Korean Hana Yori Dango—ayanaritsuno!
May 12, 2009 by the-anime-in-me
It was the farthest possible thing from my mind but last night, since YanYan went to sleep early and peacefully (mainly due to her cough medicine), I got myself ready in front of my hubby’s laptop which, ironically, is situated right in front of the television (how’s that for multi-tasking!) in order to watch Code Geass when my hubby flipped channels and announced that the “Boys Over Flowers” is now airing on ABS-CBN. Curious, mostly because I am so totally in love with the HYD franchise having watched every version possible (actually there were only 2 versions before, so sue me), I condescended to watch the first eppie. What a major disappointment.
The Korean version, apart from the annoying fact that it had very little semblance plot-wise with the manga, is nothing but a crappy, trying-hard rendition of a well-known classic. Forget the fact that it is dubbed in atrocious Tagalog (I could watch the original version online anyway), the whole series is a total wipe-out from the very first eppie. The girl they used to play Makino Tsukushi was overdoing the role it sucked big-time. She was shouting so much I had to lower the volume so as not to wake up Yan-Yan who was sleeping in our room (our last yaya borrowed money and went on a trip to Neverland so there ya go—the whoop-de-whoop of parenthood). As for the Korean F4 version, I truly believed that the idiotic producer of the series concentrated only on putting up a more “kawaii” looking F4 than the Japanese and Taiwanese versions. Given: the guys have the looks, but the acting? Let’s not go into details lest you want to throw up your lunch.
In fine, I think the HYD franchise is overused and over-produced. It was enough that a Japanese version came out after the Taiwanese one seeing that the latter made a lot of deviations from the manga, chracterization-wise. Having another, this time completely distorted version is really saturating the whole thing. In any case, the Korean HYD sucks and if anybody would contradict me on this or get offended by my assessment, bully for you. This is MY opinion and nothing short of a phenomenal disaster can change it.
In any case, Yan-Yan’s growing up exceptionally fast and getting unbelievably cuter and feistier with each passing day. Soon, she will be able to join Mommy and Tito Cymark with their evening anime marathons (yay!!!) and Mommy and Daddy with their weekly jdorama fever (double yay!!!). Soon, she’ll learn than anime will make everyone happy and jdoramas are the best series to watch and learn from. Soon, she’ll be loving Matsujun as much as Mommy though Jun-kun will be totally ancient by that time, but hey, Yan-Yan will have Johnny’s Jr. to look forward to. Soon, Yan-Yan will be reading this post and nodding her pretty little head saying, “So desu ne, okaachan.” ^_^.
