Want a relaxing night away from the office, your college, or your stupid boyfriend? If you're female, 18+, and you live in Japan, maybe you could go to a Host Club.
A host club is an establishment with a roster of all types of attractive men who will offer flirting, flattery, pampering, and companionship in a congenial environment and at an exorbitant rate. A typical host will wear a suit and pointed toe boots, along with heavy eye make-up, circle lenses, and wild, improbable Final Fantasy hairstyles that are usually dyed. Besides service, most of the commission a host gets comes from expensive alcohol ordered by their customers, so expect hosts to try to get you to throw down thousands of yen for a bottle of champagne. Hosts do not offer actual sex, though it's pretty common for them to sleep with their clients after hours. Customers at host clubs are eventually expected to pick a favorite, known as a "tantou", who will eventually become their main entertainer. The amount of clients a host has improves the host's popularity, whose ranking will usually be posted in the store.
The Distaff Counterpart of a host club is a hostess club. While the main market for hostess clubs are White Collar Workers, frequent patrons of host clubs mostly consist of women who work in hostess clubs and other parts of the entertainment industry, looking to relax after a long hard night of being nice to inebriated, sexually-harassing Salarymen. Since host clubs are mostly owned by the same people who own hostess clubs, this has the net effect of recouping some of the hostess' income, and thus hostesses are encouraged to partake of this form of entertainment.
Standard host clubs discourage male customers, and there are separate "host bars" aimed at gay men. Many host clubs also bar foreigners from entering due to language, cultural, and economic issues. They also discourage people who don't actually intend on becoming regular paying clients and just want to take part "for the experience."
The majority of host clubs are located in the Red Light District and are closely affiliated with the Yakuza. If you ordered that bottle of expensive wine but didn't want to pay? Expect them to beat you up, force you into prostitution to pay it off, or straight up murder you. Host clubs also generally have a very sleazy reputation and it is heavily frowned upon to even go to one.
For the younger set, Butler Cafes have a similar premise, only with afternoon tea rather than late-night booze.
Examples:
- Masamune Matsuoka of Aoharu × Machinegun works at one.
- In the manga series B.O.D.Y, the boy the protagonist has a crush on works at one because he enjoys being paid to flirt.
- In Bokurano, Miko Nakarai is an ex-prostitute who works now in a hostess club. Her daughter Mako alias Nakama is bullied because of this.
- Several of the supporting characters from Gintama work at host/hostess/okama clubs. A few of the mini-arcs take place in the host clubs as well.
- "Murai-kun Wants to Fuck Mizuno-kun": Murai works as a host, mainly entertaining off-duty female sex workers. In part two, he goes out drinking with a call girl named Urara after hours and ends up sleeping with her.
- Ouran High School Host Club features a PG version run as a student club at a school for the super-wealthy, where the club's members provide refreshments, light flirting and entertainment to the school's female students. Thanks to an eight-million yen debt and a case of mistaken (gender) identity, the protagonist Haruhi Fujioka (a poor scholarship student) ends up working at the club as a host.
- Kagari from Sekirei works as a Host, and is mentioned to hold the #1 ranking. Certain issues result in him taking long periods of time off from his job, with the excuse of a "serious illness". He's shown going on a compensated date and taking calls from his many female clients.
- In Super Lovers, Haru used to work as a host, and Natsuo still does.
- Sweet Guilty Love Bites has at least one partner of three pairs working in same one.
- Keith Goodman from Tiger & Bunny regularly visits one, because he thinks it's a normal cafe.
- Welcome to the NHK - In the manga Yamazaki ends up working at one.
- The Great Happiness Space - A documentary about host clubs.
- Seoul After Dark (aka Beastie Boys) - A movie about the host/hostess club lifestyle in Korea.
- Ryuuji's mother in Toradora! works at a hostess club.
- One episode of CSI centered around a host club, located above a strip club.
- Cabasuka Gakuen is about a group of female yankees who open a hostess club to save their school from bankruptcy.
- With no relation to Super Lovers, the lyrics and music video for W-inds.'s "Super Lover ~I need you tonight~" hints that it takes place at a host club.
- This is the main premise of Dream C Club, also doubles as a Dating Sim.
- Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light have these as a character class. They give party members the "Psych Up" that increases their strength and allows for combo attacks.
- One of the main locations in the Like a Dragon series is the host club Stardust, the owner and manager being good friends of Kiryu.
- Most of the games in the series have some form of minigame which involves one or more of the protagonists managing a hostess club, as well as dating sidequests for various hostesses, including Yakuza 3, Yakuza 4, Yakuza 0, and Yakuza Kiwami 2 (with Kiwami 2's mode replacing the Kiryu host substory from the original game).
- In Yakuza: Like a Dragon, the Host job is available for male party members and functions as a thief class, using skills to steal from enemies or inflict debuffs on them. The Hostess job is available to female party members but functions more as a spellcaster class that focuses on damaging and debuffing enemies with magic and elemental abilities.
- Kiryu himself even becomes a host in Yakuza 2.
- Persona 5: During Makoto's Confidant route, you find out that one of her friends has a new boyfriend who's a particularly sleazy Host. He's got a bad reputation for luring impressionable teenagers into debt and selling them into prostitution, leading to Makoto intervening before her friend gets caught by his scams.
- In Spirit Hunter: NG, if Seiji is saved during the Kubitarou case, then he'll invite Akira to a hostess club later to let off some steam. Not by interacting with the hostesses, of course, but by engaging in Seiji's favourite hobby of blackmailing a man out of his company secrets.
- Ryusei Mitarashi in Sweet Fuse: At Your Side introduces himself as the number one host at the Ulysses host club in the Ginza district. It's a source of constant humor on his route, particularly since he initially just comes across as a dumb meathead.
- ATTACK on MIKA:
- Megumi
had to work as a hostess to provide for her twin daughters Chiyo and Herika. The former understands why she works there and loves her anyway, while the latter hates her for not giving her the life she wanted.
- Shinko worked at a high-end hostess bar in Ginza. However, her toxic quips about Kota's girlfriend getting plastic surgery drove him away until the owner of the bar, Naomi, shows up and fires Shinko for her behavior.
- Megumi
- Etra chan saw it!: Quite a few episodes feature protagonists either working in or going to Hostess Clubs, but there's at least one episode featuring a Host Club. Tsutsuji, who had been abused and called ugly by her family her whole life, ends up wandering into one because she heard the hosts are paid to call women cute and she wanted at least one person to call her cute for once even if they were only being paid to do so. Tokusa, who is a host there, not only complies, but when he walks her out to call a taxi for her afterwards, he tells her again off the clock to convince her he really means it and isn't just telling her that because he's paid to, in order to boost her confidence more. It works.
- MoniRobo: Atsumu's mother worked at a hostess bar to provide for her son.
- Mary recounts in Let's Speak English her times going to "snack bars".
- In the third Where the hell is Matt? video, Matt dances with the waitresses at a Meido-themed hostess club when he goes to Tokyo.
