The Blood of Youth is a wuxia show, which more or less means set in ancient china with martial arts and fantasy elements. If you've read/watched any shonen this show will feel familiar as it used a bunch of similar tropes and story beats

The first half or so of the show is very action/adventure with the squad out running around the jianghu (term for the cities and wilds controlled by martial arts sects, as opposed to the places controlled by an emperor/imperial court), getting in fights, doing training arcs, losing fights a lot tbh, etc. i found the first plot arc to be the weakest (not bad by any means but a little too all over the place) and then the second arc in xueyue city was phenomenal, so if you're a little confused at first just hang in there and it levels out

The second half moves to the imperial city and is more about politics (but still with fun fights and such). if you haven't watched cdramas you probably haven't seen nirvana in fire but it is like what if nirvana in fire was set to yakety sax (the opening backstory montage of the show made me go what is this nirvana in fire ass plot.... many such cases in cdramas... practically a running joke at this point... but anyway...)

It has a HUGE cast. Like ridiculously so. The main squad gets introduced pretty well so they're easy enough to keep track of, but there are a bazillion sects and everyone has history with everyone else and it can be hard to keep up with everyone. but the show is fairly aware of that and does a decent job making sure you understand the stakes in any given scene. The acting is fantastic and the casting was great and the expansive world building is super cool once you figure out who everyone is

The humor in the show is one of my favorite parts of it. As I said, the show is very self-aware and makes fun of itself sometimes which is delightful. The jokes land really well and don't get stale and had me actually laughing out loud a bunch. Like more than anything else this show was just incredibly fun. I did not realize how much I was craving a mindlessly fun fantasy show until I started watching it

Other good stuff: costumes, music, and visual effects are all amazing. Felt like a big budget production. also had a squad of fabulous combat eunuchs which is an idea i had never considered before and now think every show should have

Since a lot of my followers are from femslash fandoms and are here for the ladies, let's talk about the women. There are some terrific badass female characters in the show and most are written very well, however I will say that the show just couldn't quiiiite commit to #equality and there are some silly scenes where a badass lady still has to be rescued by a guy at the last moment or they go out of their way to point out that even the strongest women are not as strong as the strongest men. And a few cringey lines. Nothing so terrible that it ruins the fun, but worth keeping in mind. Oh it also does not pass the bechdel test :( But the women are still great and Li Hanyi (featured blowing shit up in my gif sets) is a really fantastic major recurring side character who I love quite a lot. AND it has a lot of m/f platonic friendships which were surprisingly well written

moving on to Blood River... it's set uhhhh maybe ten years before Blood of Youth (good luck trying to keep the timelines straight, i gave up) and is about an assassin sect that were side characters in Blood of Youth. I'm a little more than halfway through it and overall have liked it much less than Blood of Youth. I don't find the main characters as compelling (except the female lead who is great) and the pacing and story are kinda all over. also it didn't have as much humor and the humor didn't always land quite as well

the issues I had with the female characters in the first one are more pronounced in this one as well. like i think main character boy shows up to rescue basically every badass woman from a fight (except li hanyi) at some point and every woman ever (except li hanyi) is in looooove with this dude 🙄

however, one of the really neat things about these shows is the massive amount of world building and the different generations of characters who all have their own history and relationships and seeing a bunch of the guys from blood of youth earlier on was really fun. also, very important, li hanyi and the other sword deities are in it on and off and they are fantastic and the parts they're in tend to be funny in the same ways the first one was

also the soundtrack and the costumes absolutely SLAP (the effects are big budget again but i preferred blood of youth's and thought blood river went a little too crazy with the effects). compared to blood of youth it is very goth™️ and tries for a slightly darker tone. i am deeply obsessed with the over the top dramatic goth opening credits and song

please don't misunderstand all of that to mean i don't like it or think it sucks, i just don't think it is as good as Blood of Youth

the third show Dashing Youth, which is set maybe an additional 4-5 years before blood river, I have not watched yet so can't say much about

so my advice is start with the blood of youth and if you enjoy it definitely try out blood river (i feel like ep 11 was really fun so maybe give it until that one at least)