by Mike Favila, Reporter

Though I love Maison Ikkoku, most of the anime I tend to devour involves robots, kung fu, robots that do kung fu, or kung fu masters that turn into pandas when splashed with cold water. A friend recommended Ouran High School Host Club and told me to make sure to give it time and really get into the shojo series.  After consulting Wikipedia, I was informed that the target audience were girls aged 10-18. Would I still like this classic even though I didn’t have a journal to write about it in and obsess about? I popped in the first disc to find out.

Ouran High School Host Club revolves around Haruhi Fujioka, a high school student who attends the expensive Ouran Academy on a scholarship. While trying to find a place to study to maintain said scholarship, she runs into a group of boys known as the Host Club, whose sole purpose in life seems to be making their fellow girl students swoon. In

 For some reason, certain archetypes in the group made me think of Prince of Tennis. There’s a data guy collecting information and manipulating things for the good of the club. There’s the charismatic leader. There’s the quiet, but strong muscle. There’s the cute guy. Also, there’s incestuous brothers. Wait, what?

It’s also very interesting how often they break the 4th wall and address the audience direct. Sometimes, they’ll even refer to themselves as an anime! They’ll reference previous episodes, talk about the plot and genre conventions directly and generally take a lot of left turns with the dialogue. (At one point, the leader Tamaki actually refers to the rest of of the club as the “homosexual supporting cast”. Yes, really.

Although the main story thread is about Haruhi paying back her debt, a number of stories involve helping other characters make a love connection or resolve a missed opportunity.  There’s also a lot of character development, and delving into everybody’s back story.  As to be expected, hijinx ensues.

Highlights

There were a number of simply fun episodes, and I was surprised at Ouran High School Host Club how is not afraid to take risks.

E5. The Twins Fight! I just can’t believe how many borderline gross jokes the twins make about being in love with each other! Truly hilarious/offputting.

E9. A Challenge from Lobelia Girls’ Academy! Do all these titles have to have exclamation marks? The gratuitous cross dressing is just so over the top. But what isn’t about this show?

E18. Chika’s “Down with Honey” Declaration! I like that they make Honey, the smallest member of the group, one of the most intense fighters in the nation. Even better that he’s gotta fight his brother.

Highlights

Episode Commentaries
Manga Pages – Nice to see the original art, but kind of odd without more context.
Outtakes – They put a ton on here. I’ve always really been into this type of behind the scenes look, and it’s nice for them to include it.
Textless Songs

Audio

The audio is really crisp, if not that deep. Most of the dialogue and sound effects were in the front speaker, but that’s to be expected. Very understandable, in both the Japanese and English dub.

Video

Ouran High School Host Club is a rerelease of the out-of-print BD 2010 set.  I can’t comment on the clarity of that initial set, but I am truly impressed by how clean and crisp the video transfer is. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought they produced this set last year, directly on digital. The subtitles are white, which can sometime prove to be problematic for an often bright picture.

Overall

Honestly, the members of the host clubcharacters are kind of repulsive at first. All the characters are rich, spoiled and out of touch with reality. I guess that’s on purpose, so the viewer can immediately adopt Haruhi’s shock and revulsion. As the series goes on, it became easy to empathize with each weirdo in the group. Even though they come from an insanely pricey school, they still have problems and challenges. I didn’t think I was going to like Ouran High School Host Club, but it grew on me very quickly and felt like a quick 26 episodes. I understand why it’s considered a classic.

Rating: cups of instant coffee for Ouran High School Host Club: Complete Series!

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