Ouran High School Host Club

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Ouran High School Host Club
桜蘭高校ホスト部 (Ōran Kōkō Hosuto Kurabu)
Genre	Comedy, Drama, Romance, Shōjo
Manga
Authored by	Bisco Hatori
Publisher	Hakusensha VIZ Media Chuang Yi (English and Chinese) Génération Comics Carlsen Comics Elex Media Komputindo
Serialized in	LaLa
Original run	August 5, 2003 – Ongoing
No. of volumes	10 - Japan; 8 - U.S.
TV anime
Directed by	Takuya Igarashi
Studio	Bones
Network	Animax, NTV
Original run	April 5, 2006 – September 26, 2006
No. of episodes	26

Ouran High School Host Club (桜蘭高校ホスト部, Ōran Kōkō Hosuto Kurabu^?) is the title of a Japanese fiction series created by Japanese author Bisco Hatori centering around a group of high school friends in the same club - the Host Club.

The series started as a manga serialized in LaLa magazine on August 5, 2003. The manga is unfinished with ten complete volumes released in Japan. The manga has been licensed by United States based company Viz Media with eight volumes released in English. Ouran was adapted into a 26-episode anime television series produced by Bones, which premiered on April 5, 2006 in Japan.

The North American English-language edition uses the title Ouran High School Host Club, while the Singapore English-language edition excludes the word school from the title. As for the Japanese title itself, the kanji "部" (pronounced as bu in most cases) is used, but it can be read as kurabu (the Japanese transliteration for "club"). The character, "部" ("bu") is a typical contraction for "部活動" ("bukatsudō") within Japanese schools. In the drama CDs and the anime adaptation, it was pronounced as "bu" by the cast.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Setting 2.1 Ouran Private Academy 2.2 School culture 3 Characters 4 Clubs 4.1 Host Club 4.2 Dark Magic Club 4.3 Zuka Club 4.4 Karate Club 4.5 Newspaper Club 4.6 American Football Club 5 Media 5.1 Manga 5.2 Anime 5.2.1 Episodes 5.3 Drama CD 5.3.1 Music 5.4 Video game 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Plot

Ouran High School Host Club is a story that takes place primarily at Ouran High School. The school is an exclusive institution reserved only for students from incredibly wealthy and affluent families. One exception is scholarship student Haruhi Fujioka, a young student from a lower-middle class family. Because of the superfluous cost of the school uniform, Haruhi resorts to wearing long slacks, polo shirts and a vest that resembles the male student's uniform. Therefore, upon entering school, Haruhi was taken in as a male student.

One day, searching through the vast campus for a quiet place to study since the libraries are filled with gossiping students, Haruhi finds the technically unused Third Music Room, taken over by the Host Club - a group of six attractive male students who spend their time charming and entertaining the school's girls for profit. During their first meeting, Haruhi is shocked at their behavior which causes an accidental knock over of a very expensive vase valued at ¥8,000,000 (USD $80,000 in the English manga). This causes Haruhi to contract a massive debt with the Host Club. In order to pay off the large sum, Haruhi is employed as the club's "dog" and is constantly ordered to do menial tasks for the members, such as serving food or cleaning up.

Once the club president, Tamaki Suou, sees Haruhi without glasses, Haruhi is promoted to be one of the hosts of the club as a way to pay off the huge debt. One by one, the other club members take notice, until even the club president finally discovers that Haruhi is, in fact, a female, with a self-proclaimed 'low threshold for gender identity', but since she is already accepted by the club's customers and has become one of the main attractions, Haruhi is allowed to remain as a member. She is forced to stay until she has accumulated a total of 100 (later, 1000) customers, at which time her debt would be considered paid in full.

Later, Haruhi develops close personal relationships with the members of the host club, managing to capture most of their hearts. Tamaki and Hikaru are the more obvious ones but Hunny and Mori think that Kyoya and Kaoru are also romantically interested in her. In Volume 10 of the manga, Kaoru is the first to openly say that he likes Haruhi.

[edit] Setting

[edit] Ouran Private Academy

The bulk of the story takes place at Ouran Private Academy, which is a school encompassing all the grades from kindergarten to high school. The vast majority of students are from very rich families and have connections with family businesses going back generations. Students who are not as financially well-off as others are able to attend the school due to a special scholarship, though the ones who are able to obtain this rare offer must be very intelligent. Haruhi Fujioka is one such student. It is implied that this scholarship is offered to only one student per level, as Haruhi had to take a make-up test when her ranking fell to no. 3 from the top spot. According to Kyoya, if she had done poorly in that test again, she will be demoted to Class D, or even forced to leave Ouran.

[edit] School culture

An unofficial motto of Ouran is "Lineage comes first, wealth is second". Indeed, students whose families were wealthy but have low social status (i.e gangsters, like Kasanoda) were put in the "D" classes, which is the worst classification. Conversely, students with stellar family backgrounds (notably, the Host Club boys) were assigned to the "A" classes. Another reason is that the Host Club members (including Haruhi) have high marks, as students with high marks are usually assigned to Class A, and those with lower marks in Class D, so that each student progresses at a suitable pace: No one will delay others' progress, and no one will fall behind if placed in a class with students of the same level. Although Haruhi comes from a common lineage, she was assigned to Class A for her special status as a scholarship student.

Another event at Ouran is the school anniversary. This occasion, unlike the light-hearted events of Halloween or Christmas, is a serious affair for Ouran students. The students would come up with proposals for the festivities, and their parents would judge them, based on their performance and execution of their proposals. This is a test of sorts for the students, and their parents would take this opportunity to consider their successors to the family businesses/careers.

[edit] Characters

Main article: List of Ouran High School Host Club characters

In the series, there are seven main characters that are members of the Ouran Host Club. The president of the club is Tamaki Suou, who acts stupidly but pulls to keep his Host Club "family" together. He views himself as the "dad" and Haruhi as his "daughter" once he discovers her true gender. In the manga, at the beginning of the series, Tamaki was supposed to be the sexy, annoying character, but then as the manga progressed (mostly through the first volume), he became the "comic relief" character. The vice-president, otherwise known as the "mom" is Kyoya Ootori, who takes care of the financial gain and business opportunities related to the club. He is always calm and collected, silently running the club from the shadows, but he is really quite cunning and sly.

The Hitachiin brothers - Hikaru and Kaoru - are twins who are always finding ways to have fun in the club whenever they get bored, which is often. They use their "brotherly love" act to attract female customers. They have a tendency of making Tamaki jealous of them and Haruhi, since they're in the same class as her while Tamaki is a year ahead. The fifth member is a small student by the name of Mitsukuni "Hunny" (or "Honey" in fansubs) Haninozuka who appears to be the youngest of the members but is actually one of the oldest of the group. He always carries around a cute pink bunny. He has an excessively cute style which his customers go crazy over. He is a master of martial arts, despite his small appearance and love for anything cute. He is always angry when he is woken up. His cousin, Takashi "Mori" Morinozuka, is the sixth member of the club whose defining quality is that he speaks very little, and always hangs around with Hunny, usually taking him on piggyback. His family has been serving the Haninozukas for centuries. Morinozuka turns into a ladies' man when he feels tired.

The final member of the club, unlike the others, is in fact a female student named Haruhi Fujioka who stumbled into the club one day by accident. She was initially mistaken for male and seems to have no qualms with crossdressing in order to pay off her debt to the club. Throughout the series, Haruhi learns more about the other hosts. It is shown that she has seeing eyes because she is able to look much deeper into a person and other things, though there are times where she is humorously oblivious to a person's feelings. Since her mother died when she was very young, and her dad was always at work to support them, she had grown up to be a very independent young woman. Haruhi is astraphobic which is used as a plot device.

The remaining characters include other schoolmates such as Renge Houshakuji, the self-proclaimed manageress of the Host Club; Ritsu Kasanoda, a yakuza's son who has a crush on Haruhi; and Umehito Nekozawa, president of the nearby Dark Magic Club who loves to creep out fellow school members. Haruhi's parents are featured, though her mother Kotoko Fujioka died when Haruhi was a child and only appears in flashback scenes. Her father, Ryōji "Ranka" Fujioka, works at an okama bar dressed as a woman. There is an anime-only character, Éclair Tonnere, who was to be Tamaki's fiancée via an arranged marriage (a marriage which is stopped by Haruhi with the help of the rest of the Host Club as part of the plot of the series finalé).

[edit] Clubs

[edit] Host Club

Tamaki thought up the idea of the Ouran High School Host Club during the winter of ninth grade and started it upon entering the high school department of Ouran Academy. During the time that girls attend Host Club members can be designated, which means that a specific host is asked to entertain them. Host Club members have different ways of entertaining their guests and at other times, greet all of their customers at once.

Set in a large room filled with furniture, food and drinks, the Ouran High School's third music room, which is not being used for music lessons, has been assimilated by the Host Club for their own use. Host Club members sit around and talk with their customers about anything that the girls bring up. Sometimes, the club room has a specific theme to heighten the experience of the customers and to make it more interesting for them; various themes include a tropical setting or a traditional picnic.

[edit] Dark Magic Club

The Dark Magic Club at Ouran High School is led by the third year student Umehito Nekozawa. The club members seem to spend most of their time in a dimly-lit room poring over objects that would be considered a form of dark magic, such as the cat-doll Beelzenef that Nekozawa carries around with him everywhere. This doll can take the form of a wooden doll and it is said that if you write the name of a person you dislike on the back of the doll, they will be cursed. Nekozawa has claimed on one occasion that the Dark Magic Club is running a constant Mass. One would assume from context that this is a Black Mass where those practicing black magic would congregate and practice it together. Each member of the club wears a black coat, like the one Nekozawa wears, and is provided their own free Beelzenef doll (their choice of fabric or wood).

True to their nature, the Dark Magic Club did not pass up the opportunity to scare the students of Haruhi's class, Class 1-A, during their class event for Halloween aptly named by Renge as the Halloween Special Test of Courage Tournament (ハロウィンスペシャルきもだめし大会, Harowin Supesharu Kimodameshi Taikai^?). Once the students assembled in the academy greenhouse, the club cut the lights and used the shadow of Beelzenef to scare Class 1-A.

In the anime, Nekozawa is the only member shown and it is unknown if he managed to recruit anyone into his club.

[edit] Zuka Club

The White Lily Group of St. Lobelia's Girls' Academy, otherwise known as the Zuka Club (ヅカ部, Zukabu^?) (in reference to Takarazuka, a theater group composed entirely of women) is a cultural club with a thirty-year history at St. Lobelia's. The group is a strong advocate of female superiority. The club hosts a wide range of activities at St. Lobelia’s, such as tea ceremonies and discussion groups, but its main function is theatric performances. Their formal name, 'White Lily Group', may be a double entendre as lily in Japanese is yuri, a euphemism for lesbianism. Certainly, the Zuka Club does not seem to be opposed to the concept and receives plenty of adulation from the all-girl student body of St. Lobelia's. The name of the group could be a parody of the "Mountain Lily Council" of Maria-sama ga Miteru, a series with shoujo-ai undertones.

The leading body, composed of third-year student Benio Amakusa, second-year student Chizuru Maihara and first-year student Hinako Tsuwabuki, have gained idol status at St. Lobelia's; their leader Benio, especially, is the subject of extreme affection from her fellow students, requiring her own student security agents to prevent her from being mobbed. The Zuka Club is invited for a performance at Ouran for a cultural exchange meet and its leaders avail themselves of the opportunity to visit—and mock—the Host Club, which they consider inferior due to its lack of history and because of a fair amount of dislike for men, due to their opinion that women are constantly being discriminated against. Ironically, as observed by Haruhi, in their typical displays of rudeness, their inexperience with life beyond the circle of the rich and their outrageous behaviour, the Zuka Club seems like a female mirror-image of the Host Club.

During their visit, the leading body of the Zuka Club immediately recognizes Haruhi for a woman and takes offense on her behalf for her 'being forced to' crossdress and having to work for the 'lowly' Host Club, trying to tempt her into coming over to St. Lobelia's Academy. This sparks Tamaki's paranoia, as he believes Haruhi would do extremely well in the Zuka Club (since she seems to slightly prefer male clothing and does not object to listening to girls chit-chat) and because her intellect would make it easy for her to apply for the St. Lobelia scholarship. The leading body takes liberties with Haruhi of a physical affectionate nature and constantly call her otome (乙女, otome^? meaning maiden). Benio especially acts more affectionately than is appropriate and later tries to steal Haruhi's first kiss in an act of spite against Tamaki. The members of the leading body fawn on Haruhi, often complimenting her physical appearance.

In the overall story, the Zuka Club is probably the closest thing the Host Club has to an archenemy. Ironically, Benio, leader of the Zuka Club and its policy of woman superiority, frequently refers to herself with the term 'boku'. When used by a woman, this Japanese word for 'I' indicates either a tomboy or a woman who wishes to be male. Benio wears a fake mustache for a short time during one episode, which is taken off by Chizuru Maihara. Benio is the one wearing a tuxedo or pants the majority of the time, while the other two members wear dresses. Benio only wears a skirt when she is in the proper Lobelia school uniform.

[edit] Karate Club

Little is known about this club, but it is known that Mitsukuni "Hunny" Haninozuka was a captain of the club, until he left the Karate Club and joined the Host Club in his second year of High School. Hunny was known to be strict and hard on the students but was also thoughful. Later on, Hunny's younger brother Yatsuchika, also known as "Chika", became the leader of the Karate Club, he was even more strict and "ruled with an iron fist".

[edit] Newspaper Club

The Newspaper Club at Ouran contains three members: Akira Komatsuzawa, who is the chairman of the club, Chikage Ukyo and Tomochika Sakyo, who strive to have their newspaper become more popular than the Host Club, but their newspaper mostly consists of articles pertaining to romance gossip on campus or power struggles between families that are causing divisions within classes. Since the stories are simply fictitious, no one bothers to read them anymore. The reason they did this was because they wanted to pull in more attention for their newspaper, but it did not work to improve their reputations or popularity within the school. Akira's attempt to find dirt on the Host Club so that he could destroy it and win ascendance for his own Newspaper Club fails miserably due to Kyoya's talent for planning ahead.

[edit] American Football Club

Exclusive to the manga series, the American Football Club consists of three members: Takeshi Kuze (九瀬 猛 Kuze Takeshi) who is captain of the club and the fiance of Kanan Matsuyama (満山 香南 Matsuyama Kanan), who is in the student council, the vice-captain Makoto Togoin, and Hayato Tarumi . The captain of the club's family controls the largest domestic share of fruit and vegetable imports, so the members are constantly eating fruits. The team is called the Ouran Orage, which means "storm" in French. It sounds like Orange, and they go by that name too. The Captain of the team holds a personal grudge against Kyoya for when they were in kindergarten, Kuze was boasting about the properties of oranges, and told his friends that even the orange peel was filled with goodness, when Kyoya interrupted and said that the skin was so tough and rough, and that he did not know if it was a good idea to eat it raw. He mentioned pesticides being bad for pregnancy. When Kuze angrily said that his fruits did not have pesticides, Kyoya continued, saying that it would be good to eat it in the form of marmalade, embarrassing Kuze. That is why he wanted to face-off with Kyoya in the competition for the Central Block Reception Hall. Matsuyama, in the end, was the one who tried to pull the Host Club out of the competition, as she thought Kuze would never beat Kyoya. Therefore, she would rather he spent more time with her. They believe that the orange has calming properties, so they smell it whenever they get worked up.

[edit] Media

[edit] Manga

Main article: List of Ouran High School Host Club manga chapters

The Ouran High School Host Club manga started its run on August 5, 2003 in Japan in LaLa. So far, the individual chapters have been collected into ten tankōbon and continues to run in Japan. As of 2007 it is being released in North America under the license of VIZ Media and their Shojo Beat line. It is published in Singapore (in both simplified Chinese and English) by Chuang Yi. Included in some of the volumes is the series Romantic Egoist.

[edit] Anime

Ouran High School Host Club premiered in Japan on the terrestrial Nippon Television network. It is set to air across Japan on the anime satellite television network, Animax, starting October 2006, set to be the series' first satellite broadcast.^[1]

Japanese Series Voice Actors:

• Maaya Sakamoto, who voiced Aerith in Final Fantasy VII Advent Children (JP), provided the voice for Haruhi
• Mamoru Miyano, who voiced Riku in Kingdom Hearts (JP), provided the voice for Tamaki Suou
• Ayaka Saito, who voiced Momiji Sohma in Fruits Basket, provided the voice for Mitsukuni Haninozuka (Honey), the character that has Momiji's resemblance
• Daisuke Kirii, who voiced Oboro in Utawarerumono, provided the voice for Takashi Morinozuka (Mori)
• Yoshinori Fujita, who voiced Kiruru in Keroro Gunsou, provided the voice for Kaoru Hitachiin
• Kenichi Suzumura, the voice of Shinn Asuka from Gundam Seed Destiny, provided the voice of Hikaru Hitachiin.
  He is the only member of the Anime Series (for the Host Club members) to be included in the Drama CD, where he voiced Kaoru.
• Masaya Matsukaze, the voice of Blues.exe in the Japanese version of Megaman NT Warrior, provided the voice for Kyoya Ootori

[edit] Episodes

Main article: List of Ouran High School Host Club episodes

The first episode aired on April 5, 2006, and the show has 26 episodes. The last episode aired on September 26, 2006.

[edit] Drama CD

The drama CDs of the series predate the anime with the first release in 2003. There are 3 drama CD releases, as well as 2 tracks included in Lala magazine's 28th and 29th anniversary CDs. Interestingly, a number of voice actors who had voiced the main characters of Gundam series voiced characters here as well:

• Aya Hisakawa, the voice of Kero from Cardcaptor Sakura, provided the voice of Haruhi.
• Hikaru Midorikawa, the voice of Heero Yuy from Gundam Wing, provided the voice of Tamaki.
• Soichiro Hoshi, who played Kira Yamato in Gundam Seed, provided the voice of Hikaru.
• Kenichi Suzumura, the voice of Shinn Asuka from Gundam Seed Destiny, provided the voice of Kaoru. He is the only member of the original drama CD cast (for the Host Club members) to return for the anime version, where he voiced Hikaru.
• Junichi Suwabe, the voice of Sting Oakley from Gundam Seed Destiny, provided the voice of Kyoya.
• Kenjirou Tsuda, the voice of Inui Sadaharu from Tennis no Oujisama, provided the voice of Mori.
• Ikue Ootani, the voice of Tony Tony Chopper from One Piece, provided the voice of Hunny

[edit] Music

Opening theme

"Sakura Kiss" (桜キッス, Sakura Kissu^?) by Chieko Kawabe

Ending theme

"Shissou" (疾走, Shissō^?) by Last Alliance

Soundtracks

Main article: Ouran High School Host Club soundtracks

Other

Sonata for Two Pianos K448 by Wolfgang Mozart is played in episode 6.

"Little Wing" by Chieko Kawabe is played in episode 19 where in, Haruhi is required to 'sing'.

[edit] Video game

A PlayStation 2 adaptation is slated to be released on April 19, 2007, in Japan only. The game is an adventure video game and for one player. The player goes through the game as Haruhi and makes decisions during the day that affect the other Host Club members' feelings toward her. The game also features an original character named Jean-Pierre Léo, who is a long-time and close friend of Tamaki, designed by Bisco Hatori especially for the game.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• NTV's Ouran High School Host Club official website (Japanese)
• Animax's official website for Ouran High School Host Club (Japanese)
• Official website for the PlayStation 2 game (Japanese)
• Shojo Beat's Ouran High School Host Club official website
• Ouran's AniDB Page
• Ouran High School Host Club at Anime News Network's Encyclopedia