Week Five: Romance Manga

For this week's class on Romance Manga, I took a look at Ouran High School Host Club, Skip Beat!, and Vampire Knight.



Out of the three, my favorite was definitely Ouran High School Host Club.
What made this one stand out was probably the fact that it was a romantic comedy, something that can easily grab my interest without making me want to drop the show after a few chapters or episodes. From the start, Ouran High School Host Club was amusing: the main character, Haruhi Fujioka is an honor student in a school full of rich people, and instantly gets tangled up into a Host Club mess. Only one of the host club members recognizes the fact that Haruhi is female, and as a result the rest of them rope her into joining the host club as a member. The entire situation is pretty comedic, and while mixed in with undertones of romance between the characters and heavily surrounded in themes of love, this anime in particular definitely stands out as one of a kind.


Another notable Romance Manga, while not on this list, is We Can't Study / We Never Learn. I felt like this one was worth mentioning because while still ongoing and slightly less known, this manga in particular is a romantic comedy in the same vein as Ouran High School Host Club, but with a more "harem-like" twist. We Never Learn starts off with the main character, Nariyuki Yuiga, being offered to tutor two girls in their senior year of high school in exchange for getting a full ride to the school of his choice. These two girls in particular, Fumino Furuhashi and Rizu Ogata, excel at one particular subject matter but wish to go to school for the opposite. Furuhashi is a brilliant writer, but cannot handle any math or science-related subjects whatsoever, while Rizu is amazing at mathematics and science but cannot comprehend literature. While attempting to help the two students, they start to fall in love with Yuiga, creating a love triangle that is both amusing and painful to watch as, with these types of shows, the main character remains completely oblivious to the girls' feelings. As the show progresses, more girls are added to the list, making it a harem. This is similar to Ouran High School Host Club in that OHSHC is like a reverse-harem centered around Haruhi.