Hana yori Dango

This was one of the first 10 anime I ever watched. Since then, I have watched things like Fruits Basket, Attack on Titan, Tokyo Ghoul, My Hero Academia, Maid Sama, Love is War, Devilman Crybaby, My Dress Up Darling... just, plenty of varied anime from great to mediocre to new and old. I could go on. But three years after I watched this old anime, Hana Yori Dango, I am rewatching and getting more out of it the second time around. So I do recommend it.

The most interesting part of this anime is the character development of Tsukasa Domyoji ... and the evolution of the relationships between the characters.

There will be frustration experienced over the heroine's tendency to be drawn into comprising scenarios "unwittingly" but I can also relate to that as a female who is a people pleaser.

There will be discomfort in relation to Domyoji's awful actions and misogynistic bent towards abuse.

You will be annoyed by the characters and their actions. But this makes them relatable. I'm annoyed with myself more often than not. So... relateable.

If you're a fan of shoujo and romance, it's worth a watch.

It's bad.

Objectively, it's bad, but I really enjoyed it. It's a classic messy shoujo that will piss you off to no end, but it's so brainless that you end up feeling really relaxed while watching it and it's really fun to just sit back and pay half-attention to. There's some genuinely good character development and some likeable people, some really sweet moments, and some inconsistencies that will make you kind of insane.

If you like brain-rotting shoujo and need something less-than-serious to get your mind off of things, this show is perfect! Tsukushi will make you nuts, but you'll love her anyway. Have fun.

A romance that is not romantic at all

Hana Yori Dango was one of my worst anime experiences, mainly because it tricked me in the first 20 episodes. In the beginning, the anime offers an interesting plot, especially with the protagonist. However, to my surprise, everything broke down relatively quickly, here are, in my view, the main problems of the work:

-The "triangle": The love triangle of this anime does not make any sense, because simply, one of the 2 parts of the triangle is not interested in the protagonist, in fact, all the moments that this person directs in a more "loving" way with protagonist seemed ... to me out of pity, or for him to console himself from another novel. (It is a triangle because the protagonist is indecisive about which boy she likes)

-The characters: The protagonist at the beginning is very interesting, strong and courageous, but in the last 2/3 of the work she becomes petty, false and liar, unpalatable. The men in this anime are even worse, one of them is a bully who, believe me, RAPES the protagonist, well, if you consider that the other only used the protagonist when she was fragile, it is also rape ... It is worth mentioning that because of the bully she suffers at least 4 times physical aggression, I just don't understand what the author had in mind.

-She didn't love him: I won't say who she stays with, but for me she didn't love him at all, just looked at the other, she didn't even say once that she loved him in 51 episodes! Not in appearance either, whenever she was with him she seemed in a bad mood. So, the main point of the anime, romance, for me, didn't exist.

-The manga Vs the anime: When I finished the anime I was so nervous, and I found out that the ending in the manga was different, so I read the last chapters and damn it! It's totally different from the anime, the chemistry between the characters was absurdly better, I don't know what happened to make these changes in the anime, in short, do you want to know the story? Read the manga.

-Visual and audio waste: I really like the anime songs (minus the opening) but the violin pieces were beautiful, the visual was beautiful too, the design of the characters was exactly the style I liked, unfortunately, wasted in a horrible story.

A story with a lot of potential, but that the immaturity of practically all the characters of the work, spoils it.