C-drama Dashing Youth Wraps Mediocre Ratings Run with Complaints by Male Lead Hou Min Hao’s Fans on the Production Favoring Second Male Lead He Yu

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• Ah well I didn’t watch this since I wasn’t feeling the poster
  Hou minghao is handsome but I don’t like his styling in this one.

• Neo has way more than 5 dramas as ML. He has like 11 or 12 and I'm not even counting the ones that hasnt aired yet. With those he has 16 or 17 dramas as ML.

  • You're almost 100% correct.
    I had to to visit MyDramaList and count one by one. He have 19 dramas playing ML including dramas which didn't air yet and the dramas that will never air due to very specific reasons.
    His filmography also includes a good number of supporting and guest roles in dramas besides supporting roles in movies.

    He started his acting career in dramas already as ML.

  • Not only that he was cast with pretty much every big actress and had many successful dramas,sorry but who is He Yu again? he didnt even have any presence as an actor before DY , Ridiculous did Koala made a typo or something LOL

    • Heyu is a emerging name in cdram industry. I watched him in TLSL and he's really good. Just admit HMH needs to work on his acting and need to choose his dramas carefully.

• This drama's failure is all due to the writers, direction, production, edition and visual effects.
  The failure does not rest on the shoulders of the actors.

  • True. I enjoyed The Blood of Youth but find it hard to finish this one.

  • I find Neo Hou a hit or miss, but I feel like the characterization of young Baili Dongjun and the writing and directing of Dashing Youth was a miss. I loved Blood of Youth and was really disappointed with Dashing Youth. I'm about halfway through and can't finish.

    Young Baili Dongjun was spoiled, lazy, and entitled even if he was a good and generous person. And to top off his charmed life, he is extra lucky by having the special innate talent on top of all that. It's harder to get behind a main character like that. Ye Ding-zhi's character is more main-character-coded. Traumatic past, revenge journey, well-travelled, and good at cooking meat.

    All the young people in this drama felt less mature than the young'uns in Blood of Youth (even the youngest one, Wushuang, who was probably like 14 felt more mature). The kids in Blood of Youth felt self-motivated and they sought continuous improvement of their martial arts. There were references to the martial artists levelling up and travelling to meet people to test their skills and further improve. I did not get that from Dashing Youth. Also, two of them are on revenge missions, so that was that last thing on their minds.

    BoY had maybe 20 full minutes of romantic/pseudo-romantic beats out of 40 episodes. A lot more time is spent on the uninteresting romances here. Also, the CGI was overused in Dashing Youth. I'm not sure if it's the editing or the way it's shot, but the physical movements are obfuscated so the beauty of the movements don't come across.

    I like He Yu a lot, especially since his role as the chubby friend in Lovely Sword Girl, where was the FL was also played by Jiang Zhen Yu (Yi Wen Jun). I hope He Yu and Jiang Zhen Yu can play a couple with a happy ending one day.

• No Hou is on my not-to-watch list because of his over the top plastic look together with Lee Jongsuk, Rowoon and a bunch of other actors. Hey, I am 100% fine with cosmetic surgery, but he has overdone it, he looks like anime now. The other guy, I haven't even heard of him.

  • Have you watched "The Legend of Shen Li"?, 'the other guy' aka He Yu starred in it. He's the Heavenly Emperor's grandson.

  • I thought I was the only one having issues with overdone PS that did not turn out right and making bad actors worse due to their inability to make facial expressions. Add Deng Wei to the list, I could never warm up to him in LYF S1 and S2.

• I think the issue is mainly the script writing, directing and editing even before the leads acting comes to play but it is clear He yu played a much interesting character that why is much talked about.
  This show was not good storywise imo, blood of youth was much better.

• He Yu is a more charismatic actor than Hou Minghao tho. The latter looks stiff and constipated in motion despite being visually more attractive. He Yu might not have a conventionally handsome face but he has shown promising acting in Legend of Shen Li and now Dashing Youth. But the story is boring and really bad compared to its sequel.

• He is basically a plastic mannequin these days, that's how much he has overdone with PS. When you add he isn't much of an actor, there is nobody else to blame.

  Then the plot was very meh so no plot, no eye candy? No wonder people ran.

• Heehe. I had to chuckle at the “continuously evolving face” observation.

• Hou Ming Hao face always looks for me it is about to melt

• His character just wasn’t as interesting to begin with. He was born with a silver spoon, natural talent/never needed to work hard, had the two most powerful people in the world as his master, grew up surrounded by love. Everything was served to him on a platter. The character had like zero hardships. Even when he lost his internal energy, it wasn’t even that long in terms of watch time.

  He Yu’s character was served with setback after setback, and had a more complex role. He had innate talent and a strong master but nowhere near as strong as Baili Dongjun. He Yu isn’t Oscar worthy, but he’s also the stronger actor. Neo Hou is fine in the every day scenes, but when he’s supposed to deliver strong emotions, he just falls flat for me. His face barely changed and there were a few eye drop tears. Maybe he’s just too scared or has too much “idol” baggage to ugly cry.

  Besides all that, the story pacing just didn’t flow as well. The fight scenes felt more xianxia than wuxia (might have to do with editing since I heard a lot of fight scenes were cut). Most of the fight scenes they’re just in the air waving their hands around and then flowers or dragons or some other fantastical element appears. They had that in TBoY too, but there was also actual choreographed fighting.

  Anyway, this whole drama was a disappointment for me. TBoY was a sleeper hit for me when it came out so I had high expectations.