Hana Yori Dango (officially translated as Boys Over Flowers) is a shojo manga series written and illustrated by Yoko Kamio. It was serialized in Margaret magazine by Shueisha from October 1992 to September 2003. Boys Over Flowers was also released as 36 stand-alone volumes from 1992 to 2004. Later in June 2008, Kamio released an epilogue as issue no. 37 to the original series. A sequel titled “Hana Nochi Hare: HanaDan Next Season” was then serialized in Shueisha’s digital magazine Shonen Jump+ from February 2015 to December 2019.

The manga gained huge popularity and won the 41st Shogakukan Manga Award in the shojo category. As of 2015, Boys Over Flowers reached a whooping 61 million in volume sales and has become the best-selling shojo manga of all time.

Boys Over Flowers was adapted into various mediums, many were produced even before the manga series finished. It was adapted into a 51-episode anime series from 1996 to 1997 by Toei Animation and was broadcasted by Asahi Broadcasting Corporation.

Following the success of anime adaptation, Boys Over Flower was made into a live-action feature film and released in Japan in 1995. From 2001 to 2002, the Taiwan adaptation of the manga was released as a 2-season TV drama series. From 2005 to 2007, a trilogy of two TV drama series and one feature film were released by TBS, starring Arashi’s member Jun Matsumoto as Tsukasa Domyoji. The South Korean adaptation was released as a TV series in 2009 by KBS2 and gained world-wide recognition. Other countries’ adaptations of Boys Over Flowers each achieved considerable success in its market, such as the Chinese TV series in 2018 and 2010, the Indian TV series from 2014 to 2018, and the Indonesia series from 2017 to 2018. The latest adaption is Thailand’s TV series titled “F4 Thailand: Boys Over Flowers” set to release in December 2021.

The story of Boys Over Flowers started with the main protagonist Tsukushi Makino on her way to school. She was attending a famous and prestige private high school – Eitoku Academy in Yamanote, Tokyo.

Tsukushi would always braid her hair and put on a calm demeanor to get through daily life at school. She and her friend Makiko Endo were both from middle-class families, unlike the majority of students at Eitoku Academy. When Tsukushi and Makiko were talking, they saw one of the girls in school got dropped off by her driver in an expensive car. The girl was donning a new luxury bag and called out Tsukushi for her ordinary appearance.

In class, one of Tsukushi’s classmates Kimoto was packing up his belongings to leave. That was his last day at school. Kimoto was a bright and popular male student but as he stood up to a group of famous students called the “F4” to defend his friend, Kimoto was bullied by the whole school. He was bullied so badly that he lost weight and looked lifeless on his last day.

Tsukushi has heard of F4 and hated the way they control students and faculties alike. F4 was a gang of four male students who were children of Japan’s wealthiest families. The four of them were beautiful like “flowers”, hence the nickname “F4”.

When Kimoto was bullied, Tsukushi didn’t have the courage to help him. Even though she felt bad, Tsukushi thought of her parents and how she was forced to enroll at Eitoku to compete with the other families from her father’s company. Thus, Tsukushi resolved to keep quite and stay unnoticed until her graduation.

Feeling all the pent-up frustration, Tsukushi ran to an emergency staircase and yelled out loud, calling her classmates “stupid fools”. Unseen by Tsukushi, a member of F4 Rui Hanazawa witnessed the spectacle and called her “amazing”.

After school, Tsukushi and her classmates were cleaning the classroom when a student accidently got dust on Tsukasa Domyoji's pants. Tsukasa was the F4's leader and he ordered that student to blow the dust away and even knocked over a trashcan on his way out.

Rui stayed behind to pick up the trashcan and looked at Tsukushi briefly. She blushed and realized that Rui was different than the rest of F4.

At work, Tsukushi told her friend Yuki Matsuoka about what happened at school. Yuki said that Tsukushi was really different than how she was at middle school as Tsukushi used to help and defend others in need.

The following day, Tsukushi and Makiko was walking to music class together. Makiko slip and fell down a flight of stairs. She landed right on Tsukasa, who immediately refused to just accept her apology and got furious.

Tsukushi stood up for Makiko and blurted out insults against Tsukasa. She arrived at school the next day to find the F4's notorious red slip in her locker. They have declared war on her!

Makiko began avoiding Tsukushi even though she helped her before. Later, an angry Tsukushi decided to fight back against the F4. She let down her hair and gave each member of the F4 a red slip of her own, saying “This is my declaration of war!”.

How will Tsukushi stand up to the notorious F4? Will she win or will she lose this seemingly hopeless battle?