Review: The Eternal Fragrance (2026) 千香

Summary: A tale about humans, immortals, demons, and spirit, Lei Xiu Yuan (ft Song Wei Long) approaches orphaned Qing Qiu girl Xiao Bang Chui / Jiang Li Fei (ft Ju Jing Yi) to save his brother. the two end up studying together at Chu Feng Academy. It is there that Xiao Bang Chui experiences real friendship and hints of love for the first time in her tight nit group of friends. The are evil forces at play in the spirit realms. Meanwhile, the humans are also mired in politics and asks the spirits to take sides. Xiao Bang Chui and Lei Xiu Yuan are tested in various ways. In the end, they defy fate itself, to restore peace across the realms.

Platform: Youku

Episodes: 33

Airing Date: June 27, 2026

Rating after 14 episodes: 6.3/10 – A fast-paced fantasy with a likable female lead, but rushed character development and forced relationships make it difficult to stand out amid the crowded wave of recent fantasy dramas.

Overall Thoughts

This drama was originally filmed in 2023 so it had been waiting in the wings for a while. Unfortunately, this drama doesn’t really land. This is a fantasy romance that moves at a brisk pace and has an appealing female lead in Jiang Li Fei, but unfortunately, the drama’s uneven writing and rushed character development made it difficult for me to stay invested. Jiang Li Fei is intelligent, kind-hearted, and refreshingly independent, and I found myself much more interested in her personal journey than in the central romance. I actually wished the drama had focused more on her growth and adventures without making romance such a central part of the story. That’s because Lei Xiu Yuan was particularly difficult for me to root for. His motivations are understandable, but his repeated manipulation of Jiang Li Fei, followed by increasingly intrusive attempts to make amends, made his character frustrating rather than sympathetic. Song Wei Long gives a fine performance, but the writing doesn’t give him a particularly likable character to work with.

Perhaps the biggest issue is that the drama moves too quickly in the areas where it needs to slow down. While the fast pace keeps the plot moving through different settings and mysteries, it also leaves little room for the relationships to develop naturally. Friendships and romantic feelings are established almost overnight, and later emotional conflicts are built around relationships that I never felt had enough time to become meaningful. The choppy editing, which appears to leave significant pieces of the story on the cutting-room floor, only makes this problem more noticeable.

Ultimately, there are pieces of Eternal Fragrance that I enjoyed, especially Jiang Li Fei herself and the drama’s momentum, but the rushed storytelling and underdeveloped relationships outweighed those positives for me.

The drama wasn’t a hit even though it did breach 9500 on Youku’s popularity index. There just wasn’t any marketing or buzz for this drama. Both Song Wei Long and Ju Jing Yi had dramas air earlier this year, well Song Wei Long was more like at the end of 2025 with Shine on Me and Ju Jing Yi had Veil of Shadows and it seems like the platform just wanted to get this drama off its backlog.

What I Liked

Xiao Bang Chui / Jiang Li Fei is an intelligent and genuinely likable lead: Jiang Li Fei is easily the character I found myself rooting for the most. She’s kind-hearted without being overly naive, and she has a sunny, upbeat personality that makes her enjoyable to watch. She’s determined to save her master and will work hard to achieve her goals, but she also has clear boundaries about what she is and isn’t willing to do. I especially liked that she values the friendships she forms but doesn’t let those relationships completely define her. Once her trust is broken, she knows when to protect herself and move forward on her own rather than endlessly chasing after people who have hurt her. There is a nice sense of self-respect to her character. Honestly, I kept wishing the drama would just let Jiang Li Fei have her own story. She is capable of carrying a journey on her own, and I don’t think she needed a romance to make her character compelling. Her personal growth, friendships, and quest to save her master were already more interesting to me than the central romance.
The drama moves along at a brisk pace: One thing I can’t fault the drama for is its pace. It moves very quickly, especially in the first 14 episodes, as the characters move from one setting to another, develop their abilities, and gradually uncover the larger mysteries surrounding them. The brisk pacing does help prevent the story from feeling stagnant. There’s always a new location, challenge, or mystery around the corner, and the drama wastes little time getting the characters on their journey. The downside is that this sometimes comes at the expense of character development and emotional buildup, but purely from a momentum standpoint, there’s rarely a dull stretch.

What could be better

Lei Xiu Yuan is a difficult male lead to root for: I really struggled to connect with Lei Xiu Yuan as a character. He is introduced as someone desperate to save his injured brother, which gives him a sympathetic motivation, but the way he goes about it makes him increasingly difficult to like. He deliberately gets close to Jiang Li Fei because he believes she may hold the key to saving his brother and repeatedly takes advantage of her trust. At one point, his decisions nearly get her killed. Once he realizes the consequences of his actions, his attempts to make amends somehow make things worse. He starts essentially stalking Jiang Li Fei, keeping tabs on her day and night and insisting on “helping” her despite her repeatedly telling him to leave her alone. He becomes jealous whenever other men interact with her and tries to insert himself into her life. After she finally tells him off, he switches tactics and decides that self-sacrifice is the best way to make up for his mistakes. By the first 14 episodes, I was exhausted by Lei Xiu Yuan constantly making decisions based on what he thinks is best while disregarding what Jiang Li Fei actually wants. Song Wei Long gives a perfectly fine performance, but there isn’t much he can do when the character himself is written this way. For me, the biggest problem isn’t that Lei Xiu Yuan is morally complicated, it’s that the drama doesn’t give me enough reason to actually want to root for him.
It feels like entire chunks of the story are missing: The editing in the early episodes is surprisingly choppy, with abrupt transitions, random fade-to-black cuts, and scenes that seem to jump from one plot point to another without enough connective tissue. I read that as many as seven episodes were cut, and honestly, I can believe it. The biggest casualty is the emotional development. Characters will suddenly reminisce about how close they are or how important their relationship is, but I’m sitting there wondering when exactly they became this close because we barely saw it happen. By episode 10, we’re getting flashbacks that are supposed to carry a lot of emotional weight, yet the relationship itself hasn’t been properly established in the present-day storyline. The result is that many of the emotional moments simply don’t land because the drama hasn’t done enough work to make me care.
The relationships feel rushed and forced: The drama tries to establish a core group of friends almost immediately after the characters arrive at Chu Feng Academy. Lei Xiu Yuan, Ji Tong Zhou, and Jiang Li Fei quickly become this inseparable trio connected by their “Thousand Fragrance” bond, and then, only a few episodes later, that bond is already falling apart because trust has been broken. My reaction was basically: Were you guys even that close to begin with? The central romance has a similar problem. Lei Xiu Yuan initially befriends Jiang Li Fei for ulterior motives, and then visions of the two of them together somehow prompt him to pursue a relationship with her even though he doesn’t actually love her at that point. It’s difficult to buy into a romance when one person’s initial interest is based on manipulation and the subsequent development feels more dictated by the plot than by genuine emotional progression.
The CGI is very hit or miss: For a fantasy show, the drama’s CGI is very uneven, sometimes impressive, sometimes unintentionally hilarious. There are sequences at Chu Feng Academy where the effects are quite beautiful, particularly the floating Chinese characters and some of the more elaborate fantasy environments. Those scenes show that the production clearly had the ability to create a convincing fantasy world. Then we get the flying scenes. The characters don’t really look like they’re flying so much as wooden figures being dragged through the air in straight lines. There’s very little sense of movement or weight, and some of these sequences are so stiff that they become unintentionally funny. The inconsistency is particularly noticeable because the better CGI makes the weaker effects stand out even more.

Review: The Eternal Fragrance (2026) 千香