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There are two types of shoujos. First you get what I call the Neo-Shoujo types (e.g. the works of Wataru Yoshizumi, of which you could say the comparable equivalent to Hana Yori Dango would be Marmalade Boy) and then you get what I call feminist-grounded Shoujo types (e.g. Nana). The former portrays an idealised version of love and focusses on romantic relationships and friendships. It's about dreams and hopes. The protagonists are perpetually in a state of innocence and carry the viewers in that fantasy. The other genre, by contrast, is more dark and down-to-earth where the protagonists do not believe in fairy-tales anymore (so ... to say) and is not in search of an idealised first kiss but rather of the next man to hump! Indeed the feminist-grounded shoujo always attempts to romanticise such illicit sexual intercourses to try to portray it as life realities. Dream and fantasy is not part of this genre which focusses more on the disillusions of life. Some of them should actually be classified as downright Josei - the female equivalent of hentai or Seinen.

Hana Yori Dango lies in between these two. On the one end it deals with the realities of life such as peer pressures, school bullying as well as sexual pressures which teenagers face; but concurrently it manages to fit all these within a cinderella-kind of fairy tale plotline with the rich prince and the poor princess kind-of-romance thing. The beauty of this is that it works - it makes us dream, cracking in our shoes, always wanting to see what's going to happen next or how things will turn out! So for instance amidst all the sexual pressures and other life depressing realities she has to confront, the heroine managed with a bit of luck to go through it all, remaining true to herself and achieving her dreams the way she wants! Isn't shoujo fantastic indeed!?!

Hana Yori Dango is one of those must see anime for all connoiseurs of manga/animes. There is a reason why it is the best-selling shoujo of all time and has been running for a period of 11 yrs! If you want to know why, well you know what to do!

[Ps. Be aware that Yoko Kamio's artwork is unique and is somewhat more generally realistically-inclined than the averaged animes or mangas out there. Hair colour ranges from dark to red, no blonde [except for "foreigners"] or fancy colour in between [e.g. no blue-haired aliens depicted], eyes are more proportionate to face, and nose and lips are somewhat included as opposed to the average common japanese animes! She also includes water-coloured style romaneque and picturesque landscapes. The author has done only two major works so far, of which only Hana Yori Dango has been animated, so it is unlikely you would be acquainted with her style. However notwithtanding, you should have no problem getting used to it once you get absorbed into the story and you will probably even develop a liking for it!]

The mixed reviews here are so polarised! Never has an anime generated so many negative reviews! So much that I felt compelled to shed some light on it:

WHAT IS GREEN GREEN ABOUT ANYWAY?
Answer: exactly what it says on the box -
1) Slice-of-life at a boarding school
2) Comedy (the like of American Pie - adolescents trying to get laid)
3) Romance and ecchi (nudity)

WHY PEOPLE HATE IT?
1) The anime has no plot. No it doesn't. Girls think boys are disgusting and unromantic loosers v/s boys try to get laid and/or find love. If you don't like slice-of-life then back off it's not for you.
...
2) The "Harem-ness" is deceiving. Despite what people says this is not an Harem of the like of Clannad, Air or Kanon, where one self-centred clueless idiot is invaded somehow by an unrealistic mob of female beauties and he has no clue what to do. First Green Green is a Slice-of-life, NOT AN HAREM - the airing time is divided among multiple characters, each of which different and evolves in different manners. Secondly the male leads in Green Green waste no time speculating nonesense but from the onset try to bed any girl they can get (including their teacher!). Thirdly at least 5 female characters emerged out of the crowd as leads in their own rights and they don't all go for the same man - they have different personalities and agendas.

3) "Ecchi-ness" - Yes it is ecchi but don't expect all girls to have D-size cups. Unlike conventional ecchi, the female bodies in there vary. Nudity occurs within a certain context (erotic-like e.g. in the bath) and not overtly unnecessarily (porn-like e.g. unnecessary pantyshots and bubbling boobs every 2 sec etc or girl got hit and her clothing falls apart!). Remember Ranma 1/2? So align your expectations accordingly! It is ecchi but might not be ecchi enough for you. On the other hand it is ecchi enough to disgust you if you don't like nudity or crude jokes in the first place!

4) It's gross. Yes it is. It's crude, and the jokes have sexual connotations. If you like only stuffs like Shugo Chara or Pokemon forget it, I suggest you navigate away instead of leaving bad comments!

POINTS WORTH MENTIONING:
1) Comedy. Sick humour Austin Powers' style within a school setting, not to everybody's liking but incredibly silly and FUNNY if you don't hate crude humour!
2) Character development. Yes although the boys pricipally differ in their degreee of perversity, the girls do have distinct personalities.
3) Although I said there's basically no plotline, there is the development of a romantic plot over the course of time.

PERSONAL COMMENTS:
This is school-context slice-of-life, the only reason people hates it it's because they either don't even like slice-of-life in the first place or they have an issue with the "ecchi"-ness of Green Green - it's either too much or too little for their taste!

Look at the poster again - can you see 3 large women? Good. One of them, the long red-haired one is a question mark. While she does vaguely resemble one useless character in the plot, whether it is she on the poster or not, either way both in the anime and on its poster the viewer is left thinking who and what the heck is she even doing in there?

In many respects this summarises the feelings you get after watching Interlude, whose plot doesn't fail to get you worked up with expectations but at the same time gives you a headach for the most ... part due to it being basically pointless. It is one of those animes where the authors tried too hard to twist things up but end up in the end getting twisted themselves with loose ends all over the place and leave the mess up for you to fill in the blanks, pretending all along there is somehow some great psychological logic behind it all which of course nobody grasped!

The reviews here are quite mixed. The problem with this is that some people aren't judging the series as a whole but tend to focus on the part they don't like e.g. the ending.

Objectively this is what you get: fan service in abundance during the fights and a long term plot line that links the episodes and keep the suspence on.

Personally I heve seen some ecchi flicks like Ah My Buddha and they usually consist only of fan service and NOTHING else which gets boring in the long run and waste people's time. In fact I found this one pleasant to watch and it ... was compelling enough to urge me to finish it.

What is it about? If you are asking yourself this question, and have never seen Saint Seiya, then this is definitely not for you.

Indeed this is only for Saint Seiya fans. Its basically a remake of the Hades saga but in an alternate universe. There are major changes in the plot composition though - enough changes to make it unpredictable enough. The characters cast are very different and fans will get an appreciation of the characters which have been traditionally left out or marginalised in the canonical Kurumada's original Saint Seiyas animes.

Effectively this seems like a reaction to fans's eternal complains about certain characters e.g. ... Jabu of unicorn, Aldebaran and Aphrodite of Pisces among others who are always, so to say, left out of the big picture. Here we do get a better appreciation of these Knights and their abilities, and also a fair amount of airing time is devoted to the other Gold Saints too.

The series seems to revolve around the previous holy war between the Hades camp and that of Athena, and often devolve into mini stories exposing the powers and personality of each Gold Saint and other important characters.

For Saint Seiya fan this will not fail to be a 10. But those who have not watched the whole of the Saint Seiya saga will somewhat lack the appreciation needed to fully enjoy this and could be bit lost and probably might find the battle meaningless and boring since they can't relate well to the characters.