Hana yori Dango
Boys Over Flowers

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I hate this manga. I hate it so much. I read the first half of it Christmas 2020 and had to take a 6-month break from it to free myself from the endless suffering it caused me. But just like Tsukushi, I love toxic boys so I had to finish it. I love them. All of them. ur all terrible people. objectively bad. "oh they're teenagers tho" yeah ok but when I was in high school I wasn't plotting a fake rape prank on a girl who slightly scorned me. I don't even know if I am remembering that part right. all I remember is ... it being wack. also. I get it. drama. tension. blah. they should have fucked tho. tbh it would have done more for me than it would have for them. I needed that closure. but no she has a "cold" and "I'm suddenly a gentleman" fuck outta here. I could go one for hours. days. years. I hate it so much. its everything wrong with shoujo. but I mean. i would read it again. its like love island. trash yes. but I mean, its my trash. i love her, I hate her. do I like Tsukasa or do I wanna beat the shit out of him? to be decided. ALSO, THE WAY TSUKAKA GETS ALL MATURE AT THE END UH NO NOT THIS KID HEs not like that anyways 10/10 great hate read but also would be a lie to say that I didn't enjoy it and hold all the characters close to my heart

I decided to give Boys over Flowers a go considering it is the best selling shojo manga. The story starts with Tsukushi Makino, a high student from a lower income background, struggling to fit in at an elite school for the ultra rich. She ends up drawing the attention of the most popular boys in the school, the F4. Unfortunately for Tsukushi the attention is all negative and focused on trying to get her to leave the school. At this point in the story I really enjoyed Tsukushi as a character; she is determined, stubborn, and holds her own. Tsukasa, Rui, Sojiro, and Akira of ... the F4 are arrogant, have a playboy aura, and come across as spoiled from Tsukushi’s perspective. Kind of the traits I expected in a manga about rich boys from the 90s.
As the manga goes on each character seems to become a 2 dimensional representation of a couple traits and they lose anything that once made them unique. We never get much depth from Sojiro or Akira so their main focuses are being playboys or trying to get Tsukasa to lose his virginity. Rui fades into the background once the story shifts towards Tsukushi and Tsukasa’s relationship. Tsukasa has glimmers of a strong, brooding protagonist that constantly are overshadowed by his extreme violence. Tsukushi devolves into a naive girl who feels like she lost her spark.
Speaking of extreme violence, this manga sure has a lot of it. Perhaps that’s just due to its age, and while it doesn’t bother me that much, I don’t think it will sit well with every reader. These instances seem to be one the big ways the author creates drama within the series, but after a while it gets stale. At a certain point the story become so repetitive that I sped through the chapters as quickly as I could read just to finish the manga so I could read something else.
There were things I did enjoy about BoF though. The art at the beginning was so unique and detailed, especially the outfits and accessories of the F4. Rarely were there any outfit repeats which was so impressive. It has a great nostalgic style that I love. The art starts to lose detail and interesting backgrounds as the series goes on, but I’ve noticed that happen with other works as well. Some of the interactions with Tsukushi and Tsukasa were totally relatable and cute, and those became my favorite parts of the manga. I just wish the manga had a more satisfying ending considering its length. At the end I was left wanting a larger payoff after sifting through much of the bloated storylines.
Overall, I think Boys over Flowers is a great work of its time. However this is one I wouldn’t have felt guilty about looking up the ending once I got bored of the story.

This is my first review and not intended to be a review but a way to express my burning hatred for this series:

NOTHING happens in this godforsaken manga. All we get to see is the genuinely wonderful and likeable people that Makino COULD'VE ended up with but of course, she had to be with the arrogant, selfish, egocentric brat that had NO reedeeming qualities which the other characters try to explain why the way he is with wishy washy garbage. I just LOOOVEE boys who causes everyone in school to bully and humiliate me in public. nearly rape me and walk away when I'm being ... dragged by a car with my hands tied because he was ~insecure~. My experience reading this was beyond infuriating and I have to warn others to not be convinced with the title of "best selling shoujo manga of all time" like I was. To the never ending cliches and the wide array of unlikeable characters, I wish I could give my enjoyment score a 0.

I expected good things. Good things don't exist in Boys Over Flowers.

I have never hated a character as much as Domyouji Tsukasa. I am not good at articulating myself and I feel as if I cannot do my deep burning hatred for him justice but if you read the top 2 reviews which both give this series a very low score should help explain my feelings towards him. I started this series about 8 hours ago and he is the singular entity I despise with all my being.

It should be noted that I only read 14 volumes before I remembered I didn't have to waste my time reading this series. I could tell that this was going to be the same washed up sh*t every "arc".

tl;dr: the story goes nowhere, the characters never develop and domyouji is a infuriating piece of shit that i would literally give everything away for a chance to strangle him to death