Enfnts Terribles

Meteor Garden

Meteor Garden is a Chinese remake of the eponymous 2001 Taiwanese series. The story centers around Shancai, a middle-class Chinese girl. On her first day at Mingde University, she, unpleasantly, comes into contact with F4, the four most popular boys of her school. They’re all handsome, tall, smart, rich and usually very unreachable for a “commoner” like herself. She, however, manages to draw their attention, build a friendship and she even gets romantically involved with one of the guys. You go girl!

As we said in the introduction, after years of all-American series, it’s both weird and refreshing to watch a “made in China” TV show. We didn’t fully realize we got used to some sort of on-screen reality until later. A thing we found extremely odd is the fact that couples barely kiss, let alone have other kinds of physical contact. After 25 episodes, it almost felt like we were watching a children’s program. Besides that fact, Meteor Garden was fascinating and introduced us to a country and culture we’d like to know more about.

Side note: this show wins the award for best dressed male actors, by far! Props to the stylist.

Good Morning Call

Third on our list is the Japanese Good Morning Call, based on the eponymous shojo manga series. It tells the story about high school student Nao Yoshikawa who just moved into her own apartment when realizing she’s not the only one who rented it. One of the most popular guys at her school, Hisashi Uehara, apparently signed a contract for the exact same place. Because of both practical and financial reasons, they decide to live together even though it’s against the rules of their school.

Shojo manga mainly aims at a female teenage target group, which becomes clear when you watch Good Morning Call. Honestly, the series is very, very girly. Every time Uehara walks into the school it auditory feels like a Justin Bieber concert. Honestly, we still don’t really get whether the series is pro or against independent, strong women. In many ways it feels like Nao is just a stupid girl who blindly follows Uehara, even though he’s not even very kind to her. Despite this outdated behavior, she also often surprises us.

The reason why we watched Good Morning Call isn’t because of the interesting storyline or great protagonists, it’s out of pure curiosity towards a different on-screen culture. We’re familiar with some kinds of manga, but this is totally new to us. The way of acting often feels very strained, even a bit fake. Just like Meteor Garden, there’s hardly any physical contact amongst loved ones except for an occasional hug. To make a long story short: we’re glad we watched, but we’ll take a pass for the resee.

Side note: can someone please send Uehara to a decent hairdresser, thanks!

Photo credits: Meteor Garden, Baby and Good Morning Call