HANAYORI DANGO
(STORY)
Hana Yori Dango is the story of Makino Tsukushi, a 16 year old girl from the wrong side of the tracks who is a student at Eitoku Gakuen, a very exclusive school that is attended by the richest of society's children. Tsukushi, shy at first, feels uncomfortable and out of place amongst the rich, snobby kids at her school and she cannot wait until the time, two years later, when she will graduate. However despite finding a new friend to talk to at school, Tsukushi's problems at Eitoku take a sudden turn for the worse when she crosses the path of the F4.
The F4 are the 4 richest guys at Eitoku Gakuen, and for all intents and purposes, they rule the school. They wander around the campus unchallenged by teacher or student, they flaunt the school dress code by not wearing their uniforms, and never seem to go to class.
The F4 are:
Hanazawa Rui, 18, scruffy reddish-brown hair.
Nishikado Soujirou, 18, short, straight black hair.
Mimasaka Akira, 18, long wavy brown hair.
Doumyouji Tsukasa, 17, short dark hair curly on top.
Doumyouji Tsukasa is the leader of the F4, and the one with the shortest temper. He rules the school by intimidation. The entire student body is either afraid of him or in awe of him. Doumyouji has been known to terrorize any poor student is who is unfortunate enough to fall in his path. What he does (with the support of the F4) is place a red tag in the locker of the intended victim. The red tag is a sign to the rest of the school that the victim has somehow offended the F4 and is now a target for their abuse. The whole school unites to make the victim's life hell. Just such a thing happens to Tsukushi
Tsukushi stands up to Doumyouji while defending her friend Makiko, who had fallen down some stairs and had landed on the angry Doumyouji. Doumyouji decides to red tag Tsukushi's locker, and this prompts the entire school to heap abuse on her. At first, Tsukushi is afraid of Doumyouji and is intimidated by the F4. She runs away from her attackers. However when she is confronted by Doumyouji, her fighting spirit comes to life, and she decides to do the unthinkable: Challenge the F4! Tsukushi declares that she will not take any crap from the F4 and the rest of the school, and vows to fight back. She declares war on the F4 with a red tag of her own. Tsukushi is a strong girl, not given to backing down from a challenge! Tsukushi's unexpected resistance piques Doumyouji's interest. Her strength proves to be attractive to him, and he ends up having a crush on her, even though they are 'at war' with each other. Tsukushi, on the other hand, does not seem to be that impressed with the rich, arrogant Doumyouji, and instead finds herself attracted to another member of the F4, the quiet, sensitive violin player, Hanazawa Rui. This sets up an explosive triangle of love and hate relationships, as Tsukushi finds herself in the middle of a tug of war between Rui and Doumyouji.Tsukushi has to face the pressure of the school's rapidly shifting opinion of her, her status as a poor girl in a rich school, and her attraction to a cool but mysterious guy (Rui) while at the same time dealing with the advances of Doumyouji. I think this is a great series! It is funny, dramatic, and romantic. The mood can be slow and gentle, or intense and frightening. The characters are interesting (well, most of them smile and the music is great! The series is much like a teen soap opera. The voice acting is interesting, and the character designs are unusual. The color scheme of HYD is unusual as well. The colors are very muted and soft. There are lots of pale yellows, cream, grays, blue-gray, and browns. I think this lends the series a greater sense of reality. Anyway, if you should come across this series, I highly recommend checking it out!
(CHARACTERS)
THE HEROINE
Makino Tsukushi
THE F4
Doumyouji Tsukasa
Hanazawa Rui
Mimasaka Akira
Nishikado Soujirou
FFRIENDS
Matsuoka Yuki
Aoike Kazuya
Toudou Shizuka
Endou Makiko
Kin-san
FAMILY
Mama and Papa
Doumyouji Tsubaki
Doumyouji Kaede
TROUBLEMAKERS
Sakurako
Thomas
Junpei
Shigeru
Classmates
Kunisawa Amon
(ANIME)
There are 51 episodes of the anime, and until recently, they were only available in Japan on VHS, or in some other Asian countries on VCD. Finally, after many years of waiting, the HYD anime has been licensed for North American release by Viz. They are releasing it under the name 'Boys Over Flowers'. I look forward to getting this official English Language release of HYD on DVD, and I will provide some information about this release down below my episode summaries.
I wrote these episode summaries while I watched the series as it was airing on TV in 1996-1997. There were no English subtitled versions of ANY of the episodes at the time, so I was just going by my very questionable Japanese skills. Since then all the episodes have been released in English (yay!), so I can see that there are a lot of sections I don't explain correctly, or have been resolved in detail in the fansubs. I'll eventually try and go back and revise my summaries with my knew knowledge about what is going on, but for now please try to enjoy what I managed to write at the time ^_^
I did my best at listing the episode titles and translations for them. Some were translated by me, some were not, so forgive me if the translations change a bit over time as people point out to me what ones I have listed wrong (surely they aren't all correct =) I haven't changed them to match the titles Viz used for each episode. Also, these summaries contain HUGE SPOILERS so read at your own risk smile
Oh, and a little note about my summaries. I call most of the characters by the same names consistently- Rui, Tsukushi, Doumyouji, Akira, Kazuya. However I have a tendency to call Nishikado Soujirou sometimes by his first name and sometimes by his last. I don't know why I do this =) Also, the three snotty girls: Asai, Yamano, and Ayuhara are all so similar in character, that I tend to refer to them as a unit. Sometimes I may say Asai is doing something when it is really Yamano or Ayuhara. I tend to blur them all together in my head smile
HANAYORI DANGO ANIME MOVIE
In spring of 1997, a Hana Yori Dango anime movie was released to theaters in Japan. This time the movie is an anime version. Instead of following the plot of the TV series, this movie changes gears a bit and begins a story of its own. The cast of the anime are all now in New York, working on some sort of musical production. It is like an alternate HYD universe, and is not related to the TV series at all. Tsukushi is a poor girl who works in a theater building as a cleaning girl. At the theater, the rest of the HYD gang are dancers who are rehearsing for the big show. Tsukushi watches them and practices on her own at night. She dreams of becoming a dancer and is waiting to get her big chance. This movie was OK. I was a bit disappointed. the movie is only 30 minutes long, and I was hoping for more romance. The one nifty thing about it is the sequence that mirrors the TV series op song. Now you can see where that off-the-wall TV anime op animation came from.
ANIME BOOKS
The HYD anime Filmbook is a great HYD anime resource. It contains images from 30 or so episodes of the series, along with character profiles, manga sketches (including some of the characters that dont appear in the anime) and of course, the film comic version of the HYD anime movie. (A film comic is when they take screen shots from the movie and insert word bubbles like in a comic book). No HYD fan should be without this book! (ISBN4-8342-3006-6)
VIDEO RELEASES
JAPAN-The HYD anime movie was released in Japan on video by Toei on November 14th, 1997. The rest of the TV episodes were released on VHS and were available only to Japanese video stores for rental purposes. There are pictures of the VHS cover boxes for the TV episodes. The TV episodes come 4 eps. per tape, with 5 episodes on the last tape! The pictures were taken from Toei's anime catalog.
On March 21, 2006, HYD finally came to DVD in Japan. It's pretty amazing that the US got to have this series on DVD before Japan did. Toei released the series as a nice Region 2 DVD box set (I really hope VIZ does the same with the US release, but I kind of doubt they will). The box set has 10 discs (9 discs for the TV series, and a bonus disc for the 30 minute anime movie), and Amazon Japan is selling it for 37,920 yen (serious OUCH!). I could never afford this set, so I have no idea how the video quality compares to the US release, but the description says that it has been remastered. Because it's a Region 2 release, I assume that it does not include the English subtitles from the Viz version. I love the look of the box. The artwork on it is nice!
In 2007, Toei finally decided to release HYD on DVD in individual volumes. They are the same 9 volumes from the Box Set but now you can purchase them separately. I really like the covers on these. Very simple and cute! Much better than the US covers from VIZ (bleck). Each of these volumes contains 5 or 6 episodes (very generous for a region 2 release) and the price per volume is 3,800 yen before tax. Volumes 1-3 come out January 21, 2007. Volumes 4-6 come out February 21, 2007. Volumes 7-9 come out March 21, 2007.
NORTH AMERICA-Hana Yori Dango in North America! At long last, HYD has been licensed! Viz has released HYD on Region 1 DVD in the US in 12 volumes. They are calling it "Boys Over Flowers". Each volume has the original Japanese audio as well as an English dub. Personally I don't like the covers of the Viz releases at all. The graphic design looks very ugly to me. I much prefer the covers of the Japanese VHS releases above. I wish Viz could have used that artwork instead. But perhaps they were limited with what artwork they could use. You can purchase the English language versions from Animenation. Anyway, here are the covers of the US HYD DVDs:
At this time I have only watched volume 1 of Viz's release, and my impressions of it are mixed. I like how the picture looks. I am used to watching poor Nth generation copies of HYD recorded off of tv. The picture on these DVDs is much brighter than I have seen before, and I think it looks good. Sound is decent also. However there are things about these dvds that bother me. The first thing is the lack of translation for the opening and ending songs. Viz has a history of not translating songs, and I have seen them give various excuses for it. But to me it just seems very lazy and careless. If every other Anime company manages to release their series with translated songs, there is no reason Viz shouldn't be able to do it too. Fortunately I have seen the show so many times and worked on trying to translate the songs myself, that I know what the songs are about, but people new to the show are missing out. I am also not too impressed with the English dub. Well, ok, it is not as bad as I thought it would be, but parts of it really annoy me. But I have always been a dub hater, so if you like dubs, just ignore me and watch it, I am sure you will enjoy it fine and not be as picky as I am biggrin Finally, the subtitle script/translation is also sort of incomplete at times. Some of the meaning is taken out of some things the characters say. The main example of this in volume 1 is when Tsukushi confronts Doumyouji on the staircase after the accident with Makiko. Viz's translation really missed the meaning of what Tsukushi actually says there.
But like I said, I have only seen volume 1 (I am a poor person, someday I hope to be able to afford 11 more volumes! Please release a box set, Viz!) so perhaps they corrected some of these things later on, who knows. I am just glad that HYD is reaching a wider audience now!
(MANGA)
The Hana Yori Dango manga was written and drawn by a woman named Kamio Yoko, and it ran in the bi-weekly shoujo manga compilation called Margaret, which is published by Shueisha. To the right is a picture of a cover of Margaret that has Hana Yori Dango on it. Click the thumbnail to see it up close. Also, here is a picture from the opening pages of the story. I love the color pictures at the beginnings of many of the Margaret installments!
Anyway, Hana Yori Dango ran in Margaret from 1992 through 2003, with a side story in January 2004. That is a pretty good run for a shoujo series! There are a total of 36 regular 'tankoubon' (collected volumes) of the HYD manga available in Japanese, as well as several larger collected editions, each volume the size of two tankoubon together. The Hana Yori Dango manga is being released in English in the US by Viz, under the name of Boys Over Flowers.
The Hana Yori Dango Manga Illustration Book!: The artbook was published back in 1995 and features many color illustrations from the early days of HYD. There has been so much great artwork since then, I wonder when they will release a 2nd artbook. There really needs to be one! I have scanned some images from the artbook. Check them out! The anime and the manga are quite similar in story and in look. Well, not at first. I think in the manga, everyone looks a little odd (well, very odd in Doumyouji's case, his hair is weird even for him =) but everyone slowly evolves to looking like how they do in the anime. Many of the details and scenes are done in the exact same way in both anime and manga. Clothing is the same, scenes are layed out the same, etc. It seems to go 3 TV episodes per volume of manga, but not always. Also, there are some differences in the manga. There are some subplots and stoylines in the manga that the anime has either skipped, or not covered yet. The most noticible one to me right now is the beauty queen contest thing in volume 11... anyway, here are some pictures smile As the manga progresses, the artwork just gets better and better, and after the manga passes the place where the anime ends, it just continues to be really great!
I have placed thumbnails of the manga covers below, showing the covers of both the North American English Translated release and the oritginal Japanese release. You can purchase the English language versions from AnimeNation!
(DRAMA)
Big News! They have FINALLY made a Japanese live action drama for HYD! And they managed to get one of my very favorite people, Matsumoto Jun (from the group ARASHI, and star of another most excellent drama, Gokusen) to play Doumyouji! Yay! Another awesome guy, Oguri Shun (also from Gokusen) is playing Rui. Oh, also... They actually got the superpopular MATSUSHIMA Nanako to appear as Doumyouji Tsubaki! It is fun to watch her stomp on MatsuJun razz
There are 2 seasons of the Japanese HYD drama. The official website for the HYD jdrama Season 1 is here. Season 1 ran from October 21, 2005 to December 16, 2005 for a total of 9 episodes. (ONLY 9 EPISODES??) Yet they managed to do an admirable job at squishing the storyline! Even though the J-drama was brief, it touched upon many memorable HYD moments, including the Miss Teen of Japan competition which they didn't even cover in the anime! The opening theme song for this drama is "WISH" by ARASHI, and the insert song is "Planetarium" by Otsuka Ai.
A Region 2 DVD box set of the HYD drama was released in Japan on March 10, 2006. Because it is Region 2, it does not have English subtitles. It is a 5-disc set in a nice box. Amazon Japan sells it for 15,960 yen (ouch!). The first 4 discs contain 2 episodes each, while the last disc has the final episode plus a bunch of specials including a "making of" featurette, textless opening sequence, and interviews, and much more.
SEASON 2 -- Season 2 of the HYD drama begins airing in Japan on January 5th, 2007, and is currently slated for a total of 11 episodes! Initial reports had a higher number of episodes, but the official site says there are 11. The theme song is "Love So Sweet" by ARASHI, and the insert song is "Flavor of Life" by UTADA Hikaru. Season 2 reunites all the cast from season 1 plus a few new actors playing some familiar characters. Season two brings to life more of the great storylines from the manga, including the Junpei arc, the Sara storyline, Tsukushi in NY, and the Maid arc. I am still sad that poor Kazuya-kun has not appeared in the Jdrama OR the J-Movie. Yeesh, that boy gets no respect! ;_;
HANAYORI DANGO LIVE ACTION MOVIE
In 1995 a live action movie for Hana Yori Dango was released. It stars popular actress Uchida Yuki in the role of Makino Tsukushi. The movie is pretty interesting, if a bit (well, okay, VERY) cheezy. The plot of the movie pretty much follows the storyline that runs in the anime, however events happen in a different order, or things that happen at seperate times in the anime occur at the same place/time in the movie.
he acting I found to be very overdone as well, but even though it is high cheese, it is still kinda fun to watch. Some characters from the anime, namely Kazuya, Makiko-chan, and Tsukushi's family, are not present in the movie. Sakurako is present, but her role in the movie seems a lot like Asai's role in the anime. (I was amazed when I realized that the actress Norika Fujiwara plays one of the three bully-girls in the movie. She is very popular now)
The abuse Tsukushi takes in the live action movie is very similar to what she gets in the anime, however there seems to be even more of it! Some of the more severe incidents that occur in the anime do not happen in the movie, but the opening credits of the movie alone show Tsukushi being hazed in all sorts of ways. Tsukushi comes off as more wimply and wishy-washy in this movie, I think.
Some other details differ between the anime and live action movie. The movie has Shizuka just returning from America, not France. The actress who plays Shizuka (Marie Eguro), speaks perfect English, with no trace of an accent. It is kinda neat to see Shizuka make her long speech in English. I wonder about her Japanese though. It sounds somewhat accented, like an American speaking Japanese.
The F4 in the live action movie are very similar to what they are like in the anime, behavior wise, though I think Rui comes off as being a bit nicer in the movie. Rui is played by the now super-popular actor Naohito Fujiki. Hana Yori Dango was his debut movie. Doumyouji is appropriately arrogant. (But please, can someone buy him a shirt?? Or at least anything but those Speedos ^_^;; wink He is pretty cute though! He was played by Shosuke Tanihara. I have seen him in several TV dramas lately, most recently in another live-action adaptation of a manga- Gokusen 2. He played Yankumi's love interest ^_^ He looks a lot better now, I think ^_^
The Opening Song for the movie is 'Baby's Growing Up' and is sung by Uchida Yuki, who plays Tsukushi. The Ending Theme is 'Overnight Sensation' by the Tetsuya Komuro-produced group 'trf'. They perform the song in the movie (as everyone breaks out into a choreographed dance number... >_< )
METEOR GARDEN
Meteor Garden, or Liu Xing Hua Yuan, is a live action version of the Hana Yori Dango story that was made into a TV series in Taiwan. (live-action adaptations of shoujo manga are popular there. There are also live-action dramas of the manga for Mars, Peach Girl Akuma de Sourou, Itazura na Kiss, Bara no Tame ni, and Marmalade Boy) In Taiwan the HYD manga is called Meteor Garden, so the TV series took that name as well. Meteor Garden totals 2 TV series, and set of side-story specials called Meteor Rain. The show was very popular and influential all over Asia, and the guys who were cast to play the F4 have become huge idols. They even record music as a singing group, also under the name of F4. The popularity of the series has even resulted in the show being banned in China (for fear of it promoting negative feelings between the classes, if I remember correctly).
Meteor Garden follows the HYD Anime and Manga very closely for a while, and then goes off into different directions. Some changes were made (for example, all the characters attend Ying De University, not high school) but so many other things follow the original closely in the first series I was amazed! The second series strays a bit more than the first, and I have heard it is pretty awful.
The Cast: HYD Name/Meteor Garden Name : Actor Name
Makino Tsukushi/Shan Chai : Barbie Hsu
Doumyouji Tsukasa/Dao Ming Si : Jerry Yan
Hanazawa Rui/Hua Zhe Lei : Vic Chou
Mimasaka Akira/Mei Zuo : Vanness Wu
Nishikado Soujirou/Xi Men : Ken Zhu
Aoike Kazuya/Qing He: Edward Au
Matsuoka Yuuki/Xiao You: Rainie Yeuang
I am tempted to remove this cast list because a lot of people have emailed me with 'corrections' to the spelling of the names on the cast list, and everyone gives me DIFFERENT versions of the names! I am getting a little confused smile I'm not Chinese (or even Asian at all for that matter...) so I have no idea who is correct ^_^;;;; I will just stick with what I have here.
Meteor Garden has also aired in Japan, and seems to be reasonably popular there too!
(MUSIC)
The Music
There are four Hana Yori Dango music CDs plus a few drama CDs. The drama CDs star Kimura Takuya from SMAP (how mind boggling!), but I have yet to get/listen to them! The music of Hana Yori Dango is unusual for an anime series, but I think it is outstanding and works wonderfully to set the proper dramatic mood. I admit to being a bit thrown off at first by the very upbeat opening song, 'An Ordinary Sunday', but soon the song became quite catchy, and I found myself singing it every episode smile
Opening Song:
'Futsuu no Nichiyoubi' ('Ordinary Sunday')
The opening animation features Tsukushi and the entire HYD cast in New York dancing like they are in some sort of musical production number. There is a 45 record of the HYD song playing, and each of the characters is featured. This opening animation may seem somewhat odd, considering that the series takes place in Japan, not New York =) However with the release of the HYD anime movie, TV series opening makes a little more sense (but not much, hehe ^_^)
Ending Songs
The first ending song, 'Kenka no ato de' ('After the Quarrel') is lovely as well! The ending animation features Tsukushi in a white dress standing in a cobblestone-type of area that is immersed in a few inches of water. She is holding the voice memo and seems to be lost in thought. She then begins to move, her dress rippling in the breeze. She walks towards a guy whose face is obscured by the mist, and isn't shown in the reflection in the water. (how frustrating smile
In episode 33 they introduced a new ending song and ending animation! It is very upbeat and cheerful! It is called "Todoku kana", and is by a group called CaYOCO. The new animation is of a beach scene. Tsukushi, sporting her new look, is running through the surf, the water above her ankles. As she runs, they repeatedly flash to a scene of the main HYD characters lying in a circle on the sand. Every few seconds one or two of the characters disappears until only Tsukushi and Doumyouji are left. More character pictures are shown, and finally Tsukushi stops running in the surf and she turns around. Doumyouji is standing there. The water sparkles. Very cool! Oh yeah, a meaningless bit of info that was noticed- at first when the new song is used, when it ends, the volume just gets really low as it drits away and you can hear the waves. Around episode 37 or so, the song just cuts off at the end, but you can still hear the waves. I wonder why they did this... Oh well smile
