10 Best Anime Romances Of All Time

There were a select few anime that dominated the mid to late 2000's, and Ouran High School Host Club is one of the few whose fandom is still alive and well to this day.

Mostly due to its intense, biting yet good natured parody of romance and shoujo tropes hasn't aged a day (of all the anime genres, shoujo romance is the slowest to substantially change), but also because the romance between Tamaki and Haruhi was legit compelling.

Haruhi is one of the best female protagonists in anime history, a go-with-the-flow studious young woman, completely okay with being mistaken for a boy due to a combination of her intellectual nature and her home life with a cross-dressing father leaving her with a mocking attitude toward gender roles and people's obsession with them.

Meanwhile Tamaki starts out as everything Haruhi finds utterly tiring about rich people - rich MEN in particular - all wrapped up into one package.

Arrogant, utterly ignorant about the world outside his silver spoon upbringing, dumb enough to make Monkey D Luffy look like T.S. Elliot by comparison, and worst of all, played by Vic Mignogna. Which by itself is grounds for pretending the dub doesn't even exist.

But as the show goes on, Haruhi finds a genuine charm and compassion buried underneath the rich boy phoniness, and Tamaki fell for her BECAUSE she saw right through him the minute they met.

OHSHC is ultimately a comedy about the idiotic nature of gender roles in society, and how we will only truly find a partner with whom we can be happy the moment we stop taking them so seriously. And the hilariously sweet romance between these two is a perfect encapsulation of that.