I just finished Ouran High School Host Club.

It was about time I got myself a new favourite anime/manga series. Now its 8.7 rating is not surprising at all. This one tops both lists. The anime (and probably what has projected its popular image) is a brilliant parody comedy with awesomely-developed characters, yes--but the manga (chapter 40 onward, as forumers have said) has the meat. If I hadn't been so sleepy I'd have wept through majority of the last twenty manga chapters.

Perhaps part of me is a hopeless sucker for the reader-wish fulfillment. For much of the time I was reading, I was imagining it from the POV of the female lead. But hey. It's damn good entertainment. You deserve to have it once in a while, don't you? (This is something the manga does like to explore--deserving goodness, earning goodness. No surprise that the climb to the climax was heart-stopping and actually literally had me gasping in my seat--without there being any action!!) Fiction is a salve for living in a world that's duller than we want to admit to ourselves.

I'd recommend this series to anyone. Even those outside the target demographic, if they won't mind skipping the non-plotty chapters dedicated to the teen girls for which it's written xD though, paying attention to the state of things in Ouran Academy and minor characters does pay with interest. Everything--including many surprisingly small details--returns in a powerful way if you sufficiently soaked up and revelled in the richness of the character development throughout the series.

This is for: those who like opulent settings and rich guys. Romance fans.
This is not for: those who dislike emotionally-charged (sometimes -heavy) plotlines.

Trope page time~ fittingly since what compelled me to read it was this page...seriously. Though I guess the signs were piling too (if signs are to be believed): in the past month alone it has been mentioned by 1) a deviantART friend while we were squeeing over a Wreck-It Ralph character, 2) a Facebook friend commenting on a status about another anime, 3) every single TV Tropes page I visited last weekend and 4) a random forum post I stumbled upon searching for posts about another character.