#sdaboutbr

The gayest move in the whole drama. I expressed my love for the plot and the secondary characters of this drama in this post, now let's talk about the main heroes.

So, there were two trainee slaves in the assassin sect who treated each other as the most important people in the world although they weren't related by blood. They fought together although they were supposed to fight against each other, Muyu multiple times saved Changhe and Changhe was ready to die for Muyu. They even broke the sect rule that only one of the fighters can stay alive and both survived the trial.

"OK, you both can stay then".

As they became assassins, Changhe promised Muyu to make his weapon more effective and later gave him the legendary 18-blade-umbrella as such practical weaponry.

"Let me help you to collect the blades. When I get rich, I'll buy you something more practical than this".

As they grew up, Muyu became a man with principles who absolutely doesn't care how the world works because he believes the world will bend to his will, unemotional on the surface and very skillful in sword wielding. And Changhe became a skillful in knife wielding unpredictable penny pincher with a strange sense of humor who secretly and ruthlessly made everything to bend the world to Muyu's will.

They prioritize each other and tell multiple times that, during sect schemes, the other party shouldn't get hurt. And they care about each other's well-being dearly.

LOVE IS to roll in in a fight to aid your homie.

The care includes injecting your inner power into your homie

and becoming a demon to protect your homie:

But they aren't gay, of course.

That's why one gives another the ring (it's a symbol of a rebellion, you perverts!), buys a house in a remote place in hopes to spend there some time with his homie once a year, and talks about it with the facial expression like that:

And the other decides to give up his plans to get retired because his nuts homie will definitely fuck something up without him:

They aren't gay, of course, because Muyu has got a girlfriend. Changhe, giving his yandere-ish personality, is surprisingly calm about it, kinda likes this girl and has nothing against her and Muyu dating, but... When Muyu is ill and falls into a feverish dream, he dreams not of his girlfriend, but... of the New Year date with Changhe!

Cautious Changhe, silly Changhe, dreamy Changhe, following him wherever he goes Changhe...

Changhe who puts food in Muyu's bowl (the gesture of closeness)...

Changhe who sleeps with him (just in the same bed, you perverts!)...

Changhe who watches fireworks with him (the main romantic trope of period c-dramas! As well as visiting a holiday market, but they did that in reality). They are obviously not gay and, moreover, it's a prequel to TBoY c-drama where Muyu kills Changhe off in the most anticlimactic and unemotionally acted scene ever (yep, I rewatched it in TBoY). In Blood River, there are ABSOLUTELY NO hints that Muyu can bear to kill Changhe. Absolutely. And no hints that Changhe can become as insane as he is in TBoY. I'd rather believe that, given an ultimatum to choose between his rebellion and Muyu, Changhe would def prefer Muyu over everything else. Blood River's Changhe and Muyu have absolutely nothing to do with the characters of the same names from TBoY. I like that the drama ends with them riding away into the sunset with wedding rings on their fingers, and I genuinely don't want this story to be extended and linked to TBoY further. It's perfect as is. And the last but not least: it felt like Changhe's martial abilities were cut in post-production to show Gong Jun's stunt work more, so I need to serve justice by adding more Chang Huasen's fight scenes in there:

Although I liked Gong Jun as Wen Kexing in WoH, and he is supposed to be unemotional in there, I think he is too unemotional. It's not easy to be unemotional on the right lvl on screen. That's why lets look at another unemotional guy with an umbrella whom Chang Huasen's character adores a lot (I hint at nothing):

While on the date, Su Changhe laughs at naivety of his friend Su Muyu who believed "You're asshole" is just a common way to say "Hello" in this town. Honestly, I've started it only because Chang Huasen was in there, but, in the end, I found it pretty enjoyable.

The drama itself splits into two parts: the first part matches the drama name and is about Blood River assassin sect and turmoil in its insidies. I didn't remember a thing about BR sect from The Blood of Youth drama, so I watched it like a separate story, and it was very entertaining. The only goal of the second part, though, is to prove Gong Jun has the first billing in there to bind this part to TBoY, which was unnecessary for this particular story and fulfilled not really smoothly. I wasn't happy about it in comparison with the first part. But let's talk about things I liked in there. First of all, there were a lot of lovable characters. ⚔️ The main heroes!

The umbrella guy is ML, Su Muyu (portrayed by Gong Jun), an extremely powerful autist stone-faced naïve guy, who works as an assassin but thinks he is a good man.

The knife guy is ML's BL friend, Su Changhe (portrayed by Chang Huasen), a little bit insane penny pincher who has no illusions of who he is. They are like tsundere and yandere, but in more realistic, not grotesque way, and they love each other dearly. Their relationship needs a separate post, you can find it here. ⚔️ I liked Uncle Su Zhe - an old assassin with a strange accent (I suppose it should sound like one of a hillbilly? Feel free to correct me) who is so powerful that can do whatever he wants but wants nothing. I like that he and Su Changhe have their relationship built on loyalty, despite the fact that, in this assassin sect, everyone is always ready to kill everyone.

Uncle Su Zhe has very funny relationship with his daughter, Miraculous Doctor Bai Hehuai: he tried to kill her during his mission until he learned she is his daughter. After that, he immediately turned into a loving father, and it feels... funny but nice.

⚔️ Miraculous Doctor Bai Hehuai is supposed to be Love Interest of ML, Su Muyu and, although there is obviously another LI for our ML, she isn't irritating because she is a strong person by herself and has her own plotline. And True LI of ML isn't against the idea to have her as their third party.

⚔️ Although the trope "Villainous woman vs Righteous man" isn't a thing here, I liked hints to this dynamics in a pair of a sly assassin girl from BR sect and a too straight in his righteousness boy from the righteous sect.

One of the most skillful assassins of BR pretends she is sick so her suppose-to-be-enemy takes care of her instead of going to his mission. He is such a silly guy!

But she ended up being enamored with his incompatible with life naivety and liked him enough to save him and help him out in a crucial moment.

Going back to the plot of the first part: it was great. There were so many multidimensional characters who plotted together with the each other and against each other, and it felt like something whole but at the same time unexpected (because I didn't remember what was in TBoY). Su Changhe managed to recruit to his rebel side every capable person on each level of power and I liked watching it revealing itself.

Su Changhe lured to his side even the blonde water guy who supposed to supervise him!

And an extremely beautiful lady (gentleman?)-shapeshifter from local Switzerland.

And, of course, young and promising members of other branches of BR sect who supposed to be his rivals.

⚔️ Speaking of which. I liked these two, too, especially Mu Qingyang, a multidimensional character with a lively personality, skilled and a little bit narcissistic yet silly and in love with his colleague.