Bisco Hatori

From the back cover:
The school-wide physical exam has thrown the members of the Host Club for a loop. How can the doctor not discover that Haruhi is a girl?! And once the female customers learn the truth, Haruhi can kiss her job goodbye. But then life at the club will be unbearably boring if she leaves! So the guys wrack their brains for a solution…

Review:
This volume corresponds with episodes 3 and 5-7 of the anime. I thought some bits of 7 might’ve been anime-only filler, buuuut turns out they weren’t. I didn’t like this volume quite as much as the first, because it felt like it was getting a little gimmicky. I don’t like manga where things like panda mecha or cages or alligators just randomly appear out of nowhere. The interesting characters and art that’s beautiful and cute in just the right proportion make me a little more forgiving in Ouran’s case, but I hope it doesn’t become a trend.

I continue to appreciate the moments where Tamaki succeeds in engineering happiness for someone the club has encountered, and especially enjoy seeing Haruhi being stunned by Tamaki’s brief flashes of perceptive kindness. “I like good deeds,” one of his thought bubbles declares, as he smilingly observes another success. I like Haruhi and Mori a lot, but at this point, Tamaki is my favorite character. I hope to see more insight and depth for him in the future.

From the back cover:
One day, Haruhi, a scholarship student at exclusive Ouran High School, breaks an $80,000 vase that belongs to the “Host Club,” a mysterious campus group consisting of six super-rich (and gorgeous) guys. To pay back the damages, she is forced to work for the club, and it’s there that she discovers just how wealthy the members are and how different the rich are from everybody else…

Review:
I’d had the first few volumes of this series for a while, but after seeing how fabulous the anime is, I’ve finally been prompted to read them. I think I’m liking the characters even more since I can imagine mannerisms and voices and all that. Even though he’s such a dork, I totally love Tamaki. He is everything adorable about Ayame and Shigure rolled into a Yuki Eiri-ish package.

Haruhi is an interesting heroine, as well. A little reluctant initially to undertake host duties, she eventually takes to it naturally, with paying off her debt as the prime motivation. She is not as traumatized by her charade as other shoujo leads have been, and has some interesting quotes that illustrate her perspective. For example: “Can’t say that I fully appreciate the perceived differences between the sexes anyway” and “I kinda enjoy having the girls hassle over me. Guess I’m a little bent that way.”

I haven’t done any in-depth comparison to the anime, but things are pretty much the same in the manga. There’s the jealous customer of Tamaki’s, the girl who likes teacups, and the crazy Renge, who I don’t like very much. One interesting tidbit about Haruhi’s family is mentioned that hasn’t cropped up in the anime yet, but I shan’t say more in case they decide to mention it in the future. The best part, of course, is the characters, how they take Haruhi under their wing in their misguided detached-from-reality-rich-boys kind of way, and how they earnestly try to make their customers happy. Could not possibly be more highly recommended.