexy.

The problem is that once the trust was broken, the way they found their way back to each other didn’t feel natural at all. Their relationship went from being something shared between two people to something much more selfish, where the only goal seemed to be hurting the other person as deeply as possible.

Can cheating be forgiven? This drama definitely gives us a pretty clear answer.

Ever since Mew started wearing those absolutely horrible shirts, his entire existence has revolved around revenge. Meanwhile, Top lives in guilt, and as a result, their dynamic becomes absolutely unbearable. Can you really spend your entire life trying to make up for your mistakes to someone who is no longer open to trusting you again? At some point, Top, have a little self-respect.

What annoys me the most is that until the very end, Mew never really apologizes for all the horrible things he did, even though they were very clearly just as bad, if not worse.

So ultimately, my conclusion is that once trust has been broken, sometimes the healthiest thing to do is simply let each other go. Because here, the only thing pushing these two people back toward each other is a deeply selfish desire to make things work.


Now obviously, I have to talk about Boston. Because for all the asshole behavior this man displayed, his character still has a surprising amount of depth.

Obviously, Boston is deeply selfish. But he’s also the only person in this friend group who gets blamed and rejected for mistakes that everyone else has already made. Cheating? Mew did it too. Exposing your friends publicly? Ray has done that. Being incapable of committing to a relationship? Please, don’t even get me started, I can name at least Mew and Ray.

And yet, Boston is the only one who truly ends up paying for his mistakes. Of course, Nick absolutely broke my heart. Poor baby, it was obvious that he loved Boston deeply. But as he said himself, he couldn’t force him to become someone he simply wasn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, Boston remains incredibly frustrating. But I think that through his character, the show is also trying to explore the impact of loneliness on a person, because at the end of the day, Boston is incredibly alone. He spends his time taking pictures of his hookups, almost as if keeping them at a distance through a camera allows him to preserve them on film while keeping them away from his heart.

And he’s also the only one who doesn’t really get a happy ending. He ends up without friends, in another country, and when he finally opens his heart by sharing that photograph, the timing is simply wrong.

So, in the end, isn’t Boston actually the most human and realistic character of them all? He throws himself into pleasure and distractions so he doesn’t have to think too much about his own existence.

And Nick, my sweet baby, also has a really interesting journey. Obviously, there couldn’t have been a better ending for their relationship. He learned that loving himself is far more important than giving everything he has just to be loved through someone else’s eyes.


And finally, I have to talk about my oxygen.My everything. The only reason I kept watching this show.

Ray and Sand.

Not only do they form a couple that completely takes my breath away, but their characters are incredibly interesting too. Sand introduces us to the theme of money and that endless race that can drown us in a world where everything is measured by what we own.
He also has no father and a very close relationship with his mother. Even though the whole storyline involving his father is somewhat pushed aside, Sand is, above all, a carer. And on top of that, he loves Arctic Monkeys. (PUT A RING ON HIS FINGER.)

As for Ray, even though he was significantly more unbearable, I actually found him to be the more interesting character. He doesn’t believe he deserves love. He has spent his entire life loving things that were always out of his reach, his mother, but also Mew.
He falls into alcoholism, which obviously has everything to do with his past, and spends his time convincing himself that he will eventually end up alone.

The whole storyline where Khao was kissing Book? Honestly, I took that as a personal betrayal.

But beyond all the problems constantly falling on them, this couple was the only reason I felt genuine excitement every time I watched this series. Ray and Sand are actually the complete opposite of selfish. Ray is incapable of moving on and is willing to accept a love that isn’t real. Sand, meanwhile, is incapable of truly opening up about what he feels. In reality, their entire relationship is built on countless misunderstandings.

But for those eye contacts? I would go through it all again as many times as necessary.

Thank you to FirstKhao for the acting and the chemistry because, honestly, they saved the show for me.


Finally, I want to talk about Cheum and April. Because yes. This couple exists. And I have a complaint. I’m tired of GL couples being introduced as extremely secondary relationships in BLs, only for them to contribute absolutely nothing and have storylines flatter than a pancake.
I’m sorry, but there was NO chemistry between this pairing. Even though I initially felt like Cheum had an important place in the story during the first episodes, she gradually faded into the background until she became almost completely unnecessary.


So, in conclusion: I recommend Only Friends if you enjoy problems. Because bon appétit. You will be served. Overall, this show disappointed me quite a lot because absolutely none of these characters were particularly healthy. In a way, it’s refreshing to see human characters with flaws and complicated pasts.
But here? It was too much.
Especially when Boeing suddenly appeared out of nowhere. At that point, I genuinely started wondering if this show ever planned on taking a break from creating problems.

I also don’t think this was ForceBook’s best performance. Or maybe their characters were simply too unbearable for me to care.

However, I did learn several things from this series, and I invite you all to apply them to your daily lives.
Thank you for the catharsis.

-> Forgiving cheating is probably a bad idea.

->You do NOT touch your friends’ exes or boyfriends. That's Illegal.

->A one-night stand has a relatively low chance of becoming the love of your life.

->Watch out for your friends, especially if those little demons are willing to publicly expose your mistakes.

->Get yourself a rich boyfriend. It can apparently get you out of poverty surprisingly quickly.

->If someone tells you that you are Only Friends, maybe don’t go looking for anything beyond the friendzone.

Thank you, SandRay. To everyone else, I appreciate your participation. But honestly? I could have done without it.

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This is getting the rating it deserves

This isnt the worst but it's not the best by any means.

The concept is fine, but the execution is off. Part of the issue is the short format, but that's not the whole problem. The acting is very stiff. The lack of emotion, even in the NC scene, is incredible. It just lacked expression. Everything was very flat.

And the ending is weird, not bad just weird. I want a cross between this one and the Vietnamese BL My Little Ghost. A little more time with the story here and a little less ridiculousness there. A little more emotion here and a little less campy there. It would be perfection!

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A Story of Women, Status, Partnership, and Politics

I love when a show I'm watching teaches me something, and The Road to Splendor has a powerful story to tell. Across its 36 episodes, women are the absolute stars of the plot, navigating the heavy constraints placed on them by a patriarchal society.

⚠️Be warned, this review is lowkey an essay. Lots of words ahead⚠️

Part 1: The Women
👵🏻Tingyun's Grandmother: She prides herself on her riches and her four government-sanctioned arches. Then you learn that these arches are sustained by the suffering of women. As the layers peel back, we see how this enviable and "respectable" matriarch mercilessly exploits her daughters and daughters-in-law just to uphold the weight of family reputation.

🪙Fan Ya Ke: Blinded by the desire for wishes for recognition and riches more than anything, she signs her so-called best friend's death sentence and gaslights herself that she's innocent. She trades everything for a man who never loved or respected her, and a promise of wealth she never actually receives.

🧠Tingyun: After an unfairly ruined reputation and a failed murder attempt, she has to crawl and eat filth to get herself away from the clutches of death. Unprepared but resilient, she slowly and painfully climbs her way up from a fall from grace to become one of the most powerful women in the kingdom.

📿Madam Yu: She does everything to maintain her pride and uplift her family name, yet she is bound to two men who couldn't care less about her—a petulant, self-pitying son and a husband who uses her for her brains. She is treated neither as a mother nor a wife. Instead, she is an unappreciated strategist and a burdensome family member when no longer useful.

💢Madam Zuo: Her anger at life's unfairness ultimately leads to her death. However, despite her atrocious actions, the audience has to sit with the realization that society pushed her into becoming who she was.
She chose to stay in that filth (think of how she constantly targeted 18-year-old Tingyun and put the Ganlin girls in danger), but had the unfair rules of chastity and the arches never been a thing, could she have become who we saw? We shall never know

👩🏻👩🏻‍🦳Concubine Wu & Her 'aunty':
One is basically a starved, prettied-up slave for the highest bidder; and the other is her slave driver. Instead of supporting each other, their dynamic shows how women exploit those even more impoverished as stepping stones. Fortunately, Wu gets smart, uses her likeness to Tingyun to survive, and leaves before the house collapses.

👑The Empress Dowager: Revered by all, she is still just a woman and bound by the system. Her final wish to be buried beside her husband is denied not by him, but by her own son. The man she brought into this world holds total dominion over her resting place. Despite her immense power, she cannot choose her grave because a man decided it, and her past status as a concubine deems her "less than." Even her loving grandson cannot break this cycle due to the legal bounds of filial piety.

🪽Tingyun's Mother: Her worst mistake was marrying a greedy man who saw her as less than. Her life and, more so, her death were truly so unfair. The rules of marriage kept her with that man. No matter how much money she gave him or how silently she stood by his side, she was "just a woman" to him. One whom he eventually and happily sacrificed for his greed. I think her story is something any woman wishing for the tradwife era should take a minute to look at and carefully examine.

Part 2: Wealth, Power, and Class
Societally, hierarchy was a huge part of this story. What can wealth buy, and what will people do to keep it? With wealth comes power. What are you willing to do to keep this power, and how do you wield it?

In societies ruled by classism, climbing the ladder becomes the ultimate goal, and characters go to horrific lengths to achieve it.

👵🏻The Grandmother’s Greed: This cycle starts with Tingyun's grandmother trapping Madam Zhou to keep her arches, and eventually orchestrating the murder and fake burial of her own granddaughter. (I highly suggest googling the history of these arches to understand the massive perks that made her value them over human life).

⚔️Zhao Ling:
He starts simply trying to keep his ragtag band of smugglers from starving and hopefully bring them to riches. His friend Jin Yuan Bao almost poisons him in the name of wealth. Prompted by Tingyun, he meets the emperor - then the crown prince- takes on the salt case, and later moves to Ganlin to join the army. All this to elevate his class.

He then meets the disgusting waste of air that is Yu Jing Xiu. A man far above his station who tells him that he could try as much as he wants and even 10 years couldn't reach him. Thus fueling his desire for status.

Then he spends 5 years at war, gaining recognition but losing a part of himself. It works, and he becomes the emperor's favourite. He has power, wealth, status. A self-made man. But becomes enemy number 1. Everything he's fought for, even Tingyun herself, is in danger because of who he's become. He is embedded in a world far above his head that he slowly starts to lose himself and Tingyun.

In trying to keep what he's gained, he starts to use tactics and become the very people he's fighting - further losing himself. I love how his final act was to leave the court, going back to Ganlin.

All that wealth, power, and status that he fought for brought nothing but pain. He and Tingyun went back to the place where they were both the happiest. Far away from the court, and this time, without the weight of the emperor and his expectations floating above them

📚Yu Jing Xiu:
Ah, the waste of space himself. I had to go to Google and look up 'words worse than pathetic' because pathetic quite does him justice. Google gave me Contemptible, despicable, vile, and abominable. I think they all suit him perfectly.

I'd roll my eyes every time his stupid face showed up on my screen. He was hypocritical as fuck.

He looks down on Fan Ya Ke for craving wealth and disdains Zhao Ling for his low status. He judges his mother for using her class to manipulate situations, and his father for using connections to get him a better position. Yet uses that same class leverage to look down on others, kidnap Tingyun, and pull strings. He claims to be a detached scholar but hides behind his privilege whenever it suits him.

I think his ending was the best+worst thing that could've happened to him

🪙Fan Ya Ke:
Threw her bestie under the bus, insulted her daddy and his day-old rice for the promise of wealth, a powerful man, and status. Only to go to the capital and
a. have no one care for her intellect, only the man she was married to and the fake story she gave of how they met

b. her MIL controlled her allowance. She was put on a budget, and her coffers remained as empty as they were when she went into that house coz MIL took everything. She looked rich, acted rich and classy but had nothing

c. be replaced by a knockoff version of Tingyun. Not only did her man start fixating on the woman he had discarded for her, but her MIL brought in a concubine who looked like Tingyun to appease her son and his wandering eye (it was also for business but, you know)

📿Madam Yu:
Did all that for money. To maintain the wealth and status that she had and for what? As mentioned, her husband and son never appreciated her. Ultimately, she lost her mind coz she couldn't handle being a poor commoner.

Part 3: Partnership
🧠⚔️The romance isn't the main catalyst that elevates Tingyun and Zhao Ling to the new heights. Their partnership does. The story does a fantastic thing in having them be partners before being lovers. Bound by societal limits, Tingyun acts as the brains while Zhao Ling is the brawn. He is crafty, but let's be real: without Tingyun, he would have remained in Juweijiao or, at most, become a regular salt merchant with a fake license.

PS: The breakdown of this partnership about two-thirds (maybe three-quarters) of the way through the show felt frustrating. A lack of communication creates cracks in what was once a strong foundation. This then leads to a lot of the heartache, angst, and attacks that the two experienced in the latter episodes. Mr and Madam Yu might not have had the love that the Zhao's had, but they were able to land so many hits because they communicated and always planned their horrible little plans together.

⚖️Part 4 Politics⚖️:
I won't dive too deep here—it’s the standard mix of corruption, court hijinks, and salt. If you’ve watched historical dramas, you know the drill. I honestly need to go do a deep dive into why salt was so hecking vital back then.

📎Parts I didn't quite like/Would've changed📎

📌The Villain's Endings: While I am satisfied with Yu Jing Xiu's ending, his parents got off too easily. His father died at the hands of the son he always discarded, which felt a bit underwhelming—he deserved to be publicly humiliated and dragged through the courts. Meanwhile, Madam Yu losing her mind felt like an escape. She should have remained sane to consciously experience how far she fell, rather than living in a mental utopia.

📌Fan Ya Ke's Redemption: She gets a second chance, but she absolutely didn't deserve it. Tingyun could have died because of her actions. Like Madam Zhou, Ya Ke is an interesting character whose motivations make sense, but her actions are unjustifiable. Tingyun’s privilege meant she didn't see all of Ya Ke’s struggles, but that doesn't justify weaponizing Tingyun's chastity—the one thing a woman had to preserve to survive. Later, in the capital, she is constantly trying to demean Tingyun even after she pulled herself up by her bootstraps; just to feel superior is wild. I cannot accept her redemption arc.

📌The Communication Breakdown: As mentioned above, the late-game communication failure between our main duo was highly frustrating.

✔️Final Thoughts
This is easily one of my favorite C-dramas of the year and a show I will quickly recommend to anyone. I deeply appreciate how it centers women, showcasing them in all their shades—both good and bad. It takes the time to explore how the patriarchy, greed, and self-esteem shape who women become. The salt-business politics are well-paced and engaging, making it an incredible watch for anyone looking for a story with real substance beyond just romance

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I was hooked for the first episode, after a while I was kinda pissed of.

The couple is cute and all at first. An forbiden romance because they are gay and prince/domestic. But after a while I hate it.. Calling your boyfriend "your highness" while fighting against classistic society?? Like make it make sense.

And sorry but no matter how much Tin is pretty will not make me forget how stupid he sound sometimes. "Don't make me choose", and the whole episode where we were supposed to feel sad for him because he have to work... Like No I won't cry for him.

The drama deserve a stronger engagement.

I thought the two girls would end up together, sad.

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XiaoFan should have kill all of them. Why everybody is evil - expect his mom.

I love their relationship, I did expect a stronger XiaoFan at the end. He was stronger in his action but I think he's still shy and you can see how it's still hard for him to stand for himself.

I hate all the character pls... XiaoFan's wife, his brother, his father. Everyone is so awful. Please take Xiaofan suffering and give it to everyone else.

Big ick about the intoxacted sex.. I get that they are supposed to love each other before, but please no.. Stop with that.

Btw I hate how they spoiled everything in the preview?? Like they were supposed to break up and the preview show how they will get married???

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