("Ouran High School Host Club." Screen Shot, Property of Nippon Television Network.)
Show: Ouran High School Host Club.
Made by: Nippon Television Network.
Released: 2006.
Season (s): 1 and 2.
Episode running time: 22 min.
This is an anime based off of a popular magna series of the same name created by Bisco Hatori, based on the story of a girl from modest means who earns a scholarship to an exclusive school for the rich. In the process of looking for a quiet place to study, she stumbles across the host club, and accidentally breaks a valuable auction piece. To make up for the cost she is given the ultimatum of working there herself.
From the technical end of things, the character style ( done by Kumiko Takahashi) is not completely faithful to the manga like other animes such as Inuyasha and Naruto for example, but it doesn’t veer off to much style wise from their manga counterparts in character design, leaving them still relatively recognizable. The character style works with the bright upbeat tone of the show, even with the few moments of seriousness that pop up. The school itself as the pinkish opulent stage that much of the plot is set in is perfect for the exaggerated qualities of the rich lifestyles it is portraying.
The main character, particularly the main focus of the show Haruhi, is the shining light of this show. She breaks the usual mold of female characters in high school based anime, or even other teenage girls in television from the Western end is a delightful mix of straight-man, brutal honesty, caring, and Charlie Brown; a real step forward for female characterization.
The rest of the Host club characters themselves makes its business in the narrative on playing up qualities of tropes of the different types of teenage boy found primarily in shojo (manga typified in style and story content as geared towards female audiences) such as the Princely, Cool type, Mischievous/Forbidden love, Lolita, Quiet Type. You certainly get an introduction into what classifies these tropes are, even Haruhi is one of these male tropes as “the natural.” Normally, highly trope based characters, especially main characters as the host club, run the risk of quickly becoming uninteresting if not handled right, but in this case, these characters are almost a parody of these tropes, with just enough personalities themselves that exist outside of those tropes to let you know that the characters are not solely defined by their type.
The character dynamics themselves work well, particularly between Haruhi and Tamaki, as Tamaki brings her out of her shell a bit more by livening things up and Haruhi, corralling Tamaki with her on the nose remarks. The dynamic between her and the rest of the host club is also good, though isn’t quite as fun as her and Tamaki.
The voice acting for both the original Japanese release and the English dub (done through FUNimation), were great talents that conveyed each character exactly, particularly Haruhi (Caitlin Glass), with her believably closer to gender neutral voice. Tamaki in particular was a joy to hear, capturing his flamboyantly narcissistic gung-ho qualities well.
The story itself is great, each episode consisting of a great deal of hijinks, which are a good collection of zaniness using both expected and not so expected elements, with little quiet moments to appreciate the moral (for episodes with morals) they were trying to get across.
Overall this show presented the style, tone, characters and narrative premise beautifully, upping the natural ham that made it so enjoyable from the source material, even filling in and improving on some things from the first manga volume without it veering to far from its source material until somewhere in season 2 then it veers away drastically. While it could have done to run a bit longer, perhaps taken a break to correlate with the manga a bit, and the ending of the series felt a bit rushed, it is still an enjoyable watch for everyone.
Ouran High School Host Club episodes (combo dub and sub), link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/SWIQ_voZPsL8k
Original post: https://screensquinty.wordpress.com/2015/09/14/blah/
Screen Squinty's Reviews: https://screensquinty.wordpress.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/screensquinty/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/screensquinty
No comments:
Post a Comment