Never enough Boys Before Flowers

[seichan]

Boys Before Flowers (꽃보다 남자) 1! the kdrama version of Hana Yori Dango or the fifth incarnation of Yoko Kamio's neverending cash cow. And why do we watch?...for the hot boyz.
Doumyouji Group = Shinhwa Group
Makino Tsukushi = Geum Jan-Di - does not initially go to school with the F4
Tsukasa Doumyouji = Goo Joon-pyo
Rui Hanazawa = Yoon Ji-hoo
Soujiro Nishikado = So Yi-jung
Akira Mimasaka = Song Woo-bin
(not listing the actors, but you can find them here.


Quick summary ~ We open with Makino/Jan-di delivering dry cleaning to a victim of the F4 who is about to commit suicide who actually jumps, surprisingly enough. The actress playing Jan-di isn't very pretty, but she acts well enough. Jan-di gets accepted into the Shinhwa school as a result of the publicity she gets from saving the suicide attempter (Joon-pyo's mother's manipulation). There aren't too many significant changes to the original story. The girls' skirts are shorter at this school.

Soujiro/Yi-Jung is a potter...haha. The school bitches, Ginger, Sunny and Miranda, are actually funny...with their 'Oh-my-god'. I enjoyed the fact that Tsukasa/Joon-pyo was playing darts 2 steps away from the dart board. Anyway, Jan-di starts school, stands up to the F4, gets a red card, gets bullied, and falls for Rui/Ji-hoo. There was no infamous punch scene in the first episode.

Quick impression ~ Not sure that I want to watch this story for the 4th time (skipped the tw version), but it has some corny moments that made me laugh. The production was pretty good; on par with the jdrama. The actors do appear very much like the original characters. I have to be critical of the hot pink makeup that many random people are wearing. It sorta looks like clown makeup especially on Jan-di.

Here's a quick look back at the previous versions.

Matsujun made the jdrama worth watching. Lee Min Ho who plays Joon-pyo didn't stand out too much, but I will try episode 2 to see if he can outdo Matsujun's Doumyouji.