But if we're talking about school-centric shojo manga, then we have to talk about one of the best-known titles from the 2000s, one I have somehow not properly reviewed until now.
OURAN HIGH SCHOOL HOST CLUB (Oran Koko Hosuto Kurabu), by Bisco Hatori. First published in 2002 and first published in North America in 2005.
PLOT:
Ouran is one of the wealthiest, most elite high schools around...not that such things matter that much to Haruhi Fujioka. She's there on a scholarship and just wants some peace and quiet away from all these rich weirdos. Her search leads her by accident to the school's own host club, led by the ditzy yet charming Tamaki Suoh. It also leads to her accidentally breaking one of their vases, so to repay them she must become a host herself. Now Haruhi has to deal with menial chores, the snobbery of the student body, and the increasing (and increasingly manic) attempts by Tamaki to get her attention.
STORY:
This is one of the rare times where my familiarity with a work makes it tricky for me to review. Not only was the anime adaptation one of the first anime I ever watched, but I've read through this series in full. So maybe the better approach for me to take her is to explain what makes this introduction work so well, nearly 25 years after its debut and over 20 since its heyday in American manga fandom.
While Ouran is ostensibly a reverse harem, it never takes itself too seriously. The very premise acknowledges the performative nature of it all, with the host club boys playing up exaggerated versions of themselves for the sake of their captive, swooning audience. It also helps that Hatori focuses more on the farce of it all than the romance, with Haruhi serving as the anchor to all the wackiness around her. That's not to say that there is no romance, but Hatori is more focused on establishing her cast and poking fun at them at the same time.
Speaking of Haruhi, I think she's another big reason why Ouran High Schol Host Club hits the metaphorical ground running. Her blunt, deadpan reactions make her the perfect foil to Tamaki's frantic curiosity and over-the-top flirtations. This combined with her humble origins also makes her something of an audience avatar, allowing us to react alongside her to all these weird, sheltered rich kids. When she lets her guard down, though, she displays a level of empathy and emotional intelligence that draws people to her. It's a quality she shares with Tamaki, and it's that quality that Tamaki is clearly falling in love with (even if he doesn't fully acknowledge or understand it quite yet). Their whole dynamic onto itself makes for great farce, with the other host club members pitching in as the plot (or the punchline) demands.
Her relationship with gender also makes Haruhi unique as a protagonist. Shojo manga is no stranger to gender non-conforming protagonists, but even when you're dealing with stories about heroines forced to cross-dress for Reasons, they still tend to operate on very rigid ideas of femininity and masculinity. Haruhi's approach to gender is extremely casual. Let me put this way: she's the character I would nominate as Most Likely to Come Out as Nonbinary Later In Life. Some of this has to do with her upbringing, which we only get a few glancing references to in this first volume, but a lot of it is just baked into her practical, matter-of-fact approach to life. She doesn't agonize over being forced to present as a boy or how others perceive her gender and that onto itself is kind of refreshing. I think that feeling extends to Ouran as a whole; it is refreshing different, unafraid to be itself or make fun of itself.
ART:
As much as I love the story and cast, the artwork for Ouran can be a little rough early on. Some of that is to be expected, considering that Bisco Hatori was only a few years into her career. This is most obvious in the character designs in the first few chapters. They tend to have big, soulful eyes, heavy lower lips, but otherwise very simple faces, and sometimes the proportions can get a little out-of-whack, making their heads seem weirdly kernel-shaped or their faces strangely small and smushed. Thankfully this is only a momentary occurrence, and Hatori seems to work things out before the end of the book.
It probably doesn't help that she favors a very busy style when it comes to her pages and panels. She likes to fill her panels with lots of screentones, lots of gags, lots of soulful close-ups, lots of big sound effects, and not a lot of dark shading for contrast. Thankfully it's balanced out by her very fine linework, which brings just as much of a sense of delicacy to the background peeks at the host club finery as it does to close-ups of Tamaki's pretty face or the drape of everyone's hair.
That delicacy just serves as better contrast to the moments where the cast does some highly stylized comic reaction (or in the case of Haruhi, under-reaction). Indeed, I actually like that Hatori likes to fill up panels with the supporting cast, as it's a good way to show off the supporting cast's personalities and add some genuine good jokes and commentary without derailing the momentum of the story.
PRESENTATION:
While there's nothing ostensibly wrong with the translation here, I do think Gary Leach's localization of that translation leaves something wanting. There are definitely more than a few moments where the wording can get a bit clunky and even a little stodgy. At the very least, I suspect that if Ouran ever got a more modern localization it would be able to handle some jokes a little more gracefully (like a moment where Haruhi ponders switching her personal pronouns).
RATING:
This manga is published by Viz. This series is complete in Japan with 18 volumes available. All 18 have been released and are currently in print.
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