Ouran High School Host Club: Series 1 - Part 1

Introduction

As Host and Hostess clubs are a peculiarly Japanese phenomenon, it would be a good idea to start with a definition. They are the modern equivalent of Geisha establishments, although before we sink into the gutter, it isn't what you think it is, certainly not in this anime. The Hostess Club is a service supplied to gentlemen, it's a place where you go to relax, to be entertained, and to have the sort of companionship that you would be unlikely to get in the real world. It's where you choose a pretty female companion, with whom you talk, drink, flirt as long as your credit card can support, and her job is to make you feel good about yourself. For that evening her sole concern is your entertainment, her every thought is of you, and if you for a single moment feel neglected, she isn't doing her job. The Host Club is the female analogue of the Hostess Club, where women go for young male attention, where handsome young men devote their time to making women feel relaxed and loved, showered in compliments, and their cares entertained away. Okay, in the real world, like most other human endeavours, there is a seedy side to the industry, but certainly not in Ouran High School Host Club. The hosts here are far more refined, polished, genteel, and elegant, and this is a comedy, not a hard-hitting exposé.

The Ouran Academy is a prestigious, exclusive school for the children of the rich, the elite, and the powerful. Those who attend expect the fineries, the better things in life, and the school delivers in its facilities and its grand architecture. There are scholarships of course, which is how Haruhi Fujioka becomes a student. Haruhi's poor, can't even afford the uniform, likes to remain understated and inconspicuous behind thick spectacles, in grungy clothes, and behind a stack of books. It's this desire for anonymity that led Haruhi to a quiet place to study one day. However, Music Room 3 turned out to be the venue for the Ouran Host Club. When you're a child of the rich, and have an inheritance to look forward to, education becomes less of a priority, and students have a lot of time on their hands. The Host Club exists to entertain Ouran Academy's female students, and the boys who are members pride themselves on their elegance, charm, and attractive qualities. They exist to make girls feel loved. There's something for everyone in this club, the epitome of elegance is their leader, the blond Tamaki Suou, while for utter cuteness there is the childlike Mitsukuni 'Honey' Haninozuka. Takashi Morinozuka makes up the strong and silent demographic, while twins Hikaru and Kaoru Hitachiin play with scandal and taboo to titillate the girls. Kyoya Ootori handles club finances, which is where the 8 million yen fine comes in. That's the fine that is incurred when, while trying to escape from this strange new world, Haruhi knocks over and smashes an antique vase. Haruhi is adopted as the club's lapdog, working to repay the debt, but when Tamaki gets a glimpse at the gorgeous eyes that are hidden behind the spectacles, he realises that Haruhi will drive the girls wild, and that the Host Club have their newest member. The only problem is that Haruhi's a girl.

The first thirteen episodes of this 26 episode series are presented across two discs from Manga Entertainment. Before we continue though, I should make clear that due to time constraints, efficiency, or a combination of the two, Manga Entertainment didn't send me the Region 2 check discs as they usually do. Instead I received the Region 1 Funimation retail release, leading me to believe that the Manga discs will be nigh on identical come April. I'll flag up any definite or potential differences in italics.


Disc 1

1. Starting Today You Are a Host!
Being at the wrong place at the wrong time means that Haruhi is working off her debt as the newest member of the Host Club. She'll need to get a hundred requests from interested girls first, but she's already got the attention of club president Tamaki Suou, and for him the penny as to her gender hasn't even dropped yet. But his fascination means that his regular customer Ayanokoji is getting jealous, and there is a lot that a rich girl can do to a poor rival.

2. The Job of a High School Host!
Haruhi has got a new admirer in Kanako Kazugazaki, a girl who flits from host to host, apparently indulging her pleasures. Haruhi realises this may be displaced affection, a suspicion confirmed when the Host Club gets its regular delivery of fine china, and Kanako displays as much interest in the deliverer Suzashima, as she does to the new tea service. But Suzashima is transferring to a new school.

3. Beware The Physical Exam!
Trouble arises as the physical exams are coming up. Once a doctor examines Haruhi, the jig will be up, and she will no longer be able to be a host, which means Tamaki will never get close to her. It's time for a plan. Meanwhile, there is a strange doctor roaming the school corridors.

4. Attack of the Lady Manager!
In Paris, rich heiress Renge Houshakouji spends her time playing dating games, obsessed with one particular video game character. When she happens to see a photograph of Kyoya, she's on a private jet to Japan before you can blink. She's found the real life embodiment of her fantasy love, and wedding bells are ringing. The first thing she does when she gets there is assume the mantle of club manager to impress him. Then she starts making changes to the Host Club.

5. The Twins Fight!
The twins Hikaru and Kaoru have a unique allure, preying on the girls' fascination for the scandalous and the risqué. One of their favourite games is to make the girls guess which one is which. A spanner is thrown into their sibling affection when not only does Haruhi correctly tell them apart, she does so by pointing out their annoying character traits. When one twin laughs at her accurate observations, of course you realise this means war.

6. The Grade School Host is the Naughty Type!
Shiro Takaoji is a grade school student at the Academy, who suddenly quits the Classical Music Club in order to get on the fast track to getting girls. He can't wait for his talent to mature so that he can impress the ladies, so he turns to the Host Club, and applies some judicious flattery to get Tamaki's acceptance and training. The trouble is that he's an obnoxious brat. But when he says that he's running out of time, it turns out that he's not just a pint-sized would-be lothario.

7. Jungle Pool SOS!
The Host Club have a rare day off, although why they need to kidnap Haruhi to take her to the Otori theme park is a little odd. The plan is to see what she looks like in a swimsuit, but then Tamaki gets embarrassed, the computers controlling the entertainment facility go haywire, Honey goes missing, the alligators are released, and Kyoya has to call his family's security service.

Disc 2

8. The Sun, the Sea, and the Host Club!
You'd think that a day at the beach would mean another chance to see Haruhi in a swimsuit, but Tamaki's been sneaky and invited some girls along. It's work, not play, meaning Haruhi will have to stay in character. When she rescues some delicate girls from a scary centipede, it becomes a question of just what will scare Haruhi. Soon the twins have a new game.

9. A Challenge From Lobelia Girls' Academy!
No lessons? Instead the Club Exposition is in full swing, where the various social clubs of Ouran Academy get to strut their stuff, and invite some rival schools to take part as well. Haruhi is surprised coming back from a shopping trip, when a strange girl sees straight through the male disguise to the delicate female flower beneath. She's from the Lobelia Girls' Academy's Zuka club, and she's intent on stealing Haruhi away from a school full of superfluous men. The Host Club will have to fight hard to hold onto their natural rookie.

10. A Day in the Life of the Fujioka Family!
When Tamaki has a nightmare about Haruhi's grievously poor and limited circumstances, he decides to pay a visit to her dilapidated hovel to see for himself first hand. Of course the rest of the Host Club accompany him. Poor Haruhi can't get a day away from the mayhem, but it becomes clear to the rest of the club how she can stand Tamaki's intense histrionics when they meet her extrovert transvestite father Ranka.

11. Big Brother is a Prince!
There is a little blonde girl named Kirimi wandering the Academy looking for her big brother to protect her from the monster. When she walks into the Host Club and spies tall elegant Tamaki, it's obvious that they are related, although it's a surprise to Tamaki and the rest of the club. Then from next door ventures forth Nekozawa, shrouded in black and ill omens, the head of the Black Magic Club. He's the monster that terrifies Kirimi, but he's also in actuality her brother. Nekozawa is afraid of the light, while Kirimi hates the dark.

12. Honey's Three Bitter Days
As part of his cute appeal, Honey loves the sweet stuff; he can't stay away from candies, cakes and ice cream, and all the girls delight in feeding him his favourite treats. The inevitable happens, he develops toothache and the club decrees that he has to do without sweets for a whole three days for the cavity to heal. The nightmare begins.

13. Haruhi in Wonderland!
When Haruhi first came to the Ouran Academy for her interview, a rabbit distracted her and led her down a rabbit hole to a strange world filled with oddly familiar but utterly bizarre characters. Yes, it's one of those episodes.

Picture

Ouran High School Host Club gets an NTSC 4:3 regular transfer on these Region 1 discs. The image is clear and sharp and despite the extra content packed onto these discs, I saw no problems with compression artefacts and the like. There is the issue with a lower resolution, but that's offset by a lack of NTSC-PAL artefacts. The UK discs will indeed have an NTSC-PAL transfer, and obviously I can't tell you how that will turn out.

The animation is wholly pleasant, with simple but memorable character designs, vibrantly brought to life with more than the usual energy. The world design is wholly elegant, with an emphasis on the bright and fluffy. When your first impression of the show is a replica of Big Ben built as part of the school, but rendered in bright pink, then the direction of the show becomes clear. The Host Club are fond of costume changes, and a shower of rose petals heralds every new appearance. There is a lot of thought that has gone into the look of the show, and it really works well.

Sound

I'm a lot more comfortable in assuming that the DD 2.0 Stereo English and Japanese tracks that are on the Region 1 release will be repeated on the Region 2, especially since Manga Entertainment have long since stopped creating their own surround upmixes for shows. I'm also relatively comfortable in assuming that the translated subtitles and signs will come across as well, as they did with xxxHolic. For some reason, anime comedy never seems to work for me when it's dubbed into English, and this is another one of those occasions. I'd say the English dub for Ouran was fair to middling, but the Japanese track is much better.

The themes are very poppy and suit the tone of the show well. However this is one of those shows that re-records the theme tunes in English for the English dub. You know that feeling when you walk into Matalan, and hear a familiar tune begin to play, and then the vocalist comes in and it's obvious that rather than pay the fees for the genuine track, they've gone for the cheap option. That's the same feeling I get when I hear one of these cover versions. Fortunately the original Chieko Kawabe theme is still there in the Japanese version.

Extras

Two thinpak cases hold the discs in the Funimation release, and they in turn are held in a card slipcase. The UK discs will be presented in a single Amaray case, although it will share the same artwork.

Both discs have anamorphic static menus.

Disc 1 autoplays with a trailer for Suzuka, which being a Revelation release in the UK won't be on the Manga discs.

Disc 1 also comes loaded with commentaries.

Caitlin Glass (ADR Director and voice of Haruhi), hosts Vic Mignona (Tamaki) on episode 1.

J. Michael Tatum (Kyoya) and Monica Rial (Renge) join Caitlin on episode 4.

The twins Greg Ayres (Kaoru) and Todd Haberkorn (Hikaru) speak in concert with Caitlin Glass on episode 5.

None of the commentaries were to my taste to be frank, as they were heavy on self-congratulatory backslapping and jovial gossip, and pretty light on pertinent and useful info. And the Monica Rial track turned into the usual gigglefest that had me reaching for the remote.

Disc 2 autoplays with a trailer for Save Me Lollipop, which is a Manga licence, but that's no guarantee that it will be on the disc.

This disc offers you 6 pages of the original manga to look at, although good luck reading them as the text is nigh on unintelligible.

There are 15 minutes of outtakes on this disc, offering you the opportunity to hear the English voice actors goof. One of these days I'll actually find this sort of thing funny. Maybe it could use Denis Norden and a clipboard introducing them with a dry wit to jazz them up.

You'll find the textless songs on this disc.

Trailers mostly guaranteed to be absent from the manga disc include Seasons 2 of Tsubasa and School Rumble, Peach Girl and One Piece. The trailers for the second Negima series, Sasami, xxxHolic, and Part 2 of Ouran High School Host Club may indeed be on the Manga disc though.

Conclusion

It's a sitcom. It's anime certainly, and the sense of humour does have more than a few Japanese cultural references, but it's a sitcom first and foremost, and more than that, it's probably the funniest sitcom I have seen in years. Not even The Big Bang Theory has had me guffawing as Ouran High School Host Club has, and I'm a geek. The first half of this series was delightfully funny, occasionally risqué, often surreal, and really quite unexpected.

The set up is as related above, the show's main character Haruhi wanders into the 'wrong end of town', and as a result winds up a member of the Host Club, a group of boys on school campus who pride themselves in their abilities to entertain the school's female population, and make them feel loved. The wink to the audience here is that Haruhi is in fact a girl, which sets into play a whole lot of cross-dressing shenanigans. With that your basic situation, you also need the characters, and Haruhi takes the part of the straight man, our eyes into this bizarre state of affairs. Tamaki is the head of the Host Club, extrovert, flamboyant, confident, who of course falls for Haruhi. She thinks he's an idiot, a response that is likely to shatter that confidence and see him hunched in a corner in a pall of despair. Kyoya is the club treasurer, devious and calculating, always trying to find a new way of making money. Honey caters for the 'shota' demographic in the school population. The shota complex (taken from Shotaro Kaneda, the boy detective in Tetsujin 28), describes those girls who have a fascination for underage boys. The gag here is that while Honey may look and act like a fresh-faced stripling from junior school, he's the oldest member of the club at 17. His constant companion is Mori, who acts as best friend and bodyguard, and fills the strong and silent demographic. Then there are the twins, Hikaru and Kaoru, who appeal to those girls who like a little shonen-ai (see a Gravitation review) from their objects of fancy, and if it's twincest, then all the better. At this point you're probably rolling your eyes and muttering, "those funny Japanese", so I'll dare you to type the Weasley Twins into a search engine. Go on… I dare you. I don't get it either, but it doesn't stop it from being hilarious, and that's all you really want from a comedy.

Ouran has also got the staple of the sitcom, the class divide at its heart, with Haruhi coming from the poor side of the tracks, having made it into school on the strength of her hard work and a scholarship, while practically everyone else in the school have their own accountants managing their trust funds. As if the Host Club itself wasn't enough of a shock, you get the culture clash too when two social strata collide, and while Haruhi may be mumbling and muttering away at the sheer arrogance of people so rich that they have never even conceived of instant coffee, the others find Haruhi's poverty a topic of fascination, wondering at the mundanity of her existence. And so it is that instant coffee becomes the newest fad among the rich. With that sort of set up, all that is missing is a laugh track. With that out of the way, each episode is devoted to a mini-story, with the talents and abilities of the Host Club members invariably put to use in the resolution, albeit tempered by Haruhi's common sense.

The earlier episodes set up the concept of the show, with Haruhi's induction, her training, and the avoidance of the dreaded medical exam. It's when the Lady Manager arrives that the show really begins to spark. Renge is an obsessive ball of energy that throws the club into chaos when she decides to rearrange things to her own desires. But once her storyline is resolved, she sticks around, constantly popping up on a motorised rising platform to make some profound pronouncement on the day's situation, before descending once more into the depths. Further manic characters are introduced, such as Nekozawa, head of the Black Magic Club, the militant feminists from the Lobelia Girls' Academy, and of course Haruhi's transvestite father, who ensures that she remains the straight man both at school and at home.


In amongst the comic mayhem, Ouran manages some moments of tender drama as well and wry character observation. Most of it is from the common sense Haruhi, who has an ability to understand what people are really feeling, and what motivates their often daft actions, and she often acts to curb the excesses of the other Host Club members. But her past has affected her, and while she has grown up strong and independent, some of that effect on her character is explored in The Sun, The Sea and the Host Club. It's a slightly darker episode than the others, as it looks at Haruhi's actions when confronted with adversity, and her inability to rely on others. It also shows, for a brief moment, a sensitive and sensible side of Tamaki, and as a viewer you wind up rooting for the two.

The majority of the episodes though just have a hint of seriousness amidst the comic tomfoolery, a nice balance that engages the emotions while piling on the laughs. It's only around the end of the set that the balance begins to tip, and I have to say that Honey's Three Bitter Days is probably my least favourite of the episodes. It's an episode that goes straight for the laughs without any second string to its bow, but for once most of the laughs fall flat. I'm also offended by the suggestion that dental cavities can 'heal'. The final episode is a bit of a cliché as well, but it has the energy and humour back on track, and there's a nice touch with Haruhi coming to terms with how her life has panned out in the Host Club.

If there is any justice in the world, Manga Entertainment should have a bona fide hit with Ouran High School Host Club. It's a genuinely hilarious anime comedy that also manages a broad audience appeal. You don't need a lot of experience with anime, you certainly don't have too many in-jokes and references to worry about, you can sit down and take this show at face value, and wind up having trouble breathing. There's also no excuse not to get this. With the season, and half season boxset finally taking hold on shop shelves, this is stunningly good value for money. This two-disc set retails at £20, and I've seen it discounted already at £12. That means you could potentially get the whole series brand new for £24, at less than a pound an episode. That's cheaper than some Internet downloads. That's a striking contrast to the days when collecting a 26 episode series would involve around eight volumes and an outlay of over £100. With a show of Ouran's quality, you'll be robbing them by buying it.