Ouran High School Host Club: Episode 1 – Beyond the Doors… Lies a Club

Haruhi Fujioka is a gifted student finally granted the opportunity to finish her education at one of the most exclusive High Schools in Japan. The only thing that sets her apart from everyone else is that she’s “commoner” and their on a scholarship. But that doesn’t bother her because all she wants to do is simply study in a quiet location and earn high grades.

Well, in her quest for a quiet room, she stumbles into the 3rd Music Room — a place that doesn’t look like a music room but more like a lounge decorated with expensive furniture —  and meets a charismatic group of five young men lead by an flamboyant Tamaki Suou. She then learns that this 3rd Music Room is the school’s Host Club and they are the school’s hosts. Scurrying to get out, Haruhi ends up breaking an 800 man yen vase and is forced to work for the host club in order to pay off her debt.

What ended up as a day spent on trying to find a quiet studying space ended up becoming her worst nightmare: taking part in the mindless activities of the school instead of studying.

I'm loving Nekozawa in this drama

I told myself I would not watch this drama after what I had experienced when I attempted to watch Zettai Kareshi, or Absolute Boyfriend, a drama based upon a favorite manga of mine that ended up being damn near unfaithful to the source; but after being coerced by a dear friend of mine, I caved in and ended up catching the first episode.

… I had ended up enjoying it more than I would have liked.

The thing with Ouran is that it’s faithful to the manga but its awkward to watch. Ouran is like watching a cosplay show; we have actors playing these cartoonish characters to the degree that you can’t look at them as real people, they’re simply 3D versions of your favorite characters. Everything is exaggerated even to the littlest handshakes — it’s hard to take the drama seriously when Honey apparently has the “ability to shrink himself” on command.

Honey's casting bothers me so much omg

The thing about the Ouran manga, or at least in the first six volumes, is that Ouran was written as a mockery of the shoujo mangas at the time. Haruhi was your anti-heroine, the one that broke the fourth wall and the Host Club represented every cliche that could be found in a shoujo manga of the time. It was a parody that ended up taking itself seriously (as does with all parodies it seems), but it still was a good and entertaining series.

It doesn’t seem that way with the drama. It comes off like another reverse-harem High School crackfest ala Hana Kimi or Mei-chan no Shitsuji. Haruhi rarely, if ever, breaks the fourth wall. She just comes off as confused, shocked, and dismayed. She reacts more to the situations in the host club in shock rather than the uninterested indifference her character displayed in the manga and anime. This can potentially become a problem because that indifference is a key aspect of Haruhi’s character — it was what made Haruhi. The reason why everyone loved her; she was the voice of reason amongst the chaos.

The whole feeling to this scene was completely lost

The casting is either hit or miss. My main issue with with Honey; maybe because I’m so used to seeing his manga counterpart in which his appeal was that he was a senior that looked like he was 12. This Honey just doesn’t do it for me at all, not to mention he isn’t blonde. But I could probably get over it — the twins are spot on — Mori’s casting is alright, Kyouya has good intentions but something is off. Tamaki’s actor, Yamamoto Yusuke, is interesting but he’s not Tamaki.

I think Mamoru Miyano will always be Tamaki in my eyes.

Yusuke is selling Tamaki, but maybe he's trying a bit too hard.

The one thing that bothered me the most was the wallet scene. That was a scene between Tamaki and Haruhi; a scene to allow the two to come to some mutual understanding. But it turned into another gratuitous fanservice scene that really didn’t do much of anything and completely killed the build up to the Tamaki/Haruhi romance that blossomed in the manga. Not to mention it would be completely out of Kyouya’s character to help someone physically, let alone get in the water himself.

There’s promise to this drama, no doubt, but I will be judging it critically because of how beloved Ouran is to me. I truly love the manga and the anime made the show even more enjoyable so I pray the writers of this drama treat the manga with the same respect that Studio Bones did when they produced the animation.

I GOT MY EYES ON YOU, TBS. DON'T DISAPPOINT ME.