In the course of meeting these people for the first time Haruhi manages to break an expensive vase and to repay this debt becomes theirservant.  The boys fail to realize one thing, despite her mannish clothing, manner and short cropped hair she is indeed a girl.  The first episode covers their slow realization and her transition from dog to host.  Thus begins this lovely little series.

Ouran High School shares a lot in common with another shōjo series, Fruits Basket.  A "commoner" heroine for whom nearly everyone grows to adore and a harem of rich, pretty men who have more to them than first revealed.  It moves at its own pace, only in a hurry when it serves afor a laugh and most of the series just focusing on character development.  A slice of surreal life story, you could say.  It issweet, silly and you slowly watch this group grow into a family.  It isalso a parody of the genre as well as a jab at the male cult of moe.

The cast of characters include the pre-requisite leader character inthe form of Tamaki (a half-Japanese, half French transplant, heir to the Soun family), the bespectacled Kyoya (SHADOW KING of the club), the devlish twins Kaoru and Hikari, the tall and nearly silent Mori and of course,the loli-shota type, Honey.  Each one has a story and each is covered over the course of the series as well as some of Haruhi's own story and the history of the club. Haruhi grows into the role of host  (the girls of the school continue to think that she's just a very pretty man) and eventually begins to realize that she too loves the club.

While it does run some parallels to Fruits Basket, there are some major differences.  Yes, everyone loves Haruhi but she, unlike Tohru she is not terminally dim-witted.  She also does not serve as the lynch pin ofthe group, that is reserved for Tamaki.  They become a family as opposed to being together because they are family.
While this series charts no real new territory, it does indeed try to update an aging formula and does it with a sweetness I haven't seen in quite some time.

For those new to Pani Poni Dash! - it watches like a Azumanga Daioh and Excel Saga had a baby and raised it on crack and bad television.  Add one part mini-loli teacher, copious amounts of parodies of games, movies and other anime, a cast of school girls that encompasses every cliche you can think of, aliens, gang members, illicit love trysts, an epic battle between the drama and film clubs, deadly disease, mushrooms and ahoge, sprinkle heavily with enough secondary characters to almost overwhelm and give the whole thing more self awareness and cultural humor than an entire season of the Simpsons and we'll have just scratched the surface.  Well, except this is a comedy so the surface is pretty much all there is.

This show is basically the adventures of one Rebecca Miyamoto, an 11 year old MIT graduate genius girl who comes to Japan to take over Class 1-C of Peach Moon Academy with her rabbit Mesousa in tow.  Class memebers include Himeko Katagiri (the idiot), Rei Tachibana (the controlling schemer), Kurumi Momose (the plain girl) and the ever engimatic Ichijou-san (class rep, no first name given).  The extraordinarily large group of secondary characters' ranks swell with cat girls, magical girls, battle maids,  moe falling girls, rich animal loving girls and more.  The generic background characters are often replaced with plant heads, animals and cardboard cut-outs.  The show makes use of cuts to show that the classrooms are stages and sometimes has stagehands and crew wander into the picture.  I'd like to flesh this all out so I'll probably review a couple episodes at a time as I watch through it.  Here is a montage of episode one screen caps lovingly stolen from lolitron.org because I forgot to bring the file with me to work using the gimmicky tattertools flash slideshow.

Lets do a quick list:

• Introduce main character for the episode.
• Show main character's situation/tormentor/person who annoys them.
• A name is submitted and accepted.
• Hell Girl shows up, give the deal and the price and leaves the doll.
• Main episode character has angst about going to hell/sending someone to hell/jelly donuts are fattening.
• Foe either prompts the main character to send them to hell or the main character gets bored and does it or maybe the string slips.
• Foe goes to hell.

Lather, rinse, repeat this for 7 episodes.  Seriously, you can watch one of the first 7 and skip directly to episode 8 and not miss a thing.  In episode 8 we are introduced to the two regularly reoccuring characters, peeping tom journalist guy and his daughter loli-girl.Journalist guy is down on his luck and basically survives by taking pictures of naughty married folk doing bad things and selling it back to them to keep it quiet.  He accidentally stumbles upon the legend of Hell Girl and starts trying to stop each of her customers/victims from exacting revenge because he believes it to be a bad thing.  Loligirl meets Hell Girl in the street and suddenly becomes a direct avenue into the inner workings of running Hell Girl Inc.  She has visions of the events before they happen.  At this point we see a change in the plot:

• Introduce main character for the episode.
• Show main character's situation/tormentor/person who annoys them.
• Loligirl has a vision or Journalist stumbles upon the epsiodes story.
  
• A name is submitted and accepted.
• Hell Girl shows up, give the deal and the price and leaves the doll.
• Main episode character has angst about going to hell/sending someone to hell/jelly donuts are fattening.
• Journalist tries to intercede and stop the main character from sending someone to hell.
  
• Foe either prompts the main character to send them to hell or the maincharacter gets bored and does it or maybe the string slips.
• Journalist shows up too late to stop it.
  
• Foe goes to hell.
• Journalist and Loligirl feel bad (although Loligirl secretly believes that Hell Girl is a good thing).
  

This goes on until around episode 19.  You could probably watch one or two of these episodes and skip right to 20 because that's where things get somewhat interesting as an esper/hell boy appears and challenges Hell Girl to a duel.  From here on out things change and we get a glimpse into why Peeping Tom Journalist guy hates the very idea of revenge and how Hell Girl came to be.  Finally conflict and resolution beyond the episodic scale.

So basically, watch 1-3 episodes from the first group of 7, episode 8 and 1-2 of the others from the second group and skip to 20.  Then go ahead and watch the remaining.  In that way, the show is pretty decent.  I know the pacing and length were deliberate but in my own opinion it was way too long and almost painful to sit through.  Like ROD The TV it probably could have been a 13 episode series and been much, much better or at least less likely to place high in the I'd Rather Eat My Own Feet Than Watch This Longwinded Crap contest.  All right, I jest.  It isn't that bad, really.

(images courtesy of lolitron.org because I had already removed this series from my hard drive)