I just don't know what it is with “Shoujo Beat” graphic novels. I've bought all of them, and while I haven't read all the series yet, more of the series I've read tend to suck rather than be good. And a series like "Ouran High School Host Club" not only sucks, it sucks really, REALLY bad! After I wrote my rather short review of "Tokyo Boys & Girls," I felt kind of bad for being so brief. So my intention with this review was to not be as blunt as I was with that review. Sadly, "Ouran High School Host Club" is so lame, so poor, and so bad, that there isn't too many ways one could describe it without being blunt. Here's the storyline: a girl who looks like a boy accidentally breaks an $80,000 vase and has to work as a member of the Ouran High School Host Club until she pays off her debt to these five boys. The storyline here is not the problem I have with this series. "SGT. Frog" has one of the most boring storylines ever, yet I find that series to be extremely enjoyable (in a very silly way, of course).

Memorize these faces, as memorizing their names will prove to be VERY difficult!

Yet this series... my goodness, this series seems to have some of the same zaniness "SGT. Frog" does, yet the whole series comes off as mind-numbingly boring. This may have been a case of an editor greenlighting a series because he/she simply was on his/her last leg, and decided to take a chance that this would be enough of a hit to get him or her a better job. To this person, I say congratulations on managing to sell a turd of a series to an American audience. Hopefully, word-of-mouth will reach fans’ ears before they actually end up paying money for this. My goodness, I'm already giving you my final evaluation of the series and I haven't even begun reviewing the book yet. I must really not like this series. Well, since I've already spoiled the recommendation, I might as well jump right into the reasoning behind my evaluation. So what exactly IS wrong with "Ouran High School Host Club?!" Well, to start out, nothing really makes any sense in this series, and there is no real flow to what little story bits there are. The main protagonist of "Ouran High School Host Club," Harushi, doesn't have a lot of personality. We know she looks like a boy, and we know she is being forced to work off her $80,000 debt to this boy club, yet we get no idea of who this character is.

You know...that almost makes sense.

She's sometimes seen giving advice to other girls about their lives, but other then that, she spends the whole first book standing around acting dumbfounded, as if she has no idea what she's supposed to be doing. She's made up to be the driving force behind the story, but she doesn't really do anything of real significance. Then we have the five boys who run the Ouran High School Host Club. Bringing the five boys into this review feels like a futile effort on my part, but I will do my best to describe them anyway. I will not list off names here, because there is nothing about any of these boys that stand out in any significant way. The only one who I could remember is Takami, and the only reason I can remember HIM is because he looks like he's five years old, where all the other boys look like they're around twenty or so (God, this is pathetic)! These five guys spend the whole book showing off their pearly whites, shouting at each other, and I think one of them at one point had a giant sweatdrop on his forehead, but I can't be 100% sure on that. Concerning story structure, this series is just one giant mess. Most of the time I was hoping the story structure was some sort of joke, but something tells me the author actually thought she was writing something. One page I'm watching the main hero sip tea with some fellow classmates, and then a couple pages later she's on a Hollywood soundstage, for no real explicable reason.

I was thinking the same thing when I was about, oh, five years old.

This has got to be the funkiest story structure I've seen in a long time. I want to give this series a Z. I want to give this series a Z so badly it hurts, as the story, characters, and writing are of the poorest quality out there. And yet I can't give it a Z. Why not, you ask? I can't give this a Z because of the artwork. The artwork is of high caliber. It's beautiful, it looks good, everything is very detailed, some of these pages would look great framed... I mean, the artwork almost makes me want to cry. Artwork this great shouldn't be in something this boring and confusing. Chances are if you are buying this book on impulse, it will be because you flipped through it at the bookstore and fell in love with the artwork. Don't be fooled. "War of the Worlds" (2004) had some of the best special effects ever, but a poor story sunk that movie like a hundred-pound anvil. So where does this leave you faithful readers? Well, God gave you the freedom to use your credit card to buy another series if you so choose. I strongly suggest you exercise that freedom when you see this series on the shelf of your local bookstore.

- -Review By Kevin T. Rodriguez- -