News

Boys Over Flowers Earns Guinness World Record for Most Published Shōjo Manga

Shueisha announced on Thursday that Guinness World Records has officially certified Yōko Kamio's Boys Over Flowers (Hana Yori Dango) manga as having the most published copies of a shōjo manga series written by a single author, with 59,409,000 copies printed and circulated as of November 2022.

The Boys Over Flowers manga followed 16-year old Tsukushi Makino, a bright girl from a middle-class family who gets accepted into the ultra elite Eitoku Academy. She finds herself on the bad side of the school's F4, the four most elite male members at the school.

The manga was adapted into a Japanese anime, a 1995 Japanese live-action film, and a more well-known 2005 Japanese television drama, the latter of which spawned a sequel and a hit film. Taiwan also remade the manga into a live-action university drama titled Meteor Garden. Crunchyroll streamed a Korean live-action adaptation in 2011. A Filipino adaptation was announced in November 2017, but it has not yet been released. Hunan Television produced a Chinese live-action series adaptation in 2018. Thai television production company GMMTV produced a new live-action series that premiered in 2021.

The manga also inspired a stage musical adaptation ran in Japan from January to February 2016. The all-female Takarazuka Revue adapted the manga into a new musical that ran in 2019.

Kamio's Boys Over Flowers Season 2 (Hana Nochi Hare ~HanaDan~ Next Season) sequel manga debuted in Japan on Shueisha's Shonen Jump+ website and app in February 2015, and ended last December. Viz Media published the manga as a free simultaneous digital release. The manga inspired a Japanese live-action television series that premiered in April 2018.

Source: Comic Natalie