Hana Yori Dango (Boys Over Flowers)

If you are new to Japanese drama, start with Hana Yori Dango — literally, Boys over Flowers. Originally a comic aimed at girls (shoujo), HYD first made it to the small screen as an animated show in 1996, before being recast in more human form — "live-action," or dorama — in 1995. More recently, it has been adapted by the Taiwanese and snazzed up by the Japanese. The second season of the Japanese adaptation just concluded, to squealing acclaim, in 2007. A high-budget movie is set to roll out this year to wrap up the Japanese series; but fret not, fellow adolescent (and prepubescent) HYD-addicts, for also bursting onto the scene are the Koreans with their own adaptation. For now, though, let's look at the Japanese remake.

Hailing as it does from the shoujo genre, HYD is unabashedly escapist. At the risk of over-generalizing, shoujo stories tend to be more nuanced studies in character than their shounen (boy-oriented) counterparts; fewer giant robots, more romance; less action, more talking. Here, our protagonist, Makino Tsukushi, a working-class girl with a singularly self-effacing name — Tsukushi, as she never fails to remind us, being a little pun on the Japanese for "weed" — attends a "elite" school for the rich. She doesn't fit in, of course, but perseveres for the sake of her family. The boys, on the other hand, are the F4 (Flower 4); the most overweeningly rich around, their flush coffers have given them carte blanche in the school. Their leader, Doumyouji, is that depressing combination of extreme power — his mother helms one of the biggest conglomerates in Japan — and extreme immaturity. Head-butting random strangers on the street appears to be his speciality. That, and harassing people at school.

Things boil over one day when Makino tries to defend her friend from F4's bullying, alone. She punches Doumyouji; he falls head over heels in love with her, and she, after the usual teenage angst and hesitation, with him; but his mother, quite understandably, objects. Drama ensues.

HYD is, admittedly, just fluff. But watching its characters saunter, drawl and lounge in simpering opulence — luxury coupes, to say nothing of the extravangant wardrobe, appear with startling frequency — transports us, as good escapist entertainment does, away from the mundane to the imagined, far from the weariness, the fever and the fret. Watch it in high-definition.

Quality sets aside, the acting ranges from the acceptable (the actress who plays Makino has evidently undergone tough training in the School of Impassive Female Leads) to superb. Doumyouji is played par excellence by Matsumoto Jun. Surely one of the few singers-turned-actors who can act as if they were actors-turned-singers, Jun deftly captures the various sides to Doumyouji: the brash exterior, the wild swings of mood from sullen violence to excited joy, the endearing sincerity, the foolish grin.

But good acting (or, considering how half of HYD's fans must be teen girls, cute boys) and lush sets by themselves will not account for its phenomenal success. What makes HYD particularly satisfying fluff is the way a universally translatable story — coming of age — is coupled with that strength of the shoujo genre, fine-brushed characterization. Makino, a number of the characters remark, has set the unhinged scion right on his feet; she, or rather, love, has matured Doumyouji. To examine your feelings for someone else is to examine yourself. But at the same time that we root for Makino and Doumyoji, we bite our lips as one F4 boy, a foppish dandy, casts his playboy act aside for true love; nod in sympathy as another loses his sweetheart; and chuckle as Makino's little brother plans, with Doumyouji's help, to ask a girl out for the first time.

But given how HYD has been reworked so many times, how does this latest Japanese effort shape up next to, say, the Taiwanese adaptation? I think it blows the latter out of the water. I grew up with the Taiwanese version, which catapulted its hitherto-unknown male cast to fame; it had one of the catchiest theme songs around, but even to a teenager's slightly less jaded sensibilities, the acting — by the male leads at least — was uniformly bland. Besides, nothing dates more than luxury. What was once held to be fairy-tale, or modishly fashionable, has to contend now with stifled yawns and cooler-than-thou derision.

Pop culture, it is said, celebrates the ephemeral, the short-lived fad, the one-hit band. If literature is a mug's game, then more so pop culture. But HYD, with its timeless story, with its swaggering four and the girl who dared, looks set to become, as oxymoronic as it sounds, a pop culture classic.