Kiss Kiss Fall in Love!
By Vidhi Gupta
For many years now I have watched many shounen anime and after a point, I could not watch a show without a good fight. Now, for such a shounen oriented person, when I was introduced to shojo through Ouran High School Host Club, I found my world completely changed.
Ouran High School Host Club is a 2006 anime and a manga series, animated by Bones studio. It is the introduction to the shojo genre for many people, including me, and I am forever in love with this anime. It follows the story of Fujioka Haruhi, a first year student who has come to Ouran Academy on a special scholarship and gets recruited into the Host Club for breaking a very expensive vase. That’s it. That’s all there is to the anime. However, my love for Ouran goes way beyond the simplicity of the plot (or the lack of one) actually.
The functionality of the club is for some ‘handsome’ men to pass time with the ladies of Ouran Academy, while making a profit. Tamaki, being the King of the club, is probably the dumbest character I have seen; and I have seen Naruto. However, the club’s success comes from Tamaki and no matter how stupid he is, his compassion for people and their troubles goes way beyond a normal person’s. As much of a meme Tamaki’s character is, he considers the entire host club as a family and his love for their well-being is rather cute to watch. Tamaki breaks almost all the characters shells and as the show calls it, brings them into the light. Be it, trying hard enough to tell the twins apart, or helping Honey-senpai accept his true personality, Tamaki changed each of the characters, and in my opinion, for the better. However, when it came to his own problems, he forced himself to bear them alone, as the otou san of the club. His efforts to get the club together truly showed when they came together to help him.
Kyoya, on the other hand, is the second member of the club and the third son of the Ootori family. He immediately knew about Haruhi and many other unexplained facts like about her family history, her father’s job and regularly keeps in touch with Haruhi’s father as well. Kyoya seems to be the all-knowing and his family knows no end. I particularly liked how Kyoya learned to come out of the shadow of his family. It was fresh to see someone earn their father’s pride and joy without actively making it the purpose of their life. He didn’t desperately hope for it or cry about how his brothers were more favored. He accepted his circumstance, and Tamaki played a big role in bringing Kyoya out of his shell.
What I don’t understand at all is the incestous portrayal of the Hitachiin brothers. Call it my lack of exposure to shojo and sexualised twins, but it felt rather different. I feel like they could have displayed their love as sibling love without making it incestous as well. Even then, Kaoru’s acceptance of Hikaru’s feelings for Haruhi, and his attempt to help him realize it, is something that made them seem more like brothers than any other display of affection. After a point it was just a running gag of the show and it made sense after they separated their feelings for Haruhi. Their development and Kaoru’s plan to help Hikaru is something that I enjoyed more than anything. They tried to give them their separate identities without breaking them apart.
Coming to the seniors, Honey-senpai and Mori-senpai are the perfect complementary characters. Honey-senpai is like a character who prefers everything cute and sweet. Honey-senpai’s ability and training in karate makes him break his character and seems like he is 2 sides of a coin. One side that loves cakes and his bunny and the other who is accomplished in martial arts. Mori-senpai matches his image completely and in that sense, I like his character much more than the others. He is as strong and reliable as he looks. He looks tough and unbothered, unless it concerns Honey-senpai. In other words, while they are both seniors, they are opposites who cannot stay without one another. Though, Mori-senpai could have gotten more focus than just centering his life around Honey-senpai, I have no complaints.
Apart from the main characters, Renge-chan, a french heiress, partly carried the show with her braying laughter. Her constant training to the members makes her character even more amusing. She is the otaku of the show who literally represents us (the fans) within the show. I particularly liked how she had her own pedestal and high motor engine. Her otakuness is shown in a way that helps many people realize that sometimes fantasies cannot be embodied in reality. Her association of Kyoya to a gaming character she likes is a reality that perhaps any otaku would not like to know.
What I enjoyed most about the show was its ending and how they never once broke Haruhi’s or any of the members’ characters. Every episode they have a theme and try to flatter the women of Ouran Academy with new outfits and looks. As comfortable and nice it sounds, it was equally chaotic and crazy, nonetheless. Using tropical seasons in winter or sampling the Ootori Beach Resort, the rich club members never left any chance to show exactly how rich they are. The show also depicts the difference between the social classes of the members and Haruhi. Upon learning of what instant coffee is, the members and the rich aristocrats are amazed at how the ‘commoners’ live. They cannot imagine what living for survival can mean. This is especially true when Tamaki assumes that Haruhi has been kidnapped or driven out of the city because of debt collectors. He assumes the worst, showing that rich people do live in their own bubble.
Lastly, the show’s art style was something that I had never seen before and seemed rather different from the regular shows. Though I watched it rather recently, my introduction to shojo was nevertheless one of the best, even if I don’t ship Tamaki and Haruhi.
