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Journey With You (Chinese Series)

By Golu
I've always had kind of a love hate relationship with Chinese historical BLs. Some are genuinely excellent, but then there are others that cram in so much plot that keeping track of all the layers of betrayal and scheming gets exhausting, and I end up checking out mentally. Part of the issue is also just how much content is out there in this space, so something really has to stand out to keep me hooked. In this case, the production value is genuinely impressive, top tier stuff, but story wise, I just couldn't bring myself to actually care about these characters. There's a ton of political scheming and backstage manipulation running throughout. Somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, a hostage ends up falling for his own Prince Charming. The show runs eight episodes, each around 50 to 60 minutes long. After spending three years guarding the border, Fifth Prince Yin Qi gets called back to the capital because of a secret letter, only to end up walking straight into a deadly...
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To My Shore (Chinese Series)

By Golu

To My Shore is a dark, psychologically heavy Chinese BL that happens to be set in Thailand, though honestly the location barely matters here. I guess the whole purpose was so that a Chinese BL could have a proper release and find its audience. (We all know about strict China laws around homosexuality). This isn't your typical sweet romance at all. It's a heavy psychological drama about two broken men colliding in a way that's devastating and moving at the same time, a complicated and emotionally exhausting journey that lives right on the line between love and obsession. That doesn't mean it's actually good though. It's average at best because the same cycle just keeps repeating itself over and over. The show also never gives you any real sense of how much time is passing between events, which gets even stranger considering the leads don't age or change at all despite supposedly years going by. It's fifteen episodes, forty five minutes each, so it asks for a real chunk of your time.

Our two leads are Fan Xiao and Shu Lang. What looks like a series of chance encounters between them slowly reveals itself to be anything but random, and that creates this unsettling feeling where the manipulation almost seems fated. Fan Xiao is the classic toxic top, manipulative, obsessive, and completely magnetic at the same time. He's unpredictable, deceptive, and honestly kind of awful as a person. His toxicity traces back to childhood trauma, growing up in a wealthy family where his mother, who was a mistress, died trying to save him during a tsunami. The moment he meets Shu Lang, a genuinely kind guy, he decides almost instantly that he wants him no matter what it takes. Shu Lang is already happily with a boyfriend at this point, and over the next several episodes we watch Fan Xiao deliberately drive a wedge between them, break them up, and slowly make Shu Lang fall for him instead. Shu Lang grew up an orphan and was bullied as a kid for being gay, which is why he's always kept his guard up around people. Eventually the two fall hard for each other and things get steamy, but Shu Lang soon uncovers just how manipulative Fan Xiao really is. He pulls away and ends things, but the same pattern just keeps repeating. It takes Fan Xiao way too long to realize he's actually lost something real, and by the time he gets there Shu Lang has already shut down even further, refusing to trust anyone again. The two keep crossing paths in different cities and jobs, with Fan Xiao doing everything possible to win him back while Shu Lang's heart has basically turned to stone with no room left for anyone. Eventually Shu Lang gathers evidence of all the fraud Fan Xiao and his company have been involved in and reports it to the authorities. Honestly the last three or four episodes get so muddled that I genuinely couldn't tell what was actually happening versus what might have just been imagined.

The love story here isn't healthy and it never pretends to be. It's twisted, suffocating, and built entirely on fear and dependence. These two genuinely crave each other physically and emotionally, and Fan Xiao's hunger for Shu Lang's body and attention goes way beyond just sex. The lengths he goes to in order to possess Shu Lang are honestly chilling, systematically cutting him off from his family, his boyfriend, even controlling his career, all so Shu Lang has nobody left to depend on but him. The first five or six episodes are genuinely gripping because of this, but once Shu Lang figures out what's really going on, the show lost a lot of its grip on me. Fan Xiao spirals into this unhealthy self destructive place, almost acting like Shu Lang's servant hoping for some scrap of love in return, only to realize that money and power and manipulation mean nothing against someone who's stopped trusting you completely. The choices both of these guys make are pretty questionable honestly and I couldn't help but judge them a bit along the way. That said, I do have to give credit to the actors handling these messy, complicated roles. The actor playing Fan Xiao in particular nails a genuinely difficult, deeply flawed character. Shu Lang's actor comes across as a bit flatter by comparison. They have decent chemistry together but the show just keeps stretching things out for no real reason. Some episodes drag badly and I really wish someone had tightened this into a sharp eight episode series that would've hit a lot harder. As it stands, it starts off strong but doesn't end up living up to where it started. (6/10)

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