Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Lady demo, Host demo—Kamawanai yo !

Lady or Host, it doesn’t matter !

And truly, it doesn’t. Weirdly enough, I really enjoy this JPOP opening to Ouran Koukou Host Club, a manga being now turned into an anime TV series by the studio Bones. By the horribly high temperatures of this month of July, the show is a very welcome, refreshing breeze of air.

Take all the cliches of the shoujo genre, push them beyond what you thought imaginable. Next, mix the whole lot, and add a good dose of second degree humor, and you get a delightful story which blissfully ridicules all the genre cliches, makes you laugh and put you in a good mood after a hard day of sweating and generally being miserable at work. Of course, the fact Bisco Hatori draws more than pleasant to look at male characters, and th at the character designers have managed to caputre that quality helps in making the show very much enjoyable.

After all, even though the show ridicules the shoujo cliches and the fangirls in the process, it still needs to cater to them so it will sell. And it does the job beautifully. This fangirl is finding herself hooked on it, and needing more—more !

It has everything : Kyouya, the cold, cruel, intelligent and dark planner. Tamaki the gorgeous, naive and unlucky narcissist. Takashi, the silent, taciturn man who will suddenly fling himself to the rescue of cute, small and apparently so vulnerable-looking Hani. Hani himself, the eldest of them all who looks like a child, acts like one and is so cute and sweet it gives you an overdose in around ten seconds (watch out for his bunny rabbit plush., it’s a weapon of mass destruction). And, last but not least : Hikaru and Kaoru, the twins who’ve never had any friends and anyone outside of each other, and get many a squeal of delight each time they play the « Forbidden Gay Love of the Twins » act for the crowds of drooling fangirls attending the Host Club (and paying good money to have the privilege of watching the performances of the hosts).

Of course, in the middle of this very, very nice group of yummy young men comes an intruder : Haruhi. First mistaken for a boy (she really doesn’t care about her appearance or her gender), she stumbles in the middle of the Host Club and gets shangaied into being a member of it.

From thereon, many funny things follow, and classical yet sweet things too : from the daily extravaganza of the Host Club to please their fangirl-customers, to the invasion of a would-be manager for the club who’s a last-degree female otaku drooling over her fantasy of Kyouya and also to the discovery of the twins that Haruhi can tell them apart and sees each of them as an individual, as well as her slow, gentle entry in their private world, Ouran Koukou Host Club is really a delightful surprise, highly recommended during these difficult days of extreme heat and hard work days.

Now, give me MORE !

PS : check out Wikipedia for more info on the show.

No comments: