Ouran High School Host Club Anime Summary and Review

(Warning: This post may contain spoilers.)

The story of Ouran High School Host Club revolves around a smart girl named Haruhi Fujioka who, by her own merits and determination, was able to get a scholarship at the elite private school known as Ouran Academy. There at the Ouran Academy, while looking for a quiet place to study, she stumbles into an old music room where a group of boys who call themselves the Ouran Host Club hold their meetings, and she accidentally breaks a renaissance vase worth eight million yen. Tamaki Suoh, founder and self-proclaimed president of the Ouran Host Club, mistakes Haruhi for a boy and orders her to become the Host Club's "dog" (i.e. errand boy) in order to pay off the eight million yen. And so begins the story of the Ouran High School Host Club.

Throughout their adventures or should I say, misadventures (and they are quite hilarious), in the Host Club, Haruhi Fujioka, Tamaki Suoh, Kyoya Ootori, Kaoru and Hikaru Hitachiin, Mitsukuni Haninozuka and Takashi Morinozuka learn about friendship, love and acceptance. What started out as one of Tamaki's capricious whims turns out to be the best thing that's ever happened in their lives.

You know at first I thought this reverse harem anime was going to be one of those brainless, shallow, childish animes that are so common, and quite honestly I wasn't going to watch it at all after seeing the words "High School" so blatantly advertised in its title. But I'm very happy that I did because Ouran High School Host Club has now become one of my favorite animes of all time. The hilarious parodies and witty dialogues cracked me up, but what surprised me the most I guess was the depth of the story and personalities of the characters. It was also quite refreshing to see that Haruhi, the main girl in the story, had backbone and inner strength (unlike a lot of anime girls who whine and nag and fuss a lot and can't seem to do anything else besides being helpless and annoying).

I confess that I have watched the entire series of 26 episodes three times already, and I haven't gotten tired of it yet. In fact, I liked it better the third time around. And I loved the ending to the anime as well, and a good ending is quite rare in anime. Another thing I like about Ouran High School Host Club is its soundtrack. The orchestral tunes as well as the opening and ending themes are quite perfectly suited to the anime.  Overall, I give Ouran High School Host Club a 10/10. I would highly recommend watching it.

Bad English Dubbed Anime

I wasn't expecting it to happen, but I seem to have run out of good English dubbed anime to watch. And I'm not talking about the plot of the story itself because a handful of the anime I've been watching lately have somewhat decent storylines, but the voice acting, voice quality of the English voice cast (and also the way they pronounced words), and overall sound mixing sounded terrible! Now I understand why a lot of people say that English dubbed anime sucks. They probably watched the same ones I saw recently.

Why do I say the voice acting was terrible? Well for one, the characters sounded like they're reading from a script. They over-enunciated each word and spoke so slowly that they just sounded unnatural if not flat. Their voices did not contain the emotion portrayed by their character's face or body during some scenes. Their voices were annoyingly shrill at times probably in an effort to make the character sound young. Then there's that "pausing at the wrong time in the middle of the sentence" habit that they seem to have. My poor heart (and ears) can't take it!

Examples of anime I've seen recently which were, in my opinion, horribly dubbed although I've never seen the original Japanese versions:

• Ayashi no Ceres
• Kyo Kara Maoh!
• Weiss Kreuz

Too bad, because these anime had a few hot guys in them. Hehe.