Manga Series Reactions: Ouran High School Host Club
My new obsession! I would have never checked out the manga if I didn't hear about the live action drama. And I'm so glad I did. I read all the chapters within a week (it would have been shorter if it weren't for real life stuff), watched all the anime episodes, and am currently working through the live action series.
The summary (from Anime News Network):
Haruhi Fujioka is a scholarship student at exclusive Ouran High School, where it turns out that the bespectacled, short-haired Haruhi is the only student from a lower-middle class family in attendance. Then, to make matters worse, one day she breaks an $80,000 vase that belongs to one of the campus clubs: a mysterious outfit called the "Host Club," consisting of six super-rich (and gorgeous) guys. Mistaking Haruhi for a boy at first, they force her to work for the club to pay the damages, but when she proves to be a hit with the female students who come to be charmed and entertained, the guys decide it's more fun keeping up the charade...
The series, by Bisco Hatori, originally ran from 2002 to 2010 in Japan. The series itself makes up eighteen volumes, sixteen of which are available in North America through Viz Media (The last two volumes will be available December 2011 and some time in 2012). There are also a few published after-stories; the latest is a two-part story released in the Japanese magazine LaLa commemorating the premiere of the live action drama (No clue as to whether these stories will be available in NA).
And now, my thoughts on the series. I'm going to try my best to keep this to just the manga, though I may do a comparison of everything if I feel like it.
I forget when I first heard about this series. Definitely not during my own high school years, that's for sure. But no one really tried to get me to read the series, and I hadn't seen any volumes in the local bookstores, so there was no reason for me to check Ouran out until now.
Twenty-six pages in, and I was won over by the protagonist, Haruhi Fujioka. She's my favorite kind of heroine: smart, capable, no-nonsense, and doesn't care what others think of her. She is amazing, and is, hands down, my favorite character in the series. Her reactions to the rich student's reactions to instant coffee! Her reasoning as to why she's dressed as a boy (By the way, had I gone into this blind, I would never have guessed that she was a girl). How great is it that she's not bothered by her appearance and that she doesn't care if she's outed as a girll? I ♥ her. *_*
One of my early impressions of the manga is that the setting is a lot like another one of my favorite manga series, Hana Yori Dango. Both have ridiculously rich students in an exclusive school. Both also feature a group of handsome guys and common sense heroines. There are a ton of differences, of course, but the first one that hit me? All the students in Ouran are nice (Well, almost all of them).
Which leads me to the Host Club. My favorite of the bunch is Mori-sempai (I'm most fond of the silent type), but I like all the other members for different reasons. Honey-sempai reminds me of me and my penchant for sweets (but not cake, oddly enough). The twins are hilarious and delightful to read about. Kyoya is wonderfully evil; he hasn't made me scream "RUN AWAY" at his "Shadow King" persona once throughout the series, so I can just enjoy him being his cool, calculating self (Plus, he got really hot as an adult. Yes, I'm that shallow). And Tamaki has a very dramatic personality. Normally I'd be irritated, but instead I can't stop laughing at him and his reactions. But the main thing I like about Tamaki is that he's so nice. It should be a crime to be so mean to him because he's so kind and sincere towards everyone he meets.
The series itself has parodies of various shoujo manga themes. Reverse harem? Got it. Genderbending? Heck yeah. Shounen-ai? So much that even I can see it, and I don't know if it was done on purpose or by accident. Incest? Here, have some twinscest. They even managed to put in the accidental first kiss, among many many others that I haven't mentioned.
Each chapter, in the beginning, is pretty episodic; I could've picked a random chapter to start with and it would have been OK. There's no long arc until more than halfway in, where the romance truly starts (By the way, I went into this not expecting a romance. I wou). It's also not that long, which is both a good thing and a bad thing for me. On the one hand, once all the romantic elements were finally put in place, the resolution is pretty speedy. On the other hand, I would be perfectly content reading about the Host Club being their ridiculous selves forever and ever (OK, maybe not that long. =P)
And the fangirls. Oh the fangirls. Reminds me a bit of real life, actually. The squeeing! The flames of moe! (OK, that was probably only in the anime. Whatever) How, near the end of the series, it turned out they knew a LOT about the various Host Club members. Which was why I was so disappointed when it turned out that they really had no idea Haruhi was a girl and though she was a guy who liked wearing women's clothes. And after I was so impressed with them, too.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were more stories after the series officially ended. The snippets on what happens to everyone (including minor supporting characters) in the future are short and some of them leave me wanting more, but it's still a nice addition. The current two-part is interesting and expands on one of these snippets; I really hope that they're released in North America officially.
This is one of the few manga series that I would actually buy the available copies so I could read them at any time. I keep referring back to random chapters just for the laughs. I don't think I've felt this way about a series in a long, long time. In short, I love Ouran.
OK, this turned out to be a lot more rambly than my last reaction post. Here, have a manga coloring of the last page of the first part of the latest story (original page here):
The summary (from Anime News Network):
Haruhi Fujioka is a scholarship student at exclusive Ouran High School, where it turns out that the bespectacled, short-haired Haruhi is the only student from a lower-middle class family in attendance. Then, to make matters worse, one day she breaks an $80,000 vase that belongs to one of the campus clubs: a mysterious outfit called the "Host Club," consisting of six super-rich (and gorgeous) guys. Mistaking Haruhi for a boy at first, they force her to work for the club to pay the damages, but when she proves to be a hit with the female students who come to be charmed and entertained, the guys decide it's more fun keeping up the charade...
The series, by Bisco Hatori, originally ran from 2002 to 2010 in Japan. The series itself makes up eighteen volumes, sixteen of which are available in North America through Viz Media (The last two volumes will be available December 2011 and some time in 2012). There are also a few published after-stories; the latest is a two-part story released in the Japanese magazine LaLa commemorating the premiere of the live action drama (No clue as to whether these stories will be available in NA).
And now, my thoughts on the series. I'm going to try my best to keep this to just the manga, though I may do a comparison of everything if I feel like it.
I forget when I first heard about this series. Definitely not during my own high school years, that's for sure. But no one really tried to get me to read the series, and I hadn't seen any volumes in the local bookstores, so there was no reason for me to check Ouran out until now.
Twenty-six pages in, and I was won over by the protagonist, Haruhi Fujioka. She's my favorite kind of heroine: smart, capable, no-nonsense, and doesn't care what others think of her. She is amazing, and is, hands down, my favorite character in the series. Her reactions to the rich student's reactions to instant coffee! Her reasoning as to why she's dressed as a boy (By the way, had I gone into this blind, I would never have guessed that she was a girl). How great is it that she's not bothered by her appearance and that she doesn't care if she's outed as a girll? I ♥ her. *_*
One of my early impressions of the manga is that the setting is a lot like another one of my favorite manga series, Hana Yori Dango. Both have ridiculously rich students in an exclusive school. Both also feature a group of handsome guys and common sense heroines. There are a ton of differences, of course, but the first one that hit me? All the students in Ouran are nice (Well, almost all of them).
Which leads me to the Host Club. My favorite of the bunch is Mori-sempai (I'm most fond of the silent type), but I like all the other members for different reasons. Honey-sempai reminds me of me and my penchant for sweets (but not cake, oddly enough). The twins are hilarious and delightful to read about. Kyoya is wonderfully evil; he hasn't made me scream "RUN AWAY" at his "Shadow King" persona once throughout the series, so I can just enjoy him being his cool, calculating self (Plus, he got really hot as an adult. Yes, I'm that shallow). And Tamaki has a very dramatic personality. Normally I'd be irritated, but instead I can't stop laughing at him and his reactions. But the main thing I like about Tamaki is that he's so nice. It should be a crime to be so mean to him because he's so kind and sincere towards everyone he meets.
The series itself has parodies of various shoujo manga themes. Reverse harem? Got it. Genderbending? Heck yeah. Shounen-ai? So much that even I can see it, and I don't know if it was done on purpose or by accident. Incest? Here, have some twinscest. They even managed to put in the accidental first kiss, among many many others that I haven't mentioned.
Each chapter, in the beginning, is pretty episodic; I could've picked a random chapter to start with and it would have been OK. There's no long arc until more than halfway in, where the romance truly starts (By the way, I went into this not expecting a romance. I wou). It's also not that long, which is both a good thing and a bad thing for me. On the one hand, once all the romantic elements were finally put in place, the resolution is pretty speedy. On the other hand, I would be perfectly content reading about the Host Club being their ridiculous selves forever and ever (OK, maybe not that long. =P)
And the fangirls. Oh the fangirls. Reminds me a bit of real life, actually. The squeeing! The flames of moe! (OK, that was probably only in the anime. Whatever) How, near the end of the series, it turned out they knew a LOT about the various Host Club members. Which was why I was so disappointed when it turned out that they really had no idea Haruhi was a girl and though she was a guy who liked wearing women's clothes. And after I was so impressed with them, too.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were more stories after the series officially ended. The snippets on what happens to everyone (including minor supporting characters) in the future are short and some of them leave me wanting more, but it's still a nice addition. The current two-part is interesting and expands on one of these snippets; I really hope that they're released in North America officially.
This is one of the few manga series that I would actually buy the available copies so I could read them at any time. I keep referring back to random chapters just for the laughs. I don't think I've felt this way about a series in a long, long time. In short, I love Ouran.
OK, this turned out to be a lot more rambly than my last reaction post. Here, have a manga coloring of the last page of the first part of the latest story (original page here):