Manga Review: Kaichou wa Maid-sama!

On top of liking regular books and television show I am a huge fan of asian drama and manga. I lived in South America as a child and down there the shows that were in english were mostly Japanese cartoons. I fell in love with them then and continue to keep up with some. Yesterday I was checking to see if there had been any updates for a series I enjoy called Skip Beat when I noticed this one. I remembered the name and description from another website as a new series that was coming out soon. So I clicked to read the manga, and then I finished all there was to read today. So now I will review what is out.

The story begins with a girl Misa who is the student council president for a school that used to be all boys but now has a few girls. She works hard to keep the school clean and to try and change their public image. But her family is in debt because her father ran out of them so she works at a Maid Cafe to help pay the bills. (For those of you confused this is a restaurant were all the waitresses are women and they dress up in French maid costumes and treat you like their master. Its sorta a fetish thing. But not in a creepy way, Japanese people just have different ideas of charming and fun.)

Because she feels that if the boys at her school found out about her job Misa works every hard to keep it a secret. Then the school's most popular boy Usui finds out about her job, but rather than using the knowledge against her he protects is and spends a lot of time bothering Misa at her job and at school for his amusement.

The story and how things play out are pretty standard for what is referred to as "slice of life" stlye manag. There are school trips and a sports day. Exams come up and characters have to study. There are holidays and special events. Most of these things push the action forward. Misa tends to over react to everything and Usui is stoic or a bit odd in all situations. Its clear that he is interested in her but finds watching her more fun than saying anything and Misa is a little too dense to figure it out anyway.

My main issue with the series comes up at right about when the translation kicks out. Right about the time they are finally about to address their feelings the stupidest of plot devices comes up. He is super rich but an illegitimate child of the family. They dont really care about him that much but they are trying to pressure him to go to the rich kid school and his family disaproves of Misa. I dont really know why but this is coming up more and more in the manga I read. I am just waiting for some aranged marriage to come out of closet in the next few chapters. (checks closet)

I don't know if they do this for effect of because they really think that English and French people are that old fashioned. Who knows. But other than that stupid of stupid plot tricks coming up I enjoy the series greatly.