Photo: Sina Weibo

Chinese netizens expressed their excitement after Japanese TV station Fuji TV announced on Monday that it was collaborated with Chinese streaming platform Youku on a Japanese adaptation of the Chinese romance TV drama Love O2O.

The Japanese version will be called Cinderella is Online and star Japanese actresses Riho Nakamura and Toshiki Seto. The show will tell a love story about a college student who falls in love with her handsome senior schoolmate through an online game. 

The hashtag "Japan remade Love O2O" has earned 210 million views on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo. Many Chinese netizens discussed whether the Japanese version would make big changes to the original version, and express their anticipation to see the story told with a Japanese style. 

"The story in the Chinese version is very sweet. I am looking forward to learning whether the Japanese version will have a different local style," one Chinese netizen wrote on Sina Weibo.

China has released both TV and film versions of Love O2O, both of which were based on the novel of the same name by writer Gu Man. The drama was one of the most watched modern Chinese dramas in 2016, earning more than 25 billion views online, according to reports.

The film version starred Yang Ying and Jing Boran, while the TV show starred Zheng Shuang and Yang Yang. The latter also aired in Japan in 2017, where it earned high compliments from Japanese netizens. 

"I wonder why they want to challenge a drama that cannot be surpassed," one Japanese netizen commented on Twitter.

According to reports, the new drama will be 10 episodes long and air on Fuji TV's FOD service and Youku on January 12, 2021.