Our heroine, Haruhi (henceforth referred to as “commoner”), was accepted in Ouran -a high school for the richest kid in Japan- on a scholarship. The poor commoner enters Ouran wearing her dad's old uniform and a short boyish haircut and quickly gets lost in the ridiculously huge Ouran campus. A chance encounter with 6 of the most rich and handsome boys of Ouran, leads her to join the Host club and work in entertaining the rich, bored girls of the school. Of course this was made possible because everyone passed commoner for a boy.

Commoner's adventures in the host club and the antics of the 6 boys are hilarious and entertaining... for a good while. After the first quarter of chapters more than a few problems appear.

The manga-ka creates a beautiful setting with interesting characters but fails to develop any aspect of that setting at all. Half of the boys get little to no development and everything that happens with the other 3 and the commoner feels rushed and pointless. The aforementioned beautiful setting comes full with interesting side-characters as well, but again they do not develop at all.

This lack of development results in a lot of fat in the story. The manga-ka takes far fetched ideas about character traits and stretches them so much that they lose their initial charm. After literally the 20th time Tamaki says that he is the commoner's father and wonders what are those non-fatherly feelings are, I cannot take seriously the subsequent story arc where he “deals” with it. Unfortunately there are more examples like that. This trend keeps up until a disappointing build-up to a predictable and weak ending.

The best backer of my aforementioned opinions is how good the anime adaptation is. The recipe was simple: They removed the fat and they let the side-main-characters stand a little bit more on the spotlight.

So, if you liked the anime there is nothing more for you here. If you like shoujo romcoms, watch the anime -it's my favorite of the genre. If you are a die-hard shoujo manga reader, well, I guess you could do worse than this. 6/10 because the first quarter of chapters is excellent.