“Ouran Highschool Host Club” (2006, Studio Bones) is a shojo (a series made specifically for girls) anime all about a group of boys and a girl swooning the hearts of the people in and out of the show.
The story follows a poor student named Haruhi Fujioka (voiced by Maaya Sakamoto) in a rich school called Ouran Academy.
One day Haruhi wanders into a music room hoping to study there, only to discover that the music room is actually a host club (a club in which a group of boys plays the role of hosts to female customers) where a series of events occur that cause her to start working for the club under the guise of being male.
An audience could feel very nostalgic with the character designs, especially if they grew up reading manga or watching anime from the late ‘90s/early ‘00s. The proportions of the characters are much different than anime characters nowadays, with the legs being fairly lanky and the shoulders being rather robust when compared to the character’s waist.
As for some of the color design in this show, it looks grainy by today’s standards, but for its time it was very good. The characters pop out from the background due to their harsh lines and vibrant outfits, with male blazers being blue and female dresses being yellow.
As for the way the characters are drawn: When getting a point across they tend to be high definition, with hair flowing in the wind as they speak passionately about something; but the show can also contrast that dramatic event with a low effort drawing. The timing between the events and when they use the tonal shift for this is done very well and an audience can easily enjoy it.
The animators actually draw characters here (although, yes, computer generated characters were still able to be made and used.) Back then, it was actually easier to just draw individual characters. The artists even went the extra mile to ensure that their characters don’t all look the same which most anime just don’t really care about.
A negative of this show is that it is absolutely a product of its time.
The screen ratio is not 16:9 (wide view) but rather 4:3 (boxed view), made to run in a person’s grandmother’s old box television.
Even though the background characters are not CG they’re still an issue. They do not move when they should, acting like statues.
As for far away characters, they look like the animators forgot they could adjust their brush size and in doing so, lose detail because of it. In contrast, when characters are close to the viewer their quality skyrockets.
The twins, while great characters – and their brotherly love can be charming, but only in moderation. It even gets to a concerning levels of sibling love as they nearly kiss each other in some scenes, which makes the audience feel awkward.
This show is great if an audience is looking for an awkward shoujo romance comedy to watch with their significant other.
