Haruhi Fujioka has won a scholarship to the prestigious Ouran Academy. Studious and self-effacing, her accidental breaking of a priceless vase has led to her masquerading as a boy and becoming one of the Ouran Host Club to pay off her debt. The ensuing contrast between down-to-earth ‘commoner’ Haruhi and the spoiled rich boys leads to many amusing misunderstandings.

Even during summer vacation Haruhi can’t get away from her fellow hosts. Escaping their clutches to go work for Misuzu, one of her father’s transvestite friends who is running a guest house in the mountain resort of Karuizawa, it’s not long before her cover is blown. Charming though the Host Club boys may be, their idea of helping out at the guest house only leads to more trouble for Haruhi. Several of these later episodes explore the shifting relationships within the group, and here the twins Hikaru and Kaoru are the main focus. Hikaru realizes that he has feelings for Haruhi – but the identical twins are so used to acting as one against the rest of the world that both he and Kaoru are almost incapable of asserting their own individuality. It takes a thunderstorm to help all three to learn a little more about themselves, as well as each other.

Highlights? The girls of Lobelia Academy reappear, kidnapping Haruhi to take part in their latest dazzling production. A good scholar Haruhi might be, but she is seriously lacking when it comes to the theatrical arts, as is soon demonstrated by her cherishably awful performance. Then in ‘Mori Senpai Has An Apprentice Candidate!’ we find the Host Club cosplaying the Shinsengumi (see ‘Peacemaker,’ ‘Rurouni Kenshin,’ and countless other samurai dramas.) The twins and Renge (Ouran Academy’s very own fujoshi/otaku) are on hand to pass knowing comments on the unfailing appeal of these romantic figures from the past. This episode also introduces one of my own personal favourites amongst Bisco Hatori’s characters, red-haired Ritsu Kasanoda, the son of a yakuza chief and Haruhi’s classmate. Kasanoda's facial expression is so intimidating that even his father’s hard-bitten gangsters treat him with awed respect. It seems that Kasanoda (whose name the twins repeatedly get wrong, calling him ‘Bossa Nova’ and ‘Casanova’) has come to the Host Club to ask Mori to take him on as his apprentice; the scary gangster's son wants to learn how to be liked! The Host Club, naturally, come up with some well-meaning but utterly inappropriate schemes to make the fearsome Kasanoda less intimidating…but in the meantime, the young yakuza lord has begun to develop feelings for the most ordinary and approachable of the club, a certain Haruhi Fujioka… These later episodes also reveal much more about the Host Club members’ backgrounds; we get to understand why Kyoya is so driven to succeed and learn more about Tamaki’s unhappy family background. All these issues come to a head as the series moves towards its conclusion and the Host Club becomes involved in staging the annual Ouran Cultural Fair. 

The first thirteen episodes delivered plenty of mischievous fun; so how does the second set compare? The good news is that Bisco Hatori’s delight in wicked parody is still much in evidence, especially in the Kasanoda episodes (22 and 23) where tough yakuza stereotypes are affectionately lampooned (check out Tamaki’s wild fantasy of Haruhi as a tattooed yakuza wife.) And there are plenty of banana skins in evidence again to catch out the unwary.

The less good news is that the creative team decided that they needed to inject a little drama and resolution in the final episodes by straying away from the manga storyline and introducing a new character, the manipulative ice princess Éclair Tonnerre who forces Tamaki to disband the Host Club. (Er, excuse me? Princess Lightning Thunder? Or Princess Chocolate-iced Choux Patisserie Thunder, maybe? What kind of a name is that!?) So the series concludes with – to me, at any rate – a climax of unnecessary (and frankly unbelievable) melodrama that feels forced and out of tune with what’s gone before. But if you can forgive the team this little blip in creative judgment (and it’s not all bad by any means, it’s just not as successful as the earlier episodes) there’s still plenty to enjoy here. And if you’re hooked, the delightful manga is ongoing (Volume 13 is due out this autumn from Viz) so that you can continue to discover what becomes of Haruhi and the Host Club.

In Summary 
Stylishly designed, with a witty English reversioned script that rivals the original Japanese text in invention and humour, there are so many little details to catch that each episode repays watching more than once – and how many series can one say that about?