(Cool) Shite on the Tube – Film, TV, Comics, Games, Books, Genre Pop Culture.

TV Review

Ouran High School Host Club – TV Review

Ouran High School is a prestigious school full of the elite of upper class society. Inside this school lies a Host Club. The boys of this host club, coming from super rich families, are attractive and have no need to study.  The role of the club is to entertain the super rich girls of the school by arranging high teas, conversation and social events, turning it into a lucrative business venture inside the school.

One day a poor nerdy student named Haruhi gets tired of the idle chatter in the study halls and decides to look for a quiet place to study.  Haruhi finds a deserted classroom to hide in only to discover that this is the headquarters  of the Ouran High School Host Club. During a flirtatious conversation with the club’s president, Haruhi breaks a vase and becomes in debt to the club and must pay of this debt by working for the club.  The members of the club arrange a new school uniform and get Haruhi to become a host, unaware that Haruhi is a Girl.

The anime is a great example of mixing many aspects of “shojo” (girl) anime rolled into one. There is the cute child prodigy who still carries a stuffed bunny with him, the cool vice president, the silent guy, the twins that mess with the girls heads by acting very intimate with each other and the super popular president of the club with the compassionate side. This mix of characters makes Ouran quite multidimensional and very boy-harem.

Then we have Haruhi, a very tomboyish with no care for the finer things of upper society, apart from having a soft spot for expensive sashimi.  The female audience will be doing a lot of Squee-ing throughout watching the series especially the “yaoi” (boy love) fans with the twins being over dramatically affectionate with each other but not enough to make the guys cringe (too much).

I have to say that the theme song is quite annoying, “Kiss Kiss fall in love” is a rip-off of the tune Sk8ter Boi by Avril Lavigne and it keeps popping up in the anime from time to time.  This was tolerable in Japanese, but whats even worse is that the American re-producers of the anime badly translated the song into english.  I am not a huge fan when translators mess too much with an anime, songs are really hard to translate and to fit into the tune, why bother, I’m sure the greater audience of a teen romance, comedy drama can tolerate a minute of a Japanese song in a Japanese anime. Apart from that, the other music for the anime is good, lots of classical type high society music.

One aspect I did enjoy about this anime was the satire of class. At one point the penniless Haruhi is asked to go and do some shopping and comes back with instant coffee which creates a stir among all the posh students in the room. Comments like “poor people are too busy to grind their own coffee beans” and “My father will scald me if I try this”  are made caricaturing the high society.

All up it was an ok anime, enjoyable but just a bit too girlish for me. In short, tolerable in small doses, but not the kind of series I could watch all in one go.

Purchase Now – Help (Cool) Shite

Trailer

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

Have you run your own Host Club?  Do you entertain the rich and powerful of your school?  Feedback and let us know what its like, coz we’ve never done any such thing!

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

About The Author

Grassy

Grassy hosts a small Anime intrest group in Launceston, Tasmania and is involved in other groups around the state. He has previously worked as a cook in a Japanese cafe, aswell as in a comic book shop in Canberra. He currently works out of Launceston at a toy and gadget shop. He spends his days "testing" toys. By night he releases his frustration by gaming on his variety of consoles, or tinkering with the hardware of his computers. Grassy also enjoys reading manga and comparing the differences of plot and character development with the anime. Grassy is a bit of a sci-fi fan and enjoys watching his extensive collection of Doctor Who. To sum it up he is a nerd...

Bookmark This

  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • MySpace
  • StumbleUpon
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • email
  • FriendFeed
  • Print
  • Twitter

Article Information

  • Posted: Sunday, January 24th, 2010
  • Author: Grassy
  • Filed Under: Review, TV
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments

4 Responses to “Ouran High School Host Club – TV Review”
  1. amphrite amphrite says:

    i love ouran, have since a friend told me about it when it came out in jap. i agree with the english translation of the theme song. i prefer the jap song, however i enjoy both the jap and english end themes. great review

    Reply
    January 24, 2010 at 8:25 pm
  2. Shaded Spriter Shaded Spriter says:

    I love this anime too…but then again I enjoy shojo romance anime a lot – and they are usually a lot better than the shonen romance anime (or fanservice anime.)

    Saying all this “All up it was an ok anime, enjoyable but just a bit too girlish for me.” might be true – the other people I know who like it and me are girlish.

    Reply
    January 25, 2010 at 6:07 am
  3. otakursed otakursed says:

    IMHO, it’s a harem anime, but from the more realistic perspective of it being a lass as the main character. I enjoyed it, even if some of the puns went over this gaijin’s head. Shoujo or shounen, either’s good with me if the comedy works, which is does pretty well, here.

    Reply
    February 3, 2010 at 8:35 pm
  4. tokyo teddy tokyo teddy says:

    well i personaly love and adore OHSHC because
    1-im a anime freak
    2-im japaness
    yes, now that the author mentions it, the theme song does sound like sk8ter boi but i <3 the ending song…i like OHSHC because of the whole "dramatic" set up…i can only say one thing…i cant wait 4 season 2!!!!!!!

    Reply
    February 13, 2010 at 5:34 pm

Leave a Reply

Latest (Cool) Shite Shows