Ouran High School Host Club Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

BT The P: Welcome to another exciting game of "Hide the Gender Pronouns!", the game that's sweeping the nation amongst closeted homosexuals and SNL sketches with "Pat" in them. Our contestant today is... this entry!

Flying Fox: Let's play "boy or girl!!!!!", If you're talking about Gender Hiding, then Kino No Tabi needs to be next.

Susan Davis: Is that a bit more subtle?

BT The P: Yeah, that reads a lot better. I'd never even seen the show, and I could guess what was up. It just goes to show how much easier it is for the Japanese to write stuff like this, most of the language is totally genderless, barring a few forms of "I" (and even those are flexible).

Looney Toons: Might be an Anime Trope in there, or at least a Cultural Note. I remember that the Viz dub of Ranma 1/2 had to jump though a few linguistic hoops to hide the gender identity of a couple of crossdressers while it was still plot-relevant. (A little bit later) Oh, okay, never mind.

Changed "hostess club" to "host club", seeing as host clubs serving women actually do exist in real life, even if they are not as common as hostess clubs.

osh: For extra fun, note some of those women clubs are staffed by other women who are just crossdressing. :)

Citizen: Considering the "Bifauxnen" entry at the top of the list (and the secret's out in the first episode), hiding the pronouns is kinda pointless, here and in a certain other entry that referenced this series (using "their" as a singular)...

Aya: Was the Brother Sister Incest thing also to prevent spoilers, because the Hitachiin Brothers' gimmick is Twincest- it's even pointed out in the show.

fhqwhgads: I was thinking of adding Battle Butler to the list of tropes, and wanted some feedback. My reasoning is that Mori should be considered a Battle Butler since, according to the anime, he comes from a family of Battle Butlers that have served the Haninozuka family and hangs out with Honey even though the two families have intermarried and he's not obligated to the Haninozukas. The only problem here is that Honey doesn't really need a bodyguard, and Mori never really worries much about Honey's safety in combat. What do you think?

Dentaku: I really don't get the Daily Dose Of Reality example.

BrightBlueInk: Uh. Does someone want to justify the inclusion of Kyouya as a Yuri Fanboy? Besides the fact that he's implied to set up Haruhi's accidental kiss with a girl, I can't recall him being one—and I always thought he did that to ruffle Tamaki's feathers and/or expose Tamaki's attraction to Haruhi more than because he was fanboying over it.

ratheranomic: I'm with you. That's not enough evidence at all.

sableheart: I'm really not sure about Tamaki and Haruhi being Failure Is The Only Option and think it should be deleted. The anime and the manga have differing views on their relationship. And should the various spellings be fixed to be consistent on the page? I added a joke about that on the page, but it's a little jarring to read through all the "Honey" variants.

Values Dissonance: The series becomes less and less accepting of Haruhi's liberal view of gender during its run, going so far as to have her almost sexually assaulted over it at one point.

fhqwhgads: This is something I was confused about when I saw the show. The Host Club's argument was that Haruhi shouldn't throw herself into dangerous situations if she has no chance of winning. That's good advice regardless of gender. Even Sun Tzu agrees. Heck, Tamaki specifically asks her if she's secretly a martial arts expert like Honey before he chides her for her actions. It seemed to me that the fact that Haruhi's a girl is irrelevant, but nevertheless got played up.

Double Standard: Fandom loves the Host Club guys for their antics, but hates the Zuka Club girls for essentially the same antics. This is especially jarring in case of the anime where the Zuka Club is depicted as a genderswapped version of the Host Club (especially Benio who is pretty much a female Tamaki).

fhqwhgads:It may just be me, but I think the reason people hate the Zuka club is because they're overbearing, pompous, and antagonistic. They walk into the Host Club and try to hire one of its members, then start bragging and rattling off insults. Since when has Tamaki ever acted pompous or arrogant?

Barano: And the Host Club treats the Zuka Club with open contempt even regardless of the Haruhi issue, and in their own way they're just as sexist, let alone Tamaki's reaction to the idea of lesbians. Not to mention that Tamaki is always acting pompous. (And if the Zuka Club members are arrogant then the Host Club members are arrogant as well. We just know a lot more about them so they're more sympathetic.) The story is biased towards the Host Club for obvious reasons but both clubs are made fun of.

fhqwhgads: First off the Host Club DOESN'T treat the Zuka club with contempt until after the Zuka Club walks in and makes fun of them. Second, I suppose "patronizing" would be a better term than pompous to discriminate the two clubs by. Sure Tamaki acts arrogant around his close friends, and occasionally unintentionally acts patronizing towards Haruhi because he's a Fish Out Of Water for anything involving "commoners", but he's never antagonizing. A good example of what I'm trying to get at is the discourse that happens when Tamaki first meets the Zuka Club. The Host Club welcomes the two Zuka Club members in and Tamaki, dressed as a knight, starts his usual schtick with them, which they decline. Benibara then appears with Haruhi and starts doing her own schtick. Benibara then says the host club is a "group of randomly selected light-minded fiends with little history". Can you seriously imagine Tamaki walking in on someone and saying something like that? My point is that Tamaki isn't the kind of person who'd be interested in sadistic revenge or cruelty whereas the Zuka Club clearly is.

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