Ouran High School Host Club Promo Taunts Fans Wanting a Remake

One of the most famous examples of a shojo anime plagued by the “no second season” curse is Studio Bones’s adaptation of Bisco Hatori’s Ouran High School Host Club. When the series released in 2006, it exploded in popularity due to its large ensemble cast filled with lovable, eccentric bishounen, clever humor, and early approach to LGBTQ+ themes, that, while flawed in many ways, was one of the first mainstream anime to openly explore and embrace a variety of gender identities.

Videos by ComicBook.com

With a 26-episode single season adapting only the first eight volumes of the original manga, Ouran High School Host Club suffered the same fate as many anime adaptations released during this era, diverting away from the source material for one reason or another in favor of a wholly anime-original ending. While the series is still a classic, fans have been begging for a remake in the same vein as the recent Fruits Basket reboot for years – and Studio Bones seems to be having a blast teasing fans with new content.

Studio Bones recently released a brand-new visual featuring the main cast of Ouran High School Host Club, not to announce a new animation project but to promote their official online storefront. The visual promotes upcoming merchandise sales for the start of 2025 and depicts the members of the titular host club wearing cream-colored suits in their iconic, welcoming poses.

Ouran High School Host Club Remains a Cultural Phenomenon – But Fans Deserve a Reboot

Following the series’ resurgence in popularity after becoming available to stream on Netflix and Crunchyroll, Ouran High School Host Club re-entered the mainstream after seemingly being left behind amidst other mid-2000s classics. In 2019, the original creator of the series, Bisco Hatori, attended Anime Expo in Los Angeles and told fans that, while she would openly welcome a new project adapting the characters and events of the story, she had no real control over whether the series would be picked up, and to continue petitioning Bones for a new adaptation.

Considering the success of other recent shojo reboots, like the 2019 remake of Fruits Basket from TMS Entertainment, the upcoming revival of Rose of Versailles from MAPPA, and the third season of From Me To You: Kimi ni Todoke during the Summer 2024 season, it makes sense that Ouran High School Host Club would be the next big series to get an updated release. Tons of content’s still left to be adapted from Bisco Hatori’s original work. The 2006 anime adaptation of the series diverts from the source material and attempts to give the series a definitive ending.

In the anime-only ending, Haruhi learns that Tamaki has been arranged to marry a young woman named Eclair from a wealthy family at the behest of his grandmother. With Tamaki resigning to his fate and pulling away from his friends, the club, and Haruhi, the group is forced to race against the clock to stop him from abandoning everything. The final episode ends with Haruhi rushing to rescue Tamaki, and while the finale is somewhat open-ended, it’s clear that Haruhi and Tamaki are the end-game couple. However, this series of events never happens in the manga. As previously mentioned, the anime only adapts up to Volume 8 of the manga, leaving over 50 chapters of important character and story development missing from the anime.

A proper reboot of the anime, especially one in the same vein as Fruits Basket, which received multiple seasons, would finally give the story time to breathe and develop the slow-burn love story between Haruhi and Tamaki. The later volumes feature some of the series’s best writing as well, expanding on the backstories of every single member of the host club and their complicated and troubled relationships with their families that ultimately led them to find community with each other. While it still seems like a hopeless dream to many longtime fans who have turned begging for a second season into a meme, with the amount of new merchandise and attention the series has been receiving from Bones, there could still be hope for the future of Tamaki’s precious host club.

H/T Shoujo Crave on X (Formerly Twitter)