I'm convinced the only reason this anime maintains its high rating is due to nostalgia. As someone who did not grow up watching anime and only discovered it turning my early teenage years, I have no sense of nostalgia for this show, but after years of hearing about it, I decided to finally give it a try.
Never have I ever been so bored in my entire life.
I suppose a part of me knew that this show would entirely consist of silly antics, absurd plotlines, and cheap jokes that have aged poorly, but after watching the original Fruits Basket last summer, I was hoping that Ouran would be on the same scale. Nope. I sat, episode after episode, watching no plot progress and reaching for binoculars to find the tiniest sliver of character development. What's frustrating is that the few episodes that actually did take the time to unpack the main characters better were thoroughly enjoyable and easily rekindled my interest. Then we'd have another 5 episodes of silly nonsense and my enjoyment would rapidly decline again.
I'm also mourning the fact that this show could have been a great commentary on gender identity and expression (a lot to ask for from an early 2000s anime, I know). Sometimes it felt like they were so close to reaching that point (Haruhi saying she didn't mind being referred to as a boy or a girl in an early episode, for example, was so exciting to see portrayed, especially in an older anime). However, most of the time it felt like your standard transphobic crossdressing jokes (Haruhi's father's character particularly rubs me the wrong way, which is frustrating because he had so much potential!). If this show had treated its characters a little more carefully (which is apparently a lot to ask since they barely get a speckle of character development), Ouran might have had some actually good LGBTQ+ themes, but between the incestuous twins, the lesbians from Lobelia that are clearly represented as being predatory, and the straight up MISOGYNY in this show (don't even get me started on that episode when Tamaki blames Haruhi for getting pushed off a cliff for failing to account for the fact she is a woman instead of blaming the boys who were verbally harassing her and other girls at the beach), I'm just constantly left with a bad taste on my tongue.
It's one thing if you grew up watching this show and have an emotional attachment to it, but for those of us who didn't, this show did absolutely nothing me, and I'm thankful that there weren't more than 26 episodes.
