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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.  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 display a lot of           FUJOSHI
  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 Shojo
     women (shojo as opposed to shonen)     schooling with Ouran, as I
     that it's presence here works as       definitely did, then you
     a satiric reference.                   are definitely walking
                                            backwards through the
     Other tropes in play here are          material, as I often do.
     "twincest": male twin brothers
     in a life-long romantic                           SHOJOS_DESCENT
     relationship that no one can    A repeated
     penetrate in the smallest       theme is that
     degree... except for our        Haruhi the                MELANCOLY
     heroine, Haruhi, who can        commoner has
     immediately distinguish the     more "common    The protagonist of
     twins at a glance, despite any  sense" than     this story happens
     attempts they make at           the rather      to have the same name
     disguising their appearence.    high strung     as the namesake of
                                     rich kids.      "The Melancoly of
     Another is "Moe": one of the                    Haruhi Suzimiya"...
     Hosts is a preternaturally
     young-looking, boyish fellow                      Doing searches on
     with an obession with sweets                      'Haruhi" is how I
     and plush toys.                  LOLITA_MOE       found 'Ouran'.

       Compiling an exhaustive list of                    It is entirely
       every manga/anime trope satirized                  possible that a
       here would be difficult: they've                   Haruhi is a standard
       made a strong effort to include                    name for a type of
       everything.                                        character, which
                                                          would mean I'm
        And there's quite a bit of                        looking at another
        over-the-top shrill humor here                    common trope without
        as well -- that's not remarkable.                 realizing it.

          What's really remarkable-- outside              E.g. In the magna
          of the fact that most of the humor              "The Black
          is actually funny, not something                Butler", the
          to be taken for granted-- is that               butler is named
          the story works as a story, the                 Sebastien because
          characters are actually engaging                *all butlers are
          characters, you believe in them                 named Sebastien*
          and care about them... despite the              (a notion they
          fact that the general setting is                apparently
          insanely unbelievable by any                    picked-up from
          objective standard.                             the TV show
                                                          "Family Affair").

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