Book Review- Ouran High School Host Club vol 1 by Bisco Hatori

Title: Ouran High School Host Club vol 1

 Author: Bisco Hatori

Series:  Ouran High School Host Club #1

Published:  5 July 2005

Length: 184 pages

Warnings: sexual situations (Viz rating)

Source: Library

Other info: Bisco Hatori has also written Millenium Snow, also published by Viz. OHSHC has been made into an anime and, recently, a live-action television series. The manga is    and spans    volumes.

Summary : One day, Haruhi, a scholarship student at exclusive Ouran High School, breaks an $80,000 vase that belongs to the 'Host Club', a mysterious campus group consisting of six super-rich (and gorgeous) guys. To pay back the damages, she is forced to work for the club, and it's there that she discovers just how wealthy the boys are and how different they are from everybody else.

Review: Haruhi Fujioka is a scholarship student at Ouran High School, a school where money and linage determines how  school life is. One day, she searches for a quiet room to study in. Instead she finds the host club, six boys with nothing to do other than entertain the girls(who pay them). She then accidentally breaks a vase that cost $80,000. She has no way of paying the debt with money, so she ends up working for them as one of the boys-if she gets 100 customers, her debt is paid. She learns exactly how different life is for these rich guys, and the girls that they cater to, and possibly falls slightly in love along the way.

The concept isn’t that amazing, but it’s good enough to get a fairly large fanbase. The plot is interesting somewhat. In the first chapter, we get introductions to the Host Club, who all play up to some romantic stereotype: Tamaki, the leader of the host club, Kyoya, the smartish guy, Hikaru and Kaoru, the twins with an implied, played up, side relationship, Mori, the guy who’s almost silent all the time, and Hunny, the cute one who looks to be five but is one of the oldest of the group. We also get one of the customers, Ayanokoji, who doesn’t really like Haruhi and the fact that he/she is “common”. She tries to sabotage Haruhi’s school life, by doing things like dropping her books into the pond. She is eventually caught and thrown out, and Haruhi’s customer requirement is raised to 1000. Which will take her forever. In the other two chapters, we meet other characters, and things revolve around the events surrounding the host club.

It’s a very easy story to get into-light, not too much going on, nice characters, very funny in times. Tamaki’s character in particular. All of the host club have their own distinct personalities that make them sellable in the book and easy to distinguish for us. The comedy is the strong point here. It does die down at parts for more serious things, but the series is meant to be a comedy one, and it lives up well to this. However, some parts are played up to the point where it’s annoying.

The art is detailed and flowy in typical shojo style with quite a lot of flowers and typical girly motifs. The characters are easy to distinguish, apart from the twins(which, as they are identical, is probably the point). 

Sorry this has more been a detailed summary than a review. Not that much happens, but it’s good in the way that comedies are, in a completely different way to novels.

Overall:  Strength 4 tea to a manga series that is very easy to see why it’s taken off, and is recommended to anyone who wants a quick fluffy school-set romance.

Links: Amazon | Goodreads |