Maid Sama!: Volume 7

by Hiro Fujiwara, 189 pages

Misaki Ayuzawa has her hands full as class president at her formerly all-boys high school, where she has been forging order from chaos and looking out for the interests of the female minority. To keep the boys in line and maintain her authority, she has developed a bullet-proof reputation as a no-nonsense, hardworking enforcer who holds herself to the same sometimes draconian standards she demands of others. She's all work and no play and even has a part-time job to help make ends meet at home. But Misaki worries that if anyone at school finds out she works at a maid café, they'll no longer take her seriously and everything will slide back downhill, so she spends what little energy she has leftover trying to keep her secret. When classmate Takumi Usui stumbles on the truth, he agrees to hold his tongue, but only so he can sit back and watch the show as she scrambles to keep it all together.

Or so he says. For someone who claims to be a disinterested party, Usui has become awfully involved in Misaki's life and surprisingly confrontational with her newly surfaced childhood friend Hinata, who has openly professed his love for her. Misaki can't figure out why Usui hangs around her all the time or why she hasn't made too great an effort to make the "perverted space alien" go away. But when the two inadvertently get sucked into a "love trial" at a local school festival, they may finally get some answers.

Maid Sama! is fun and Misaki is a great female lead. She's strong, smart, proactive (well, in all areas but one) and cares about other people. She's no damsel in distress (she once beat up her own assailant), but neither is she an indestructible superhero. When she does need Usui, it usually isn't how a princess needs a knight in shining armor, it's how a person needs another person. And for all his professed detachment, he seems to need her the same way. In fact, the more he draws Misaki out, the more the reader realizes Usui's been holding back and that neither she nor Misaki knows much of anything about him. The discrepancy hints at drama in the future.

This series sports snappy, thoughtful dialogue, pleasant visuals, engaging characters, silliness tempered with a wee touch of sincere drama, and a story with a little something for everyone.