Meteor garden(2018) C-drama review

This was my first Chinese drama and honestly I fell in love. The series had been on my to watch list for the longest time, but I admit it took me time to get out of my comfort zone (k-dramas), also the fact that it had almost 50 episodes didn’t do a good job of convincing me, but once I watched it, I wished I could’ve given myself a hug cause it was so frigging good.

Watching meteor garden for the first time, I had no idea that it was based on an original, I kept on wondering why it was so similar to boys before flowers, turns out boys before flowers, one of my all-time favorite k-dramas was not an original either. At first I was like, ‘’why is this series shamelessly copying boys before flowers?’’ then I did some research and found out there were many other versions. I hope the original scriptwriter is getting money from all the versions that have been made.

Where do I even begin? I got attached to this drama really quickly, like I would randomly find myself saying ‘’ Daoming Si !! ‘’ in Shancai’s voice, just because, and swooned over Dylan Wang and his personality, when I was done with this series I felt like I had lost a really good friend or something.

I’m glad they didn’t spend much time on the whole bullying the main girl saga, because it’s something I always disliked about boys before flowers. Even though Shancai didn’t get bullied, I feel like the scene where Daoming Si basically sexually harasses her was very uncalled for, even though it was in the original meteor garden.

I don’t usually do this but once I was done with the show, I watched basically any behind the scenes of Dylan Wang and Shen Yue I could find because they had such amazing chemistry, and I know most Asian shows have leads like that. But I felt this one more than others.

This show was the first time I cried to an Asian series; they usually never hit me hard. It was the episode in London where they decided to spend a day together before they had to break up, specifically the restaurant scene where Shancai was quoting something he said. It wasn’t that emotional, but I cried like a frigging baby, that’s what solidified my stance on how amazing the series was.

I’m only going to do a character deep dive on the leads, and the second male lead;

Daoming Si: Dylan Wang completely blew away all my expectations, being that BBF was the only version I had watched, I held him up to Goo Jun pyo standards, but now I know how wrong that was because he was his own person, and really different from Jun-pyo. I love how much he loved Shancai, and he had me laughing throughout this series. Have I mentioned that he has a really amusing smile? Not in a bad way. Throughout the series I honestly could not take my eyes of him, it was like he was born to play Daoming Si, his little tantrums, him being emotional and all. I cannot imagine anyone else playing that role. I don’t have the words to describe how much I liked his personality, but I’m really eager to see him in another series, hopefully in the near future.

Dong Shancai: First of all, I really like her accent, it’s a weird thing to say but I did. I like how she stood her ground despite Daoming Si’s many efforts, she allowed herself time to get to know him and fall in love, I get that’s an advantage of the many episodes, we got to see them develop as people, although Daoming Si pretty much stayed the same lol. I could not keep count of the amount of boys that liked her, if I’m not mistaken it was about 4, I mean mood. She’s a beautiful person and did a great job in playing Shancai.

Huaze Lei : I know a lot of people got second male syndrome from him but honestly I just found him annoying, like when he told Shancai to turn off her phone, and let Daoming Si run around looking for her. I know he had good intentions, but I just found it plain annoying, but I like how he was a good friend to Shancai and didn’t try to come between her and Daoming Si.

I couldn’t end this without talking about the wedding, it was soo weird, Zhuang had a whole performance and I was just lost throughout, but the weirdness made it really funny.

Now for the moment of truth…

Boys before flowers or Meteor garden(2018)

*Drum roll*

I cannot choose!! On one hand, boys before flowers was the first ever Korean series I watched, I fell in love with Jun Pyo, and the storyline had me hooked, it will always be special to me. On the other hand, meteor garden was like an improved version, and I cannot stress how much Daoming Si’s personality made me laugh. So I’m basically caught between a rock and a hard place. But for anyone who’s watched both, subscribe and email me which you prefer.

Overall I would give the series a 8.5/10. Because it had me addicted, among other things.