Ouran High School Host Club

Episodes 13-14

My patience with a relatively middling stretch of episodes of Ouran High School Host Club has been distinctly rewarded with this time around. Not that the show was ever bad or anything, but a lot of the flair from earlier episodes seemed to have dried up, so I'm pretty happy to see Stella get her proverbial groove back. It's particularly great in how the two episodes each affect a facet of Ouran that I appreciate: One is a delightful, entertaining romp, while the other provides strong character work that builds off the situational setup it's been pushing all this time. In both regards, this is the good stuff.

So we start this week with episode 13, the somewhat famous ‘Alice in Wonderland’ themed one, which I was already looking forward to when I glimpsed some of it in the preceding next-episode preview. No mincing of words, this is the best Ouran has looked so far, by a wide margin. It's one of the few episodes of the show that director Takuya Igarashi storyboarded himself, and that commitment to vision is apparent in how well every part of this gels. There is some masterful use of sense of space and framing here. That's especially important in an Alice allusion like this where your focal character is magically changing size relative to her environment several times, but it also manifests in other clever ways. My particular favorite detail was the bit with the Hitachiin twins playing Cheshire Cats: They twirl around pillars out of sight of Haruhi, but then we cut to higher angles revealing they've disappeared altogether. It's touches like that selling the unreal dreamlike logic powering this tremendous trip.

The direction of the episode itself can't take all the credit away from the sheer power of its production values though. The animation here is a cut above the Ouran average, exceptionally fluid and playful as this material demands it to be. There are definitely ways the series could have portrayed things like Haruhi's multiple plummets down holes using the show's more standard static style, meaning the looser, more Active Animation here is as much about showing off as it is portraying the bizarre, unique atmosphere of the story being told. That style shift also allows the characters to shift into maximum face game, so that's one more advantage. There's an argument to be made that even if you have no overall interest in Ouran, this is the episode worth sitting down and watching on its own, just for how neat it looks.

And what of that askew Alice adaptation this episode chooses for its story? What's really going on, if anything, other than a half-hour of literary references? The episode plays with its setting, apparently to tell a twisted tale of Haruhi's first trip around the Ouran grounds as she was interviewing to be admitted there. There's a question of whether this whole adventure is just a memory from the warped perception the younger, more impressionable version of our beloved heroine, overwhelmed by this beckoning decadent student life. But as the story goes on, it's obvious that this is not the case, and we realize that, whether imagined or reality, we're simply navigating a lush visual representation of how Haruhi let herself engage with this absurd anime school life she volunteered herself for. She expresses desires to get back to places she can't anymore: Her old home life, or a reunion with her deceased mother, while faced with the ever-hanging question of what exactly she's doing at this campus wonderland and if she's actually enjoying herself here.

This episode teases the most strongly yet the revelation of Haruhi's ambitions in attending Ouran. Though we're still cut off before a clear declaration, there's enough context to figure out that she's pursuing a legal career in the stead of her gone-too-soon mother. But the “What” part of the question isn't the most interesting, and this tale instead seems to be beckoning us with the “Why” and “Who” inquiries. Haruhi's motivations are rooted in obligation to her parents, and that can be a thorny emotional road to navigate. She doesn't want to make her father worry that she may be unhappy at Ouran, but is that reason enough to force herself to find enjoyment in this bizarre, terrifying Wonderland? The point of this emotional journey, afternoon dream that it turns out to be, is to help her realize that the joy she's found in Ouran and the Host Club is in fact genuine, and being able to truthfully tell that to her parents lets her rest easy.

That's a spiritual move forward, a declaration of where our main character has gotten to at this halfway point of the series. The following episode then is a more typical, but not much less entertaining entry that sees the actual plot points of Ouran get some oh-so-enticing nudges forward. It's a Tamaki episode overall, but the way it does that is interesting, by framing him through how all the other Host Club members really regard and interact with his antics. The idea of Tamaki as the dopey, free-spirited mascot of the club instead of the face-forward leader he's presented as has always been one of the more amusing dissonances central to Ouran. But this episode helps paint a picture of why the rest of the club regards him that way, and as warmly as they do, in spite of his... Tamaki-ness.

Destiny comes calling in this case in the form of an errant ball The Student Currently Known as Prince kicks through the window of the Newspaper Club, who just happen to need the Host Club's power to help them avoid going under. An idea here is that in contrast to the Host Club, who can seem intimidating but are mostly just harmless goofs, the Newspaper Club are the petty, manipulative jerks you would expect a bunch of rich kids running a school club power-play to be. The best part of this whole bit is that the club's president, Komatsuzawa, clearly thinks that Tamaki is leading the Host Club with the same four-dimensional chess skills setting up his own brand of sabotage, while we (and the characters) are well aware now that he's just a colossal dipshit. In fact, it's extra funny to see Tamaki's usual take-charge desire to help those who come to the Host Club in need be met with dismissal by the other members, who already know what's really going on. It's a clever shift on a formula the show has used plenty so far, making clear how Tamaki can often want to help too much.

A key point of most of Tamaki's less diplomatic moments throughout Ouran so far has been that they were born out of ignorance rather than any level of malice. And for as abrasive as he can still come off plenty of times, all the other main characters here reveal they're keenly aware of that distinction. The truth of that endearment is communicated in this episode's flashbacks, showing Tamaki's downright innocent recruitment of them into the Host Club, with no motivation of gathering influence or manipulating anyone, instead simply wanting to reach out to people he could have fun hanging out with. That goes hand-in-hand with his backstory that he reveals to Haruhi: a friendless childhood exacerbated by the tragic illness of a parent. I've commented multiple times already on Ouran's successful efforts to set up a potential Tamaki/Haruhi romance, and this is one more notch in its favor.

Episode 14 is one that most effectively portrays the hosts to me as a group of friends more than mere co-workers. As much as guys like the Hitachiins also scheme to screw with Tamaki for fun, they almost entirely use their power and influence to bat for each other. Their genuine rapport is contrasted against the cruelty of the Newspaper Club, who end up getting a bone anyway per Kyoya and the others interfering on Tamaki's behalf. It's what he would have wanted, and his increasing parallels with Haruhi only serve to reinforce that she's counted among their treasured friends as well, rather than the novelty she originally joined as. And that's all before we find out that Tamaki's family actually owns and runs Ouran High School, and may be directly responsible for her being where she is. That's quite a last-minute revelatory spin, coming off as it does from Haruhi's contentment in episode 13. It keeps the relationships between the characters intertwining in interesting ways even as it's leading us to believe in their more genuine depths. That thirteenth episode sets up that entire vibe, while the fourteenth makes clear there are plenty more surprises to expect from this odd bunch of kids.

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Ouran High School Host Club is currently streaming on Netflix, Funimation, and Hulu.