Ouran High School Host Club Episode 1 - From Today, You’re a Host
OP - Sakura Kiss (Chieko Kawabe) - in a recurring theme for this episode, the song is awful Jpop cheese AND I LOVE IT, and the animation is awesome and very, very girly.
ED - Shissou (LAST ALLIANCE) - boring rock song with manga images. Meh.
Haruhi Fujioka is a poor scholarship student at the exclusive Ouran High School who accidentally breaks a horribly expensive vase belonging to the Host Club, a bunch of stereotypical bishounen who sell themselves as hosts to the rich ladies of the school, each one catering to a different fetish; Hikaru and Kaoru the almost-yaoi twins, “Hani-chan” the shota, Suou the “king of bishounen” (i.e. the dumb one), Kyouya the brainy cool one and Takashi the random one that hangs around protecting Hani. As punishment for breaking the vase, Haruhi is forced to become a host.
Hijinks ensue, involving “the peasant’s coffee”, Haruhi’s first steps as the “natural” host, a bitchy ojou-sama who takes a dislike to Haruhi, and the somewhat interesting discovery that Haruhi isn’t actually a guy…
Maybe I should just castrate myself now? I certainly have no credentials as a bloke now. Or, in fact, anyone with taste. I LOVE THIS SHOW. It’s the most generic shoujo set-up ever and the jokes are a bit hit-and-miss occasionally, but the ANIMATION! The VOICE ACTING! The POST-UTENA DIRECTION!
Seriously, you’ve never seen a shoujo comedy look this good; the artwork is seriously awesome, as you’d expect from Bones, and there’s some really nifty direction; you can tell it’s by the DoReMi director as the SD stuff really shows his influence, but there’s some impressively Ikuhara-esque touches with the typical shoujo rose borders turning up and some shadow-work animation in the second half of the episode. None of it is avant-garde or anything, but it’s all really, really well done.
And that is SO not Maaya Sakamoto voicing Haruhi. Who’d have thought she has actual acting range! It’s amazing! In fact all the seiyuu are good; they all play up to their stereotypes well (in a vaguely ironic manner).
Maybe it’ll get old fast; comedy is always a bit of a gamble with me. I understand the manga is extremely popular in Japan but also loathed by a lot of people, so I guess this series will polarise many. But at the moment Ouran High School Host Club gets a huuuuuge thumbs up from me, despite the damage it does to my testosterone…
April 5th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Aren’t all ojou-sama bitchy by definition ? It’s the reason why we all love this type of characters…
…post-Utena direction ? PLEASE EXPLAIN YOURSELF AT ONCE !
April 5th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
Well, it’s no secret that the script is written by Yoji Enokido, who was in charge of the screenplay for Utena, and the director worked under Kunihiko Ikuhara on Sailor Moon S and SuperS, and it shows. Signs, imagery and text are employed in a particularly Utena-esqe fashion; it’s not like doing the show as a straight Utena rip would work, as it’s a silly comedy rather than a fantasy drama, but the visual style of the more serious sequences reminded me a lot of parts of Utena.
The sequence I mentioned in the second half of the episode is where Haruhi discovers that the ojou-sama (I wish I could remember her name!) has thrown her satchel and wallet into the massive fountain that is the centre piece of Ouran High School - Haruhi then runs down a corridor in silhouette before rushing past the ojou-sama and stopping in front of a massive window, and the conversation between them plays out with cuts between each side of the window to frame the relevant character. The sequence reminded me a lot of most of the “cloister” scenes in the early part of Utena in particular, such as the one in episode 1 or 2 I believe where Utena talks to Saionji; the opulent windows are particularly reminiscent of Adolescence Mokushiroku, and so forth.
Also, I’m tainted by Utena when it comes to roses - anytime I see rose frames around the screen I automatically think of the show, even though they’re a relatively standard device in shoujo manga these days, and they’re used frequently in this episode.
The main reason I call this “post-Utena” is that the show seems quite self-aware and less willing to succumb to the trappings of more conventional shoujo series. The humour comes in part from the subversion of the shoujo stereotypes that the show perpetrates (we know that everything the Host Club does is a cynical maneuver to earn money, for instance), much like the way Utena reverses shoujo cliche for dramatic effect quite frequently.
At least that’s how I see it. I’m not sure if that makes sense, and you shouldn’t be getting your hopes up for something like Melody of Oblivion or anything, but I just felt as though the show seemed quite influenced by Utena for the above reasons.
April 5th, 2006 at 5:37 pm
Normally I wouldn’t have touched this with a ten foot pole…but your taste in anime is generally exactly the same as mine, so I think I’ll give it a try. Ditto for Simoun. Hurray for great anime bloggers!
April 5th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
This is obviously what half of Japans animaion staff are working on at the moment - it looks great, unlike Air Gear or Disgaea, which are pretty awful as far as animation quality goes. Just a result of the insane number of shows airing at the moment stretching staff incredibly thinly…
April 7th, 2006 at 8:28 am
It’s called…. BONES.
Now let’s hope the other half of them are going to do a good job on Juuousei.
Dammit, why must I have tons of work during the beginning of the new season!!
April 8th, 2006 at 4:06 pm
Poor girl. Being shoved around like that. It really shows you the plight of the commoner. Nicely done.
April 9th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
I just liked the light bulbs ._.
April 11th, 2006 at 4:21 am
If you like the anime, you should definitely check out the manga. That thing is brilliant, and cracks me up laughing every time. Being a jaded manga veteran by now, I appreciate the fact that it never takes itself too seriously and is constantly poking fun at many of the cliches/conventions of various manga genres. Priceless…
April 11th, 2006 at 5:40 am
lol testosterone damage.
January 13th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
wow this kawai program
July 24th, 2007 at 4:47 am
I do have to say, and I am pretty sure this all began with me seeing a fanvid as a related YouTube video, followed by a google search, and then a trip to VEOH.com… But I watched the whole series in two days and it was great… (A little embarassing that that is how I spent… What? Thirteen, fourteen, hours of my life doing?) Haha, but it was great for a comedy, and the conflicts were well integrated. (The middle episodes may have been slower but were effective in getting some background info out…) All in all, it was very enjoyable and really addicting!
Seriously, it was fantastic.