Meteor Garden and Hana Yori Dango: Similarities and Differences (masterpost)
The new Meteor Garden 2018 is set to be aired in August, so I've decided to watch Meteor Garden in preparation. I've seen Meteor Garden when I was very little, and everyone talked about it in school, so I had a vague memory of it, but I couldn't bring myself to watch it because the 2 seasons would total about 61 episodes and that's like watching Hana Yori Dango seasons 1 & 2 thrice (I've seen it loads more times in this lifetime, just rewatched it a month ago, it is my intro to J-drama and my favorite of all so I'll probably be biased) but yeah now I've decided to really watch Meteor Garden even if I could only find it in 480p online. So for the love of the franchise, I've decided to compare both versions, not to judge and debate which one is better, but since I haven't read the manga and these dramas are both based on that, I could see which ones were consistent throughout both adaptations, which ones were unique, cultural adaptations etc. This entry is basically a passion project and will probably be pretty long, detailed and updated as I make my way through Meteor Garden so I will split it per Meteor Garden episode. I will link comparisons of all episodes here. I have only screencaps of Meteor Garden for now but I'll update it with the HYD version soon for comparison.
So this is one of the first big differences I first noticed:
Makino's funny younger brother Susumu is not present in Meteor Garden. Shan Cai is the only child in their household.I was very disappointed because Susumu adds a lot of humor to the episodes. However Shan Cai's parents more than make up for it with their hilarious antics. The inside of Shan Cai's house looks huge compared to Makino's though. Rent in Japan must be crazy expensive.
Shan Cai and Xiao You work in a cake shop called Italian Tomato. Makino and Yuki-chan work in a dango shop (hence the title). Okami-san and her romantic escapades are not represented in the Taiwanese version.
Yuriko and her 2 friends are replaced by only 2 mean girls in MG, Qian Hui and Bai He. This doesn't necessarily mean that they are less mean. They seem to throw themselves less at the F4 though in my opinion. At a party, they just aimed for any rich guy present whereas Yuriko and the gang have clear F4 members targeted and are consistently throwing themselves at them.
As far as I know, Qing He isn't in HYD. I try to think of a character to compare to him, but I just can't figure it out. I'll not include Qing He scenes because they're all obviously differences as there wasn't a character like him in HYD.
Also, in HYD Nishida is mostly Domyouji Kaede's secretary. But in MG, Roger as the manservant takes care of the household and since Dao Ming Si's always alone at home, he serves mostly him whereas Nishida is mainly reporting to Kaede's orders. Which leads me to another point. In HYD, Tsukasa only has a mother. We don't know what happened to his dad, but he's never there and very rarely mentioned. In fact I think we all presume he's dead.
And! Dao Ming Si drives himself and takes taxis. Tsukasa is always chauffeured around.
Episode 1
So this is one of the first big differences I first noticed:
Makino's funny younger brother Susumu is not present in Meteor Garden. Shan Cai is the only child in their household.I was very disappointed because Susumu adds a lot of humor to the episodes. However Shan Cai's parents more than make up for it with their hilarious antics. The inside of Shan Cai's house looks huge compared to Makino's though. Rent in Japan must be crazy expensive.
Shan Cai and Xiao You work in a cake shop called Italian Tomato. Makino and Yuki-chan work in a dango shop (hence the title). Okami-san and her romantic escapades are not represented in the Taiwanese version.
Yuriko and her 2 friends are replaced by only 2 mean girls in MG, Qian Hui and Bai He. This doesn't necessarily mean that they are less mean. They seem to throw themselves less at the F4 though in my opinion. At a party, they just aimed for any rich guy present whereas Yuriko and the gang have clear F4 members targeted and are consistently throwing themselves at them.
As far as I know, Qing He isn't in HYD. I try to think of a character to compare to him, but I just can't figure it out. I'll not include Qing He scenes because they're all obviously differences as there wasn't a character like him in HYD.
Also, in HYD Nishida is mostly Domyouji Kaede's secretary. But in MG, Roger as the manservant takes care of the household and since Dao Ming Si's always alone at home, he serves mostly him whereas Nishida is mainly reporting to Kaede's orders. Which leads me to another point. In HYD, Tsukasa only has a mother. We don't know what happened to his dad, but he's never there and very rarely mentioned. In fact I think we all presume he's dead.
And! Dao Ming Si drives himself and takes taxis. Tsukasa is always chauffeured around.
Episode 1