Ouran High School Host Club starts off with an honours student name Haruhi Fujioka stumbling into a music room. Haruhi then meets up with the Ouran Host Club, who mistakes Haruhi for a clientèle, until Haruhi breaks an antique vase. The club’s leader, Tamaki Suou then drags Haruhi into serving as a host until the debt gets paid. The only problem that arises becomes the discovery of Haruhi being a girl, in a male host club directed towards women. Thus, she works hard to payoff the debt while the host club keeps her gender identity a secret.

The voice acting in Ouran starts off rocky. Many of the characters voices take adjusting to, for instance, Haruhi’s androgynous voice comes off as a shock to many people knowing the series. The choice to make the Hitachiin twins have different voice actors makes the unity of the twins characters slightly off-kilter. The acting though shines through. Each voice actor, albeit few, defines the characters well, giving and strengthening the quality of the characters. The acting helps quicken the adjustment allowing for the full effect of the script to come out.

The script succeeds in bringing out the full comedic effect of Ouran. Each of the lines feel natural to the characters' overall persona. These lines come out fully for instance when Haruhi states things bluntly, or when Tamaki romances his guests. Even the lines breaking the fourth wall and the use of vocabulary such as “moe”, accurately display themselves and add to the humour properly. The use of honorifics comes out fluent and proper for the addressing of higher and lower age students but also feels unmissed when addressing certain characters as lord instead of “-sama.” The witty lines truly come out during comedic scenes making jokes hilarious and punctual. Misstating words, bombastic statements, these lines represent the humour in Ouran High School Host Club spectacularly. The script improves the solid state of the story.

The story presents itself in a more formulaic form. Most episodes focus on the “character of the week” model. One character will come to the Host Club and the Host Club tries to cater towards the guest’s initial request. The guest will then have a deeper request which requires a bit of soul searching on the guest in order to find true happiness, all of this happening while Haruhi’s debt reduces from the payment. The plot convention of the story takes a back seat to character development. While aiding the character of the week, the personalities of the members develop. Seeing how each character differs from each other in distinct, yet not extreme manners, easily hooks people into the world of Ouran. Tamaki’s flamboyant self-centered behaviour in the club seems like a façade compared to his true noble and selfless nature. Haruhi’s independent and impervious nature contains humanistic weakness such as obliviousness but comes along with strong morals. Even Kyouya’s cold, calculative behaviour serves a purpose to aid his work ethic and his caring nature. The good animation backs this good story.

The animation is solid. The colours, as well as the details, for the scenery look good. Character movements have smooth transitions between each action. Character design, for the most part, looks different and appealing making each character similar from another. The handling of the animation before and after characters meet Tamaki during the older days shows great contrast and emphasizes the story’s progression. The respectable sound quality aids.

In the sound department, Ouran High School Host Club stands firm. The sound effects add nice touches to the overall comedy of the series. They also give Ouran a more aristocratic feel to Ouran, as well as the background string music. The use of actual compositions brings more life to the overall composition of Ouran. Despite all of these good showings, general problems arise from Ouran.

There are few problems with Ouran. Some of the gags in Ouran get overdrawn and played out, loosing its comedic effect. The character design, although distinct, might not appeal towards everyone. The shoujo style of drawings may give off a pretty setting to many who are used to the style, but for those new to the art it may come off as slightly unpleasant. The character development happens mostly in the back half of the series, making the pacing seem rushed. While the character development happens in the back, it exposes the lack of a continuum in Ouran, granted the time seems to progress. Some of the voice acting takes a sincere amount of time to adjust, and even when they become normalized, it still seems as if the voices do not define the character whatsoever.

Ouran High School Host Club is an enjoyable comedic series. With its great script and humour, many people will find themselves chuckling or laughing at the situations Haruhi and the rest of the club enter into. Despite its general flaws, the series shines through with good character development, good acting, and overall good animation and sound. Anyone can enjoy Ouran High School Host Club for its comedy or its character development throughout the series.

4 / 5 stars.