Ouran High School Host Club 🌸 Book Club // Starting Volume 4 on Feb 3rd, 2024 (桜蘭高校ホスト部)

I was not planning to read this but got caught in the enthusiasm. It appears to be on sale on Bookwalker for the next 2 days. At that price I may as well buy a copy.

Edit: make that 4 volumes. Hoping it’s as good as you all say.

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@Pitapi May I suggest checking out Absolute beginner book club and the Beginner book club? If the current ones being read or that will be read aren’t to your interest, check all the books/manga they’ve already read. Especially the absolute beginner book club tend to have a lot of grammar explanations and such.


@Cathm2 I hope our recommendation don’t disappoint you! It is honestly my favorite anime, the only one I regularly rewatch because of how fun it is. Can’t promise it’ll work as well in manga format nor that you’ll like it at all though. ^^

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On the one hand, I prefer not to hype things I enjoyed because others might expect it to be better than it is, and they’ll end up disappointed when it isn’t.

On the other hand, I:

  1. bought Ouran on DVD
  2. watched it (both English subtitled and dubbed)
  3. enjoyed it
  4. sold the DVDs
  5. later wished to watch it again
  6. bought the DVDs again
  7. wondered how the manga went beyond the end of the anime
  8. bought a box set of the manga in English
  9. read the first few volumes but stopped as I went digital with my manga
  10. sold the manga box set
  11. started buying the English manga digitally, starting from the beginning again
  12. read through the first eight volumes
  13. stopped as I went Japanese with my manga reading

I’m looking forward to actually getting through the whole manga series this time =D

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I saw someone recommending it recently (maybe on Renshuu’s discord?) for the festivals at least.

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Yeah, same for me, but I’m nothing if not ambitious before I start reading and actually realize how far I’m in over my head :stuck_out_tongue:

(If I’m not giving up really quickly, prepare for lots of questions, folks. :speak_no_evil:)

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I think you’ll have an easier time than you expect :slight_smile:

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The biggest concerns will be:

  1. Can I read xy pages per week?
  2. Do I have time to read xy pages per week?

The majority votes on pace came in at 25 pages per week, which means if you can put in five pages daily (including time for asking questions and learning from responses), you’ll be on top of it with a couple of days to spare each week.

Actually, I suppose there is one more concern:

  1. How will I fit this in alongside the other 12 book clubs I’m in?
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For me, the bigger concern is “Does it feel like a difficulty +1 or +2 compared to what I usually read, or a +10.”

If it’s the former, I can ask questions; if I’m struggling just to get through it at all, it’s probably not a good use of my time at the moment.

Unless we’re going for 50 pages/week, I don’t expect reading speed to be the primary problem for me.

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Do you expect a potential high difficulty to be in vocabulary or grammar? (Or both or unknown?)

Because of the main characters’ exaggerated “high class” status, I anticipate a lot of grammar and vocabulary that I typically don’t see in other things I read. But making it through the first volume should set a good foundation to continue through the rest of the series.

That said, it’s completely understandable if you find Ouran takes time and effort to the point you feel you can use that time better to reading easier works. I have two series I put on hiatus after the first volumes because they were just too difficult for me. I have no idea what to expect from Ouran.

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Unknown. I’m just looking at the Natively levels, and I’m expecting an L27 to be harder than my usual L20-24, but possibly not too far out of my comfort zone with the help of a book club.

(The L30 I tried in the IBC felt very firmly outside of my “this is hard, but I have still enough room to ask questions and learn from it” zone.)

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At least by the end of May I’ll be through all the N3 grammar on Bunpro, so I should be fine on this front at le—

firefox_2023-03-17 04.13.14.557

Ah.

Yeah, I know that the JLPT ratings on Natively don’t actually mean much, and even if they would, L26 is still in the range marked “N3”. :wink:

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Well, of course they do. Up to level 26 you’re not allowed to use any N2 grammar, but on level 27 you can go wild with them. That’s why no complex grammar appears in easy mangas ever.

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I mean, it’s not like I’ve ever seen an L22 book for children that has a story that starts right off with an N1 grammar point.

(If we’re not counting 少年探偵団-対決! 怪人二十面相 10歳までに読みたい日本名作 | L22 of course.)

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Tbh, having a quick look at the sample from amazon. I’d chalk up the difficulty rating to 2 major things.

One being the incredibly high text density on some pages. This isn’t usually something that pushes up the difficulty that much on natively.

The second thing is what I call the bane of my existence since stuff like Horimiya, handwritten, furiganaless side texts. It’s one thing being able to look up a kanji without furigana, but if it’s also handwritten, low quality, sitting right in the middle of the page instead of in a neat box, that’s a whole new world of pain. but I like pain, so I’ll be reading along

The grammar itself doesn’t feel like it’d be that bad.

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Fun(?) activity: Pick a random N1 grammar point and see how many “easy” manga it appears in.

となると is like a freebie.

からかい上手の高木さん
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くノ一ツバキの胸の内
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ルリドラゴン
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三ツ星カラーズ
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To be honest, that’s one of those cases, where I don’t really get what makes this grammar point “harder” than other grammar points besides of course that it appears less maybe? Same situation as most joyou kanji and stuff.
Like this literally just translates to “if ‘x’ happens…” which is what it means,

Edit:
Lol, it just appeared in the book I’m reading. Funny how priming works

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Guilty :sweat_smile:

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Well one poor financial decision later it looks like I will indeed be joining this club :joy: as seems to be the general sentiment Ouran has a special place in my heart, so going through it once again in Japanese sounds like a great adventure! I do have the manga in English as well (actually the only English manga I physically own if that’s any indication) so if we ever have questions about how things were translated or anything like that I can check it out :grin:

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me putting in my mandarake order :joy:

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Since I’ve forgotten to warn about the start date and schedule polls closing (they’re in the second post), I’ll do so now, and I’ll close them tomorrow night so in about 30 hours, they have been open for a week already so I hope that isn’t a problem.


Welcome abroad! And I’m glad there will be more paper readers haha, although the ebook readers actually gets page numbers which we don’t…


Wait a minute… I need to find mid-chapter break points without page numbers? … Cry for me. :sob: (Looks like plan B will win, so half a chapter per week of reading.)

Good thing I have a feeling I’ll know the first few chapters backwards and forwards from the anime. So all I’ll need is to figure out where approximately the middle is and then pick a good page to break on. :joy:


Every order for Japanese books (and games) I ever make. :joy:

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