Hana Yori Dango / Season 2 : 5 of 5

A great way to take breaks from studying Japanese all day is to watch an episode of a Japanese drama, so suddenly I'm already finished watching the second season of Hana Yori Dango! I really enjoyed the first season, so I was looking forward to finding out what could happen next. The first episode is double-length to kick things off, and even takes place mostly on location in New York City, but unfortunately I thought it was disappointing (just like the first episode of the first season), since it was filled with too many boring flashbacks to last season. Thankfully, every other episode really delivered, and now I think overall that the second season is much better than the first! The main plot this time has to do with a marriage forced by Tsukasa's witch mom as a business ploy for a corporate merger, so while Tsukasa is busy with his fiancee Shigeru, Tsukushi has lots of time to spend with Rui (who I still like more than Tsukasa as a character). Shigeru starts off disgusting but eventually becomes a fascinating personality, but besides this main thread, there are loads of subplots to flesh out the other characters. I loved the story of Tsukushi's brother's kokuhaku, as well as Yuki's love for Nishikado. The end of the season gets a little weird with a convenient "selective memory loss" plot, and introduces a new cutie named Umi-chan, but she turns out to be the most evil of them all! Finally everything wraps up a little too perfectly, but when you're sitting there crying in front of the TV, you don't really care! In the end, both seasons of Hana Yori Dango were so much fun to watch, and I'm definitely going to miss it now (but I'm going to check out First Kiss soon so I can see more of Inoue Mao)!