Ouran High School Host Club: Volume 15

by Bisco Hatori, 183 pages

When tomboyish scholarship student Haruhi Fujioka accidentally breaks a priceless vase in a club room at her ridiculously prestigious private school, she seals her fate. For the room and all its riches belong to the one and only Ouran High School Host Club, a group of six fabulously wealthy and fabulously charming male students who make it their high-school-life's mission to make the female students feel like princesses. Problem is, their illustrious leader Tamaki Suoh fails to notice (until it's a little late to try and explain to their ecstatic clientele) that the quiet, calm young man he's just indentured into the club as payment for the broken vase is not a young man at all.

It is difficult to describe succinctly the fun and silliness that is Ouran.

Haruhi is so laid back and comfortable in her own skin that she doesn't even bother correcting Tamaki's mistake, but just rolls her eyes at him and shrugs when he, beet-red with embarrassment, finally figures it out. The other boys, who all catch on faster than Tamaki and happily sit back to watch him squirm, take a liking to her, as well, and she is quickly adopted into their little family. Since she wears a boy's uniform, anyway, just because it's more comfortable than the fru-fru alternative, nobody at school outside the club members realizes she's a girl. She doesn't particularly mind, as it gives her something to do with her time and saves her from losing her scholarship. Plus, she discovers that it's fun to make other people happy, which is what the cos-playing, tea-and-cake-serving, fantasy-delivering Host Club is all about.

The boys are hilarious and individual in their personality quirks and, having never met a scholarship student before, take great pleasure in learning about the endlessly fascinating details of Haruhi's "commoner's" life. And she, in turn, finds their everyday luxury a bit of a marvel, though one she's in no hurry to trade for, being quite content with discount grocery store sushi and the little apartment she shares with her widower dad. The relationships they all develop throughout the series are sweet and endearing and their gradually revealed personal histories give them considerably more depth than you'd expect from such a comedy-driven series. By the time this volume takes up Tamaki's and Haruhi's slowly dawning attraction (they're a little dense, these two, but you fully understand why), you're long-since invested in the outcome and content to watch the getting-there unfold at the author's own artful pace. I'm just sad that there are only a few volumes left.