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Hana Yori Dango

Flying dango: Unique tourist site where Japanese sweets are flown to you over a gorge

A touching memory that’ll last a lifetime. 

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Legendary shojo manga classics get reprints as miniature capsule toys with full-volume contents

Small packages contain a huge dose of girls’ comics history and nostalgia.

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Dango samurai swords appear in Tokyo’s Harajuku, so Mr Sato heads out to try them

Crazy long sweets are about to take over your Instagram and TikTok feeds, but are they worth eating?

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The one place in Japan where you can buy epic, super-long dango sweets

Sword-like sweets take the phrase “hana yori dango” to a whole new level.

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Japanese netizens list their top 10 choices for ’90s anime remakes — What’s your pick?

Now that we’re two decades on from the ’90s, what shows would you like to see receive a modern day make-over?

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Tokyo’s Hana Yori Dango cafe features cool 3-D art panels of anime hunks and special desserts

We’ve recently seen a pair of Sailor Moon-themed dining options appear in Tokyo, allowing fans to wrap themselves in the hit franchise’s atmosphere as they enjoy a bite to eat. But if your anime and manga tastes run more towards beautiful boys than magical girls, now there’s a place for you too, at the new Hanai Yori Dango Cafe in Tokyo’s Shibuya.

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You’d be hard-pressed to find a girls’ manga with a broader or more international fanbase than Hana Yori Dango. Also known as Boys Over Flowers, Hana Yori Dango ran as a serialized comic for more than a decade in addition to having a popular anime version that aired in the late 1990s. That was just the beginning of its multimedia franchise, though, as the series was later remade as a live-action TV and film series in Japan, with separate, locally produced versions for Taiwan and Korea as well.

One place Hana Yori Dango hasn’t gone yet, though, is the stage. That’s changing next year, though, with a Hana Yori Dango musical that’s holding open auditions to cast its female lead.

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A complaint commonly lobbed against manga made for young men is that the main character is just a blank slate for the reader to project himself onto, allowing him to vicariously live out his fantasies. That may be oversimplifying things quite a bit, but it’s also hard to deny that many male Japanese comic heroes possess three traits that men almost universally aspire to, namely being strong, cool, and surrounded by women in incredibly short skirts.

But what about women who are manga fans? If given the chance, which female character would they like to be?

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The top 10 manga to live-action adaptations【Ranking】

Sometimes fans groan when they hear that their beloved book is going to be made into a movie. Manga fans often have the same reaction when they learn that their favorite manga will be turned into a live-action film or drama adaptation. But not all of these adaptations turn out to be cringeworthy. Readers on one Japanese website chose the best live-action adaptations of popular manga. Do you agree with their ranking?

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American casting for Hana Yori Dango (Boys Over Flowers) TV series receives harsh Japanese criticism

Starting this November, the first episode of a new romantic young adult series, Boys Before Friends, will be released to American audiences. The series is based on Japan’s hit manga, Hana Yori Dango (aka Boys Over Flowers). Already, the series has inspired the creation of anime, novels, and live action television dramas from Japan, Korea, and China. However, what should be a highly anticipated American adaptation of this much appreciated manga is encountering a lot of skepticism, especially from the Eastern side of the globe. It makes sense that some changes have to be made to implement an American setting for this Japanese tale, but how much change can the story endure before the tone of the original is totally lost?

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