Hana Yori Dango

One manga, 2 adaptations on tv - the well known Meteor Garden in Taiwan and the recently released Hana Yori Dango in Japan.

Conclusion - I'm smitten by both (though I love MatsuJun better playing Tsukasa than Jerry Yan playing Dao Ming Si).

The plot: Kind of like a modern day Cinderella with guts, minus the helpless shoe-lost scene. Put a middle-class girl in a high class school ruled by 4 spoilt rich brats and you get a very interesting story. Whoever offends the well-known F4 group at school would get a red tag and would be bullied mercilessly by the rest of the students. Kind of like kissing the F4's feet to the extreme since their families were the most powerful contributors to the school. Makino Tsukushi was the transfer student, very low profile, trying her best not to cause any trouble and graduate. Her plan changed when she defended her only friend, Sakurako whom accidentally spilled orange juice on Domyouji Tsukasa, the leader of F4 at the cafeteria during lunchtime.

She was, as predicted, received the red tag the next morning and the torture began. Since her family were cutting corners to the extreme at home just for her to attend Eitoku, quitting the school would be bad. She went through it courageously with indirect help from Hanazawa Rui, the quiet F4 member and managed to keep her cool- until Tsukasa threw her lunch on the floor and stepped on the shrimp (looks to me more like a lobster than a shrimp in the scene) that her mom put into her bento. Then she decked Tsukasa and declared war.

How does it end? for those who already watched Meteor Garden, it won't go through the same plot. As always, I won't tell :D

Acting wise, Hana Yori Dango is definitely better than Meteor Garden. MatsuJun nailed the character Tsukasa with flair (I prefer his hair better in Gokusen), and as for Oguri Shun who played Hanazawa Rui, who would have thought that he was Uchiyama Hirohiko in Gokusen? In Gokusen, he was boisterous, LOUD, stubborn and way too naughty. In Hana Yori Dango, he was quiet and mysterious. One of the highlights of HYD is that Nanako Matsushima acted as Domyouji Tsubaki, Tsukasa's 'always-hitting-her-baby-brother' sister. My brother likes HYD better because, as he said - 'Tsukushi is cuter and the F4 in HYD is less faggotty than Meteor Garden's F4, but nevertheless still faggot'. He couldn't stand watching Meteor Garden even for 5 minutes but he waited for my downloads to finish for HYD.

Plot wise, Meteor Garden is better than HYD, probably because HYD cramped everything in 9 episodes - and of course because of the different ending. The songs are great and I definitely love the song Planetarium by Ai Otsuka and of course, Wish by MatsuJun's group Arashi.

Definitely a must see - if you like teen drama, thee hee hee