Ouran High School Host Club
| Episode Count | 26 |
| Season | Spring 2006 |
| Genres | Comedy, Romance, School, Shoujo |
| Source Material | Manga |
| Rating | TV-14 |
| Streaming | TBD |
If I had a nickel for every anime released in 2006 starring a girl named Haruhi that overtook the discussion space, I’d have two nickels. You know the rest.
OHSHC is a funny little thing, because it doesn’t sell itself easily on the surface. It’s, in theory, a Shoujo reverse-harem romance with all the hallmarks. An unwilling female lead, the handsy Casanova, the stern glasses guy who is above it all, the questionably-close identical twins, the cutesy Shota, and the strong silent type, all wrapped up in a setting almost designed to make you wonder if this damn school even has a governing body to regulate this nonsense. What OHSHC does to set itself apart, however, is that all of these characters are truthfully the opposite of what they seem.
The unwitting female lead is actually a snarky straight-man who is perpetually exasperated by her peers. The Casanova is a caring yet insecure man who only wishes to do the best for others, the glasses guy is actually very close with the Casanova and has his own issues, the twins play up the twincest angle entirely for effect and have their own personal dramas that set them apart from each other, the cutesy Shota is the oldest of the group and a martial arts practitioner(!), and the strong silent type… well, he still is, but it’s played for gags to keep the Shota character happy.
OHSHC takes its premise and effectively turns it on its head. An affectionate parody that pokes fun at tropes and cliches of a common Shojo subgenre, and builds upon them in ways both humorous and serious. It’s perhaps slightly overshadowed by some other series that have come later (My Love Story and Nozaki-kun come to mind), but it’s still quite the entertaining little show that showcases some great creativity and self-awareness within the space of Shojo romance.
- CCharmanderK
“Kiss Kiss Fall in Love”? The anime community sure as heck did. Ouran was yet another one of those 2000s anime that came along and just took over for a while. Seriously, after this show dropped, there wasn’t an anime convention in America you could go to without seeing those familiar periwinkle uniforms in cosplays. Honestly, I did enjoy Ouran, but since this show was part of the big anime boom of the 2000s, I mostly think it came along as this big, new, shiny thing of the season that just so happened to have some staying power. I do like it, though, as it sits on my shelf... somewhere...But I think this show was just PRODIGIOUSLY lucky to come out when it did and to enjoy the popularity it did.
- KhakiBlueSocks