Ouran High School Host Club Episode 5 Recap

OMG, this episode of Ouran High School Host Club had me making incoherent noises at my screen, with my mouth flapping open and closed like a fish out of water. It was so good I couldn’t even pick a single picture to top the post, but instead let you guys decide which of the two makes your toes curl. Tamaki hugging Haruhi in a thunderstorm, or Kyoya looming over Haruhi in bed to teach her a lesson in male-female disparity? *back to making high-pitched squeals*

If I didn’t yet love Ouran, this episode would have tipped me over. Since I already love it, this episode turned me RABID. If this drama were an angsty HanaDan, the love triangle will cut me into pieces. But alas, it’s just sweetness and light, so I shant hold out hopes for my Kyoya to get the girl in the end. It’s okay, he always has me.

Episode 5 recap:

The Ouran High School host club is spending the summer at the beach. While it looks like Tamaki is flirting with a girl, turns out a line of girls are waiting for their turn with the Prince. Haruhi grimaces at Tamaki in action, asking why she has to be subjected to this sight even at the beach.

When girls run up asking Haruhi why she doesn’t swim, Haruhi smiles and says the girls ought to take a dip since they are all wearing such cute bathing suits. Tamaki overhears and mumbles inside his own brain that Haruhi would look the cutest in a girl’s bathing suit if she deigned to wear one.

Honey pulls Haruhi to go collect shellfish on the beach, and Haruhi happily picks up lobsters and abalone strewn all over Nekozawa senpai’s private beach. When the boys crowd her to offer her more delicious future dinner items, she yells at them to leave her be!

The twins wonder why they are at Nekozawa senpai’s private beach. Kyoya explains that Haruhi doesn’t have a passport, and all of them have private beaches overseas, so this was their best option.

Nekozawa senpai pops up to scare Tamaki with his ominous warning that the Cat’s Head Peak is rumored to be cursed and anyone falling from it will not come back alive.

Suddenly a girl shrieks as she encounters a bug amongst the shellfish. Haruhi calmly picks it up and tosses it back into the sea, which makes Kyoya just laugh. God, I love it when that man smiles. When asked why she’s not scared, she shrugs and asks why she should be scared, it’s just a bug. Tamaki wonders why she doesn’t ask the guys for help, and she wonders why she should.

The twins create a new game – What is Haruhi Scared of? Tamaki initially refuses to participate until Kyoya flashes the reward prize – pictures of feminine Haruhi from her middle school years. Suddenly everyone is in on this competition.

Operation What Is Haruhi Scared Of commences. Turns out she’s not scared of the dark, of ghosts, of heights, or even of sharp pointy objects. Much to everyone’s dismay.

Suddenly some female students get harassed by some local boys and Haruhi tells them to back off. The boys corner Haruhi against the cliff thinking she’s a shrimpy boy. The host club is alerted and Tamaki in particular takes off running.

Haruhi gets pushed so close to the edge that she slips and falls over the cliff. Tamaki jumps in after her. The local boys try to get away but Mori and the rest of the host club stop them.

Haruhi is fished out of the ocean and wakes up in Tamaki’s arms, with all the boys hovering around her. She’s fine, but Tamaki chews her out for not calling for help and thinking she can handle everything. Haruhi doesn’t see anything wrong with that – a girl can take care of anything a boy can take care of.

Tamaki genuinely gets upset and tells Haruhi that he won’t speak with her until she understands what she did was wrong.

Later that night at Nekozawa manor, the storm has caused a power outage as the boys prepare for dinner. The cool angry Tamaki of earlier is gone, leaving only mopey and distressed Tamaki, whining over why his Haruhi hasn’t come to speak with him yet. He’s reminded that he was the one who announced he wasn’t speaking with her.

The lights come on just as Haruhi walks downstairs, wearing a dress for the first time in front of the boys. She explains her daddy changed her suitcase without her knowing and packed her girl clothes. Everyone thanks unknown Haruhi daddy. Nekozawa senpai had earlier bumped into Tamaki leaving the latter with a bloody nose, which everyone attributes to him being perverted and getting too excited seeing Haruhi wearing a dress.

During dinner, Tamaki and Haruhi continue their stubborn battle of wills. When Haruhi offers Tamaki a crab leg, he happily accepts only to discover it’s just an empty shell.

Tamaki and Haruhi shoot each other supremely disgruntled looks. Tamaki stands up and announces he’s retiring to his room for the night, and tells Kyoya to show him to the room.

The remaining boys quietly tell Haruhi that they were all so scared when she was in danger, and the only reason Tamaki is so mad at her is because he’s so worried about her. Haruhi decides she ought to apologize and walks upstairs. Too bad she ate too much seafood during dinner and has to quickly run into a room and use it’s bathroom.

She walks out after she’s done, wondering which room she happened to be in. She sees a topless Kyoya standing next to his bed. He nonchalantly asks her if she’s done in there? Haruhi decides she ought to apologize to Kyoya while she’s here, but he tells here there is nothing to apologize for. He’ll just send the guests some flowers from the host club as apology for what happened.

Kyoya then asks Haruhi what they ought to do now? She’s confused, so he explains that since it’s just the two of them alone in here, they ought to do what a man and a woman do alone. He dims the lights and walks over to Haruhi, telling her that if he wanted to have his way with her, she can’t fight him.

He pushes her onto the bed and looms over her, grasping her wrist tightly and pinning her down. He calmly tells her that her belief that a woman can do the same things as a guy isn’t always correct. Like right now, she can’t break free from his grasp. Haruhi realizes she is weaker than Kyoya simply because she’s a woman.

Having understood the lesson, Haruhi delivers a zinger of her own, telling Kyoya that she’s in no danger of being violated by him. He would never do anything that didn’t benefit himself, and taking advantage of her has no benefit to him. Kyoya smiles and pretty much says touché to her perceptive abilities. He sits up and gets off the bed.

Haruhi sits up as well and remarks that Kyoya is actually quite a considerate guy. The reason he just taught her a lesson by playing the bad guy was purely for Tamaki’s benefit. Which is when Tamaki walks in asking to borrow lotion from Kyoya. He sees the tableau (topless Kyoya standing next to a bed where Haruhi is sitting on) and rushes forward, drawing the wrong conclusion.

Kyoya quickly shoves a bottle of lotion in Tamaki’s face and walks out of the room in one swift gesture, telling Tamaki to take it from here. After Kyoya walks out, he puts on his shirt and takes out his glasses, which are broken. He murmurs that Haruhi sure is an odd girl.

We flash back to what happened earlier. Kyoya actually was right behind Tamaki as the guys raced to help Haruhi. During the sprint, Kyoya’s glasses fell and cracked on the rocks but he didn’t even stop to retrieve it. Tamaki may have dived in after Haruhi first, but Kyoya followed right behind him. And when Haruhi was fished out, it was Kyoya shaking her in agitation, telling her to wake up. Kyoya wonders if perhaps she’s not odd, but it is he who has become strange recently?

Before Tamaki and Haruhi can discuss anything, a blast of thunder and lightning rocks the room and Haruhi immediately gets scared. She ends up hiding inside the armoire in fear, leaving Tamaki outside trying to coax her out.

He understands now that she’s scared of thunder and lightning, because when she was small and a storm hit, her dad was working so she had to endure it all alone in the house. And because she’s grown up being left alone so often, she’s accustomed to never relying on anyone.

Another clap of thunder and lightning sends Haruhi straight into Tamaki’s arms. He embraces her as she cringes from the one thing the normally unflappable and fearless her is scared of. Tamaki sighs and concedes that he won’t push her to change and ask for help. He’ll just watch over her more carefully so she never gets into trouble.

The host club boys walk into the room sometime later to find Tamaki wrapping a cloth around Haruhi’s eyes, and then putting an ear phone around her ears. She’s allowing him to do this since it will mitigate her fears in stormy weather if she can’t hear or see the thunder and lightning. The boys ooh and ahh at Tamaki’s now not-so-secret penchant for S&M. Mwahahaha, that is so perfect an assumption to make in Ouran land.

Every heads back to school and Music Room #3. The boys, minus Tamaki, sit down around the table and discuss, what else, Tamaki. When the aforementioned one walks in, everyone turns in unison to stare some more, before whipping out the S&M gear. I…..I can’t even write it. Suffice to say, it’s all in good fun, but poor Tamaki cannot dispel the misunderstanding without explaining the real reason he wrapped an eye cloth and put ear phones on Haruhi. But since he agreed to keep her secret, he’s stuck between a rock named Haruhi and a S&M place.

Tamaki picks keeping Haruhi’s secret, announcing proudly that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with liking S&M. Which is when Haruhi walks in and gives him a dirty look. Poor Tamaki can only wail in anguish. Kyoya declares that it’s clear what Haruhi’s only fear is – she’s afraid of Tamaki! Everyone concurs, but afterwards Haruhi’s sweet smile and sideways glance at Tamaki shows us she does know exactly what he did for her.

Thoughts of Mine:

WOW. Uhm, this episode flipped the emotional switch for me. Before I just loved how funny this drama was, but now I actually connect with the three main characters – Tamaki, Haruhi, and Kyoya. Y’all know I’m crushing on Kyoya like mad, the actor just makes what is already a Koala-nip character even more irresistible to me. I love nerdy bad boys with a personal agenda. What’s clear in this episode is that Haruhi affects Kyoya, without touching upon his typical requirement that he only cares when something adds value for him.

What’s thrilling to watch is that as much as Haruhi does something to Kyoya (makes him a human boy, perhaps), he always appears to put Tamaki first. Which is why I know my ship is bound to sink, because Tamaki’s immediate and instant affection for Haruhi marks her as his and Kyoya wouldn’t ever dream of encroaching. I really love the bromances in this drama, as all the little teasing and jokes only solidify the affection the host club boys have for each other. And now Haruhi is their personal princess, and they will protect her to the ends of the world.

I definitely can see why Tamaki and Haruhi are the OTP, because he’s also the only one that gets under her skin. His crazy antics pull her out of her calm and unflappable shell, letting her enjoy life more and stop being so stolid and earnest. And she appears to be the only person he would lose his temper around when normally he’s like a cartoon character of happiness and joy. It’s clear that Haruhi is truly aware of how the boys adore her, and she is slowly letting down her reserve and opening herself up to needing and being needed. If only there was another Haruhi for my Kyoya, then the Ouran world would be complete for me.