Forum - View topicBuried Treasure - Boys over Flowers (Hana Yori Dango)
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frodonk
 Posts: 99 |
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honestly, while I am a fan of this column since it always features old series that deserves to be watched by more people, i was disappointed (disgusted) when i saw the title hana yori dango, but after reading all of it i'm glad that i didn't stop when i read that title.
i'm very much aware of the taiwanese "meteor garden", the japanese live action "hana yori dango" and the korean "boys over flowers" adaptations of the story (all of which are crappy to the point that its not even funny) and the legions of fangirls that the series spawned everywhere around where i am now. I never took interest in them, but now i see them all in a new light, because if i've read everything correctly all of these were merely adaptations of an anime series. i now have the urge to watch the original, maybe i'll find something likable there. thanks Justin! |
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here-and-faraway
 Posts: 1528 Location: Sunny California |
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This is one of the few series that I HAD to marathon. I agree that the relationships are disturbing and raw, but, like Justin points out, there are some incredible "sparks" too. This is shojo at its best.
I second the notion for Viz to release this in BIG editions. |
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DuelLadyS
 Posts: 1705 Location: WA state |
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By my experience, that can be fixed with fingernails, lemon furniture polish (the kinds that foam up and don't run), a soft cloth, and a LOT of patience. Of course, having never specifically de-stickered something from a library, I can't say for sure what your results would be. This is one of those shows I keep hearing good things about, but can't really bring myself to watch due to length and obscurity (it's a lot of money to sink into a blind buy, even if it's heavily reccomended.) That and I'm pretty sure I'd have to turn it off due to disgust with the cast at some point... like, say, 'why would anyone put up that crap and not just transfer to another school? I KNOW there's other top schools in Japan!' That kind of thing. |
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justinhyll
 Posts: 10 Location: Bassett, VA |
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This anime is one of my favorites. I pick up all 12 volumes back in 2007. I'm glad I did then. I would like to see them do a remake of the anime again, but that probably want happen. I wounder how much I could get for the all 12 volumes if I wanted to sell them?
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Nights1stStar
 Posts: 8 |
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If you look at BoF as an accurate representation of women, might as well watch One Piece or Naruto as an accurate representation of men. We all want to be able to blast bad guys out of the sky, and shonen shows like those cater to those fantasies. But who thinks Naruto or Luffy is the epitome of what guys want to be? Let's age it up from shonen to seinen. Suppose we're talking about a "manlier", darker action show like Berserk. Guts is pretty good at fighting (understatement), and it would be cool to be as tough as him. But no one wants to live in a crazy, demon-ridden world where being as brutal as Guts is the only way to survive. We want to be as strong as Guts, but we don't want to be too much like him. Same with the main character of BoF. Who doesn't want to be able to completely charm their enemies to their side? But most girls know better than to fall in love with a guy who doesn't mind orchestrating your attempted gang rape. |
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Nights1stStar
Posts: 8 |
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As for the "new-weak-Asian-male" phenomona, let me shed some insight as a Chinese American on the far East Asian mentality. All Asians, male or female, are taught to generally follow the masses and be very obedient to superiors. This obedience extends to customer service, which is why your average Chinese waiters are the whole more servile than your average American waiters. This obedience is because of the "survival of the fittest" phenomona: If you're strong and powerful, you deserve the respect. If you're not, then you deserve the demeaning treatment.
However, this does not mean that Asians on the whole are weak, because "survival of the fittest" gives them more incentive to fight for themselves. They just have to be selective about their battles.For instance, a playground bully who torments other students probably won't be punished by the school if s/he gets good grades and is nice to teachers, because the faculty would believe that the bully's victims "brought it upon themselves" for not being able to defend themselves/standing out too much. But if the same bully's grades drop and s/he starts talking back to teachers in addition to bullying peers, the school will punish the bully, because tormenting your peers is considered a healthy exertion of strength and power, but disobeying your superiors is "not knowing your place". This extends from school into the working world. Competition in the workplace is angrier and more cutthroat. If you have a verbally abusive boss, you won't be able to fight back without getting punished/fired, but it'll be very socially acceptable to take out your anger by verbally abusing your own subordinates, or coming home to yell at your spouse. This is why countries like China and Japan tend to focus less on women's rights, worker's rights, domestic violence laws, and free speech, because their mentality is that if you don't know your place/can't defend yourself/disturb the peace, you probably deserve whatever fate you get. You just don't hear too much about the victims of these situations, because Asian societies dissuade complaining about your personal problems. For some reason, Americans seem to think that Asians are "more submissive" because of superior customer service/more obedience to superiors. They're wrong. Asian culture encourages submission to superiors, but reciprocates by encouraging competition and harsher treatment towards equals and underlings. |
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
 Posts: 1684 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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A few points...
First I did not say, nor mean to imply that ALL Asians are subservient or weak. I certainly know a few that could kick my ass both physically and psychologically. A few of them could probably blow up my head like in "Scanners." However, based on my personal observations there are simply a higher number of (and/or perhaps higher tolerance for) weak willed people of both genders. (Anime, in fact, tends to wallow in exaggerated versions of both.) People too timid to stick up for themselves, or so pathologically non-confrontational that they always end up with the short end of the stick. Maybe it's the American way, but I think American society tends to really discourage that sort of personality type. Not that the type doesn't exist here, but perhaps ours hide it more. (Please note that this is the opposite of my personality type, so I am totally guessing here. I'm the most confrontational person at ANN.  )
And while I don't expect any dramatic work, anime or otherwise, to be a perfect window into what a gender desires for themselves, I do think a mega-successful work with a protagonist that many women relate to might shed light in that direction. Which is why the ending is such a shock. My point was asking, if you think of Makino as your avatar in this fantasy (as girls are wont to do with such characters -- see some of the drama around Katara x Zuko pairings in Avatar: The Last Airbender) are you REALLY satisfied with this ending? And I think it's kinda funny that someone would try to correct my opinions on men. As a man, obviously I don't think we're ALL jerkbags. A fair blanket assessment of a group to which you belong is neither funny nor fun. PS: Right Stuf informs me that the Korean drama will soon be coming out on DVD here with English subs. |
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chrisb
 Subscriber Posts: 617 Location: USA |
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I found it refreshing that this series and Ai Yazawa series have semi-abusive relationships going on, it's not that I approve, it's just that it's a much more realistic portrayal that most relationships aren't perfect and people can be a-holes and sweethearts at the same time, and by the end they usually better themselves. The bishounen perfect girly boys suck in most series and tend to only appeal to the romantic 14 year old nerdy and scene girls... and some guys.
The ending would have been perfect had they left it with the episode prior to the finale, that was an excellent way for the series to finish off and leave room for people to continue the manga if they wanted. In the episode prior to the last (the episode with the best music and art) is incredibly well done overly dramatic, a lil touching and actually sad: spoiler[Tsukishi and Tsukasa decide that they will destroy eachother if they continue their love life so they decide to seperate in a very beautiful scene], heck even the final episode with its bittersweet first half would have been great if not for the half assed ending out of nowhere. For me the series ends at episode 50 and continues in the manga. Last edited by chrisb on Thu Aug 13, 2009 12:43 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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DSX
 Posts: 15 Location: Regina, SK |
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[quote="pachy_boy"]
Have you heard Nice Guys (tm)? Because that's exactly what this sounds like. Women watch out for these types of guys and actually find so called "jerks" and "predators" less of a turn-off than them. Here's some required reading: http://alturl.com/xhjg Using a second generalization about "all women" does not help your argument that Justin is making a generalization about "all men". And shoujo manga is not the best way to support a blanket idea about what real women want or are like. |
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pachy_boy
Posts: 1323 |
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I don't believe I used the word 'all' at all, but I guess I was still generalizing as well, and should've incorporated the word 'some'. When it comes to making a point or an understanding, I guess it's impossible for us to get totally away from generalizations, generally speaking of course.  And again, I was just proposing a theory.
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Cloe
Moderator
 Posts: 2728 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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This isn't all that pertinent to the discussion at hand, but your post reminded me of an interesting article about "herbivore" men in Japan, who abstain from careers and sex. I could never, EVER imagine that trend catching on in the states. Maybe the not-wanting-to-be-a-corporate-tool part, but never the sex part.
I view shoujo manga as an answer to the question of what young, inexperienced girls think they want. You're exactly right; it's a fantasy, but a fantasy informed by ideals that seem terribly innocuous. I'm pretty sure I bought the idea that Domyouji had become a better person and Makino was on a fast-track to happily ever after when I was 15, because hey! 15-year-old me was sure The Perfect Guy would always change for the better to please his lady. But looking at it from where I stand now is obviously a bit different. I can only speak from personal experience, but the moment I began having serious relationships (complete with enjoyable physical intimacy, as opposed to horrifically awkward high school experiences), my fascination with shoujo hyperdrama and bishounen went out the window. "Big, brutish, and occasionally smelly guys," with all of their charming imperfections, are much more attractive to me than their doe-eyed, gender-ambiguous drawn counterparts. The shoujo manga "playground" seems like exactly that to me: a kiddy play area. I lost track of where I was going with this. ^^; I guess I agree with you, sunflower, about shoujo manga being different from what women want in reality. What's hard for me to reconcile is the idea of the taking shoujo manga seriously (which pleeeenty of women do) while at the same time pursuing a realistic relationship. It just seems... counter-intuitive. On a different note... a whole article about Hana Yori Dango and not a single mention of the catchiest opening song of all time? For shame, Justin. ;p Last edited by Cloe on Thu Aug 13, 2009 3:24 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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belvadeer
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Um Justin, wouldn't brutish imply muscles? I think your definition is a bit off.
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ladyvoid
 Posts: 31 |
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Funny… unknowingly, I actually enjoyed a “domestically violent” shojo manga such as BoF and even Hot gimmick once in awhile, but this discussion is shedding some new light on how I perceive this sort of trend throughout manga. Sure, I’ve always been aware that unconsciously, the underlying message in BoF was “Do you dare disturb the universe? Join us instead!”, but I didn’t really pay it any mind until now. Maybe it’s my silly American mentality getting in the way, but I must admit, this idea of being uniform and treated as a group, not as an individual, is definitely… not how I tick, to say the least. In other words, it takes some getting used to.
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animefan4567
Posts: 1 |
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I have never lived in Japan so if anyone has better information on this subject please feel free to correct me if this is faulty in any way.
I have heard that the ideal Japanese man (traditionally) is someone who has a great deal of control over their emotions, even more so than in western cultures. So often they may "shy away" from expressing emotions or be more easily embarressed by it, but they are by no means weak. To use an anime example certain Shonen heroes such as Ichigo from Bleach typically embody this ideal. In some shonen manga they may even be completely oblivious to things like love entirely. A man's realm was success in the outer world and in providing for his family while the wife was expected to take up the domestic aspect of this. Where I am from I have heard the term "samurai man" be used to refer to a man who is used to having his wife do certain things for him (like cooking and cleaning) and who also speaks a bit roughly, though it's usually used jokingly. So I think the appeal in Domyouji isn't so much that he's a jerk, but that he's actually more shy about his emotions then he initially lets on. (Well, he is extremely stuck up but I digress) He becomes more capable as the story goes on and is actually quite adept in a superficial social enviornment. When he became interested in her, he was very polite toward her family even though he still looked down on them. Anyway that isn't supposed to excuse his violent habits, but he's not too different from other shojo leading men in the sense that deep down he's an ok guy who is willing to take care of his 'woman' when she's in trouble. Unfortunately relationships in a manga usually wouldn't work out so smoothly in real life. 
Edit: Er, strangely enough it isn't just young inexperienced girls who love this sort of story. There's a reason why this series generated three different spin offs in three different languages. There are also much older women that I know of who love this series. I found the original manga to be mostly entertaining and very typical of the shojo genre, but I honestly couldn't tell you exactly why this one has been so appealing for viewers all over the world. |
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KanjiiZ
 Posts: 661 Location: Central Coast |
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Great overlook, but why is this in the "Buried" section. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this a fairly well known series?
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