Drama vs Manga

image credit: wiki.d-addicts.com

Hana Yori Dango, which translates to Boys Over Flowers, is something of an East Asian pop culture phenomena. It started as a manga which ran from 1992 to 2003 and spawned an anime, a Taiwanese drama (2001, called "Meteor Garden), a Japanese drama (2005), and finally a Korean drama(2009). Of the many interpretations I have seen the first episodes of both the Taiwanese and Japanese versions, the whole 25 hours of the Korean version, and read more than half of the manga (so about 6 years worth). I'm going to be considering the Korean drama and then manga, since I've seen more of them and more recently.

The basic of the story is: poor goes to rich school which is essentially run by a clique of four rich, pretty boys called the Flower Four, or F4, which gives us the Flowers in the title. Due to her plucky nature our heroine eventually becomes a target for their bullying. However unlike all their previous targets, our heroine fights back for herself and refuses to give in. This causes the somewhat warped leader of the F4 to fall in love with her. Unfortunately she's kind of into one of the other Flowers, who is musical and supposedly autistic. Drama ensues. Other problems: the two leads living in "different worlds," the rich guy's mom thwarting their relationship, and really poor communication.
One thing I found interesting reading the manga right after finishing the drama was the difference in characterizations. The leader of the F4 (Tsukasa in the manga, Jun Pyo in the kdrama) and the "autistic" second lead (Rui in the manga, Ji Hoo kdrama) were both less sympathetic and more sociopathic in the manga.

In the kdrama, Ji Hoo is the pure white knight of the heroine, always there to recuse her emotionally or physically (after the first like 4 episodes). In the manga, Rui way less screen time and has a couple of moments where he makes crazy eyes at the "camera." In neither version is he particularly autistic. I;m not sure if any of the writers cared enough to look up what that actually means. Also his rescues of the heroine-though important to her- seem kind of far and few between compared to his drama counterpart. This might in part be because the manga ran for so much longer, thus more things happened with our heroine.I think this also part of what happened with  Jun Pyo and Tsukasa. Since the drama had limited time, everything had to happen faster: the falling in love, the character becoming sympathetic, the bulling ending. It also doesn't hurt that he was played by Lee Min Ho (nick name: Lee Min HOT).

Now that's what I call plucky

The heroine was also toned down a lot. Jan Di is a fairly typical kdrama heroine: not too bright, very cute, determined, but at heart a "Candy" type character who will silently endure most of her life's problems. Tsukushi shares a lot of these characteristics and her character does fluctuate a bit (as does the drawing style) over the 10 years, but especially in the beginning she has more balls. I said earlier that Rui rescues Tsukushi less often than Ji Hoo rescues Jan Di. This is also because Tsukushi gets rescued way less times than Jan Di. I was surprised at how many situations where in the drama Jan Di is rescued by someone else but Tsukushi can handle it all by herself. For instance early in the story both heroines are invited by the mean girl trio (that clearly has to exist in a high school story) to a fancy party. In the manga they simply don't tell her how fancy it is, letting her arrive in awkwardly casual wear (extra funny because the fashion is super early 90s). The drama turns the knob to 21 by having Jan Di think it's a fancy dress party and showing up dressed as Wonder Woman. Either way our girl finds herself woefully wrong at a party leading to embarrassment. In the manga (maybe because she's not dressed like wonder woman) Tsukushi is able to play it off and even gets told that she seems refreshing and unique. She even revenges herself a little on the bitch trio before leaving.
Jan Di on the other hand needs to be rescued. This might be because her rescue serves as an introduction to another character to let us know that this girl is not only beautiful and smart but also kind. And prone to really weird metaphors, but that's a different story. All this in spite of the fact that she's kind of a love rival to the heroine! Anyway, allowing her to rescue Jan Di makes the character more sympathetic but it also undermines Jan Di as a bold girl who can take care of herself. One other difference between the two is that Jan Di is a swimmer, which someone means she near-drowning experiences more often. I'm not sure if any will appear at the end of the manga, but I'll looking forward to it.

One element I thought the manga and drama both handled well, but completely differently was a side story involving one of the F4 and the main girl's friend. They had many points in common, but the trajectory and conclusions were very different. I thought the drama was cuter while the manga had better poetic harmony. The basic plot is that the main girl's poor friend gets interested in one of the F4, who is traditional artist but also a playboy. He even has a tragic first love; his childhood friend wanted to confess to him by showing him billboards which spelled out "I love you" at dawn, but he missed it and she walked out of his life. He doesn't even know what his first love wanted to show him until the main girl's friend finds it and shows it to him. Somehow the phrase "One life one meeting" in involved.

In the manga the phrase comes from tea ceremony-the art Souichiro is a master of- and I think means something like "each tea ceremony is a once in a lifetime opportunity." Souichirou uses that line to pick up girls (because otherwise being at good at tea ceremony is not really much a pick up tool). After he doesn't show up to see the billboards, his friend tells him that while he has "once in a lifetime" meetings with women every night, that was her once in a lifetime moment. The moment where she walks away after he doesn't say anything becomes his own once in  lifetime opportunity: that was his one chance to hold on to her. Once she hears this story, Yuuki (Tsukushi's friend) is able to let go of her love and move on. I admired Yuuki as a character who contrasted Tsukushi's extreme boldness with her own kind of determined gentleness. The anecdote in the manga is that when one of their classmates stopped coming to school because of bulling, Tsukushi beat up the bullies but Yuuki was the one who went to the girl's house everyday and asked how she was doing.

In the drama Yi Jung is a master potter and so he and his childhood love (also a potter) made a puzzle out of pottery with the phrase "One life one meeting" on it and each took one of the pieces. Why they chose to saddle their relationship with that kind of meaning isn't as clear in the drama as it was in the manga. Yi Jung and Ga Eul (Jan Di's friend) also somehow spend way more time interacting, although all of their main interactions remain the same. So in the end when they get together it's really adorable and makes perfect sense. Especially since first love girl has moved on and is with Yi Jung's older brother. Which he gets to see before anyone bothers to tell him about it.

Overall the drama was crack-ilicous and emotional while the manga made slightly more linear sense and just sense in general. Both are very enjoyable and lots of fun.

This video covers roughly the first half of the drama and does a good job of illustrating the love triangle.