A New Series has Hit the Shelves (and Screens): Ouran High School Host Club

Ouran High School, where lineage is king, money its consort and students are blessed with an exorbitant amount of time on their hands. Six such especially handsome male students decide to start a host club in Music Room 3, an unused classroom in the south wing of the school building. One day, while trying to find a quiet place to study, scholarship student Haruhi Fujioka stumbles upon the club and while trying to escape its eccentric members, ends up breaking a vase and contracts an $80,000 debt with the host club. Mistaken for a boy, she is forced to become the seventh host in the club, where she chooses to remain even after the other hosts discover she is a girl.

Ouran High School Host Club focuses on the seven hosts and two reoccurring supporting characters. Haruhi Fujioka, the unmotivated heroine of the series, remains at the Host Club strictly so she can pay off her debt. Being economically of lower-middle class has prevented her from tasting ootoro (a type of tuna sushi) and often the host club bribes her with the prospect of getting some. At the top of her class, 1-A, Haruhi has to work hard to remain there if she wants to keep her scholarship. (Ouran employs an interesting class system. The number is what year (1, 2, or 3) a person is in and the letter represents which class. The closer one gets to A class the better as the A class is where all the children of influential or rich people are. It is also where Haruhi is because of her status as a scholarship student.)

Haruhi shares her class with the Hitachiin twins: Hikaru (older of the two) and Kaoru. As far as they're concerned there are two worlds: "us" and "them." Their world is very small and they view everyone else around them as mere play toys. While Haruhi dominates the top spot in Class 1-A, they take spots two and three. Their mother, a famous designer, has passed her fashion talent on to her children, making them very fashion conscious. Their favorite pastime is playing tricks on others and poking fun at Tamaki. "The King," or Tamaki Suoh, President of the Host Club is half-French, half-Japanese. Most people would describe him as "an annoying idiot." It should be noted, however, that it is his antics and Haruhi's responses to them that make this series enjoyable and funny. Despite being characterized as a moron, he is not stupid in the classroom. In class 2-A he is second only to Kyoya Ohtari, the club's Vice-President. Opposites must have attracted Kyoya and Tamaki together as their personalities could not be more different than the other. While Tamaki wears his heart on his sleeve, Kyoya remains calm and collected. It's this demeanor that attracts his customers in the club. All financial business that involves the club goes through him and some might say it is he who holds the real power in the club and Tamaki is a figure head. Nonetheless, the two boys get along very well and are often called "Dad" (Tamaki) and "Mom" (Kyoya) by the other club members.

The final two members are the top two students of class 3-A, Mitsukuni "Honey" Hanizoka (number one) and Takashi "Mori" Morinozuka. The two are very close and are almost always seen together. Other than Takaishi there are two more things Honey loves: his bunny and sweets. You rarely see one without the others. Tall, tanned, and handsome, Takaishi is quiet and easily the strongest one of the club. His stoic personality attracts the shy girls of Ouran High. Finally are the two reoccurring support characters Renge Houshakuji and Umehito Nekozawa. Renge is a French girl who loves video games so much that she confuses them with reality and flies to Japan to announce her self-proclaimed engagement to Kyoya. The reason? He looks like her favorite video game character. She then proclaims herself to be the female manager of the club and since Kyoya forced her to face the reality about their relationship (they aren't really engaged) as opposed to her fantasies, she's taken a strong liking to Haruhi, though she has yet to discover Haruhi's secret (no one other than the hosts know that Haruhi is a girl). Umehito Nekozawa is President of the Black Magic Club. He has an intense interest in Tamaki, who is scared senseless by Nekozawa's presence. Nekozawa carries around a cat-shaped puppet named Bereznoff.

It may be interesting to note that host clubs actually do exist in Japan and that they are not just a creation of the Ouran author Bisco Hatori. And they operate much like how the club is run in the series, though they usually aren't located in high schools. They are very expensive to get inside of (cost ranges from a couple hundred dollars to a thousand), but once you're in, you can pick your favorite guy and then chat over drinks. One could easily compare them to a type of nightclub as they often have live bands and karaoke as well.

Ouran is unique and a joy to watch and/or read. The anime airs in Japan on Tuesdays and is currently being subbed by Lunar and Solar, as it has not yet been licensed for American release. The manga, however, is being brought over under the supervision of Viz Media. Serialized in the Japanese magazine, Lala, Ouran is still running, with no end in sight. With such a wide cast of personalities meshed together, this is one series you can't afford to miss.