Sunday, February 25, 2007

   Anime: Ouran Host Club
Creator: Bisco Hatori
Episodes: 26
Liscensed By: unknown

Summary: Ouran High School is an exclusive institution for students from wealthy and affluent families. One exception is scholarship student Haruhi Fujioka. One day after an accident, Haruhi contracts a massive debt with the school’s “Host Club”; a group of six rich and attractive boys who spend their time charming and entertaining the school’s girls for profit. Since then Haruhi needs to work for them as a host too, even after they discover she is actually a girl. [from crunchyroll.com]

Review: I admit this series is definately shoujo and probably one of my ‘guilty pleasure’ anime. When I read the summary of the series I wanted to know exactly what the ‘host club’ did, apparently my mind is dirtier than I originally thought. So for all those that were thinking pimping bishonen, you are wrong. Host club holds tea parties and dances. I would classify this as a comedy, reverse-harem (Haruhi is a very lucky girl even if she’s oblivious to that fact), shojou, and totally enjoyable for anyone with fangirl tendancies ^^;

The storyline was good, I would classify this as pretty original. The story develops at a nice pace, with each character’s background being unravelled as we go along. As the backgrounds were shown, I found myself wanting to know more about the characters and I even grew attached to a few. There is some yaoi hintings for a few characters so if that’s not your cup of tea, I’d suggest looking at another anime (in fact, the twins do gain customers because they sell the ‘forbidden love of brothers’ act…still not sure if its all an act…).

The brings us to the characters, although the guys are all rich, somewhat spoiled teens, they each have a different personality and you do learn just why this weird group assembled in the first place. I do wish we learned more about Mori-senpai’s past since his character seemed the most 2D but the rest makes up for it. Haruhi is not the normal shoujo female lead role, she does speak once or twice about her aspirations but only when pushed, she’s not pinning after the guys, she’s (at first) there only to work off her debt and later because they’re her friends.

The artwork for this anime was a bit different from what I’m used to and (as a friend brought to my attention) the lines are very sharp (he actually said ‘You could cut yourself on his chin’ ^^). I did like how it wasn’t obvious that Haruhi was a girl who looked like a guy. In the first episode I kept going “Isn’t he supposed to be a she? Was the summary wrong?”, and although there are a lot of rose petals flying around, the animation isn’t the usual shoujo style. The closest I could link it to was a sort of Utena feel.

(watched subbed) Voices were great, Haruhi isn’t a squeeky girl, the twins do sound mischeivious, and all the other voices match as well ^_^ There’s even appropriately placed fangirl sighs and sqwees from the females of Ouran High. The opening song ‘Sakura Kiss’ was fun and really easy to get stuck in your head…I really can’t think of anything bad…

Overall, I totally enjoyed this anime but I admit this is definately not something for everyone, which is why the score got lowered. Its a comedy with character development and banana peels and certainly appeals towards girls. I did show it to my friends (all male) and it did kinda freak them out, they lasted about 3 minutes before they were going WTF? and I had given up trying to justify it with logic and resorted to ‘Its a girl thing’

Results:
Story - 10/10
Characters - 9/10
Presentation - 10/10
Audio - 10/10
Total - 9/10
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