Boys Over Flowers Sets Guinness World Record for Being the Shōjo Manga with the Most Publications

On Thursday, Shueisha made an announcement that Yoko Kamio’s manga series Boys Over Flowers (also known as Hana Yori Dango) has been certified by Guinness World Records as the shōjo manga series with the highest number of published copies by a single author. As of November 2022, 59,409,000 copies of the manga have been printed and circulated.

Boys Over Flowers follows the story of Tsukushi Makino, a 16-year-old girl from a middle-class family who gets admitted to the prestigious Eitoku Academy. However, she quickly finds herself on the wrong side of the school’s most powerful male group, the F4.

The manga has been adapted into various forms of media, including a Japanese anime, a 1995 live-action film, and a 2005 television drama which became a hit and had a sequel and a film. The manga was also remade into a Taiwanese live-action university drama called Meteor Garden, and a Korean live-action adaptation was streamed on Crunchyroll in 2011. A Filipino adaptation was announced in 2017 but has not been released yet. A Chinese live-action series adaptation was also produced by Hunan Television in 2018, and a new live-action series was produced by Thai television production company GMMTV in 2021.

The manga also inspired a stage musical adaptation in Japan in 2016 and was adapted into an all-female Takarazuka Revue musical in 2019.

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