The story is about scholarship student Fujioka Haruhi, who attends a prestigious school for children who come from extremely wealthy families. While looking for a quiet place to study, Haruhi runs into the Host Club (yes, you read that correctly; the school has a host club) and ends up breaking an expensive vase. Haruhi now must pay off her ¥8,000,000 debt by working as a manservant for the Host Club. Eventually they notice that she's actually pretty good looking and--thinking she's a guy--tell her that she can pay off her debt by working as a member of the school's Host Club. The plot after this is... well, there is none, really. Haruhi spends time in the Host Club, going on wacky adventures and all that fun stuff.
If you want to watch this because you're looking for a good romcom, know that there's a lot of "com", but not so much of the "rom". The romance sub plot is dragged out extremely long, and very few episodes are even about that. There are only really five romance-focused episodes, and the romance really starts toward the end (don't get your hopes up, though; they don't even kiss, and their romantic relationship is basically just implied).
The romance subplot is kind of bland. One of the guys who has a crush on her actually seems to like her as a person, whereas the other (the main love interest), mistakes his feelings for her as familial instead of romantic (which I admit is very unique, and I've never seen before). One of the romance-focused episodes is actually focused entirely on one of the main character's feelings for her, and then they basically never mention that he likes her again even though the episode concluded absolutely nothing regarding their relationship.
This anime has a lot of stereotypes, but one of the refreshing things about it is that it makes fun of those stereotypes. The shota is extremely skilled in martial arts and has a fiery temper, the stoic is overprotective of his adorable cousin and barely ever leaves his side, the incestuous twins are actually just faking the twincest for s***s and giggles, and then the ikemen with the dark past isn't pretending to be pompous—he's really just that big of a narcissist. The only real spot-on stereotype is the stoic megane with the "four eyes, zero soul" trope, though it works. Then of course we have Haruhi, the foil, dragged along in the weirdness of the Host Club.
I really enjoyed this anime at first, but after a while it became annoyingly repetitive. Actual plot followed by filler after filler after filler.
Basically, if you're looking for a funny anime about random, silly adventures and don't mind an extremely slow romance sub plot, then you should definitely watch this anime. It's not bad, but I'm just not big on anime with extremely slow plot progress.
