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HOST

                                                 February 26, 2011

Allow me to indulge in a futile
attempt to describe and/or explain
the anime series "The Ouran High
School Host Club" (2006).

  Our hero is a young girl who is
  understandably intially mistaken for a
  nerdy boy -- it's unclear if she was
  intentionally cross-dressing, or just
  dressing down to focus on her studies--
  she is a low-class "commoner" who has
  made it into the elite Ouran private
  school on scholarship.  She's very
  serious about her career (what that is
  is not explained), and yet she finds
  herself drafted into the school's "Host
  Club", where a group of young men             FUJOSHI
  display a lot of swishy behavior for the
  edification of the female guests of the
  host club.

     For "host" you may read "gigolo".
     This is apparently such a common
     trope in stories marketed to young     If you begin your Shojou schooling
     women (shojou as opposed to shonen)    with Ouran, as I definitely did,
     that it's presence here works as       then you are definitely walking
     a satiric reference.                   backwards through the material,
                                            as I often do.
     Other tropes in play here are
     "twincest": male twin brothers                    SHOJOS_DESCENT
     in a life-long romantic         A repeated
     relationship that no one can    theme is that
     penetrate in the smallest       Haruhi the                MELANCOLY
     degree... except for our        commoner has
     heroine, Haruhi, who can        more "common    The protagonist of
     immediately distinguish the     sense" than     this story happens
     twins at a glance, despite any  the rather      to have the same name
     attempts they make at           high strung     as the namesake of
     disguising their appearence.    rich kids.      "The Melancoly of
                                                     Haruhi Suzimiya"...
     Another is "Moe": one of the
     Hosts is a preternaturally                        Doing searches on
     young-looking, boyish fellow                      'Haruhi" is how I
     with an obsession with sweets    LOLITA_MOE       found 'Ouran'.
     and plush toys.
                                                          It is entirely
       Compiling an exhaustive list of                    possible that a
       every manga/anime trope satirized                  Haruhi is a standard
       here would be difficult: they've                   name for a type of
       made a strong effort to include                    character, which
       everything.                                        would mean I'm
                                                          looking at another
        And there's quite a bit of                        common trope without
        over-the-top shrill humor here                    realizing it.
        as well -- that's not remarkable.
                                                          E.g. In the magna
          What's really remarkable-- outside              "The Black
          of the fact that most of the humor              Butler", the
          is actually funny, not something                butler is named
          to be taken for granted-- is that               Sebastien because
          the story works as a story, the                 *all butlers are
          characters are actually engaging                named Sebastien*
          characters, you believe in them                 (a notion they
          and care about them... despite the              apparently
          fact that the general setting is                picked-up from
          insanely unbelievable by any                    the TV show
          objective standard.                             "Family Affair").




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