By: Nayely Deleon
When Shancai, the female lead of Meteor Garden, entered college, she never thought she would get caught up in a love triangle between two of the most popular guys at school.
Meteor Garden is a Chinese television series based on the wildly popular Japanese manga series, Hana Yori Dango, which has been made into Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese television series. It first aired on July 9, 2018 and is available on Netflix with new episodes released each week. Over 40 episodes will be released by the end of the summer with subtitles available.
This highly anticipated drama does not fail to capture the hearts of many fans, including mine.
The show revolves around a girl named Dong Shancai who begins her college journey at the elite Mingde University where she majors in nutrition. After standing up to F4, a rich and powerful group of 4 seniors, she gains their respect and captures the leader of the group, Daoming Si’s, attention.
The show follows a Cinderella-like love story. Daoming Si, who comes from a wealthy and renowned family, risks his life to win over Shancai, who comes from a working class family.
Although Shancai is portrayed as painfully dense and is often put through various unrealistic situations, she values friendship and is protective of her friends. For example, after hearing that her best friend, Jiang Xiao You, was last seen outside during a blizzard, Shancai rushed out and spent hours trying to find her despite nearly freezing to death.
Even though not all the scenes are very realistic, this is what classifies the show as a drama. Without these dramatic scenes, the plot would be boring and dull.
The acting—although a bit overdone—is fairly impressive and makes it easy to understand how the characters are feeling. The camera angles, quality, and cinematography are also top-notch. In a must-see scene that continues to baffle me, Shancai sends a flying kick to Daoming Si’s head. The shot freezes their positions and the cameras move around them, making it seem like time has stopped.
“What I love is that—in this version—I can actually tell that the male lead really likes the female lead… He’s clearly got personality issues and doesn’t know how to communicate (not a surprise if you’ve seen the other versions), but I find myself liking him a bit more,” said a fan on My Drama List’s review section of Meteor Garden.
Some may argue that the show’s plot progresses very quickly in the first few episodes, however that “prevent[s] it from being draggy and we [are] already met with iconic scenes in just the first episode… [these changes] actually made it better,” says Gab Agar from Drama Panda.
Since the show has not finished airing, it has lots of potential and many fans—including myself—sit at the edge of our seats waiting to find out what happens next. So far, Netflix has released 20 episodes. New episodes are released Tuesday-Thursday.
Americans do not usually watch Asian dramas. Whether that is because the drama is in a different language, the plot is too traditional, or simply because the program was not produced in the U.S, people are definitely missing out.
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