keiko fayola

Before Meteor Garden, I had a craze for Korean "Boys Over Flowers" which had started to subside after a few months but still, it remained the top drama on my 'favorite list'. I don't know how many days I had spent trying to find a 'recent' drama like it. So Meteor Garden was an absolute blessing for me! With all the fresh faces and the young actors, it helped me come out of the original addiction I had for the Korean version. But still, there are the pros and cons of everything. While I was watching 'kkotboda Namja', I wasn't able to pinpoint the ups and downs much but after watching 'Meteor Garden', I was better able to spot some common ones: *Shinhwa Academy/ Mingde University: While the actors in 'Kkotboda Namja' were shown to study in a high school, they looked nowhere like school students. Whether it was their faces or their figures, I realized that they appeared to be quite old for school students and while the characters in 'Meteor Garden' are shown to attend a university, they look nowhere near university students, except for Mei Zuo. Yeah, he's the only one who looks old among them. I think the cast in Meteor Garden should have gone to a school and the cast in 'Kkotboda Namja' should have gone to a university. *Clothes and Wardrobe: While the choice of dresses in "the Korean version was outstanding and elegant, they made the cast look a whole lot older. Ji-hoo's all-out white made him look like a grown-up saint while Goo Jun Pyo's rich clothes made him look like a demonic CEO already. Whereas, Yi-Jung and Woobin who were portrayed as young playboys, appeared to be dressed as middle-aged sugar daddies. And, Geum Jandi? She looked cute when she dressed up but her makeup seemed to bring out her real age into her face. Now onto Meteor Garden, I had a love-hate relationship with their dresses. Good things first: none of their dresses made them look older than their age, and I was thankful for that. Whether they were party dresses or casual wears, they suited their ages. Another thing, the dresses which the F4 wore to elite occasions made them look much more handsome, a case which was absolutely non-existent with the Korean version where the F4 was always seen wearing coats and pants, so there was not much difference when they dressed up for parties. Meteor Garden's F4 took the ground there. But what I didn't understand was again what the hell was on with their casual dresses? At times it felt like they were wearing their sisters' or girlfriends' shirts. What was the deal up with long shirts and equally long coats? And, not to mention the oversized blazers and jackets, sometimes it felt like Dao Ming Si was the heir of some mafia with all that oversized blazers on his figure. More than that, sometimes it felt like their shirts were loosely hanging rags. Except for their shirts, I liked their shoes, pants, sweaters and everything else. *Portrayal of Poverty: Where Geum Jandi looked at least a bit short on money and poor, whose family was 'really shown' to barely make ends meet, Shancai's family setup was nowhere near that. Except for the small house, it was like their poverty was much more highlighted by dialogues than the actual setting. The very first thing that annoyed me was the 'touch-screen mobiles' that Shancai and her mother owned and also the same brand that F4 had. How was it even possible? Unless Shancai's dad some shady business that was not supposed to be discussed or the crew in the whole had some rare obsession with those mobiles that they didn't care whether Shancai was poor or not, she ought to have it and not just one but two!