Ouran High School Host Club 8

Apparently sometime over the weekend (I can’t tell for a variety of reasons, cancelled posts, drafts, the fact it counts stuff like the “about” pages, etc) I passed 1,000 posts.  Holy crap, that’s a lot of manga.  I think I’ll buy more.

Now, let’s get back to reporting the funny parts in Ouran High School Host Club.  The best joke so far came at the end of the volume on one of the author talk pages.  She tells a story about how one of her assistants pulled her cellphone out of her bag and realized she’d grabbed her remote instead that morning.  Then they all imagine Kyoya doing the same thing.  The next page is a regular page of manga, where Tamaki asks Kyoya to make a phone call and everyone silently observes that he pulls out a remote and wonders what the etiquette in that situation is.  I laughed so hard I did wake my roommate up this time.

Better than the humor this time though was the fact that, very slowly, romantic elements are creeping into the story.  A longer plot at the end of the book introduces a new character who openly crushes on Haruhi in the most unintentional scary way possible.  Obviously the Host Club members disapprove, but Tamaki disapproves most of all.  Said new character (who we’ll call Bossa Nova, same as the Host Club) finally, after 8 volumes, points out to Tamaki that he is not Haruhi’s father.  Tamaki doesn’t understand, because he thought he was.  Tamaki doesn’t know.  TAMAKI DOESN’T KNOW.  It works so well.

Second best, aside from the romantic development, was Bossa Nova.  Bossa Nova has a real name that sounds like Bossa Nova, and Haruhi calls him Casanova, but everyone else defaults to Bossa Nova.  He’s the son of a big yakuza boss, has been thoroughly instructed in the ways of the thug, and has the scariest face on the planet.  His servants at home shy away from his glance, because every look is like a death threat.  The thing about Bossa Nova, though, is that he’s really a big pushover, loves kittens and cute things, and wants to play kick the can all night with his servants.  He also doesn’t have any friends because everyone thinks he’s going to kill them.  He can’t help it he’s so scary, so he tries to get Mori to teach him how to be friendlier.  Mori and the rest of the club try a variety of hilarious solutions, and Bossa Nova sticks with them through thick and thin because he knows they’re honestly trying to help him.

Bossa Nova really is a perfect character.  He takes every thug stereotype you can think of and tries to run in a cute direction with it.  He doesn’t act cute, he just wants to act cute, which is an important part of the jokes.  He gives himself Yanki tattoos with magic marker.  He wants to play kick the can.  He starts hauling around a little boy as a “cute item” like Hunny, which make his servants question other things about him.

He’s perfect.  Thank you, Bossa Nova.

There’s also a great chapter about how Tamaki and Kyoya got to be friends.  Once again, after acting foolish for awhile, Tamaki shows some surprisingly strong insight into Kyoya’s character, which seems to be his talent.  They are also shown at the end briefly discussing the formation of the Host Club, which brings to mind some comments Kyoya made about the Club being beneficial to all the members.  Hmm.

One more thing I got to mention: Tamaki’s depths of despair are illustrated perfectly over three panels, all with a spaced-out upset Tamaki in the foreground: one had dinosaurs in the background, one had volcanoes and planets blowing up in the background, and one had him falling through space in a full-panel illustration.  It was perfect.