ABSTRACT
Meteor Shower is based on Hana Yori Dango (Boys over Flowers), which is a Japanese shōjo manga that was written and illustrated by Yoko Kamio in a bi-weekly Japanese magazine from October 1992 to September 2003. It is a love story among four boys from super rich families, who are named the Flower Four (or F4) Group, and a girl from a grassroots background, who is named the “weed.” These characters attend an elite high school that was founded by the families of the F4. As expected, the lure of the drama is the stark contrast between the family and class backgrounds of the lover. Having sold 54 million copies by 2005 in Japan and Asia, Hana Yori Dango was a big hit and was translated into several languages. In 2001, the manga series was first adapted in Taiwan as the drama Meteor Garden, which created the fad of youth-idol drama in Asia. It thus became a classic and a pioneering example of how a locally made cultural production could become popular in the Asian region. At least 500 million people watched this Taiwanese version, which included dubbed subtitles. It was broadcasted in 16 countries and districts. The four leading actors in the drama became extremely popular, and the trend of the young boy idol eventually evolved into the current Asian idol-star market. The original manga and the televised productions were later adapted in other Asian regions: Hana Yori Dango in Japan in 2005, Boys over Flowers in South Korea in 2009, and Let’s Watch Meteor Shower (Liuxing Yu) in China in 2009.
