Maid-Sama! vol. 1

Maid-Sama! a.k.a. Kaichou wa Maid-sama! volume 1
Hiro Fujiwara
Tokyopop, 183 pp.

Maid-Sama is the story of Misaki (called Misa-chan here-on), one of the toughtest, most agressive females in an all-b0ys school that has recently gone co-ed. She's the student council president, and pretty much keeps everything in check at the school, making sure the boys look neat and the girls are treated nicely. But what happens when a boy, Usui, finds out that her afterschool job is working at a maid cafe?

And thus starts the shojo romantic-comedy Maid-Sama!. It's formula works for now, which consists of the spats between Usui and Misa-chan, but it seems like it might become a bit repetitive over time. I mean, how long can you drag on keeping a secret? It's going to get out sometime.

There's also an extra story called Transparent World in the back of the book, which takes up roughly 1/4th of the paperback. It's a cute lil' story about a boy that died but comes back as a transparent that only his crush and best friend can see.

The characters are probably one of the strong points of Maid-Sama. At first Misa-chan comes off as a tsundere, but it turns out she's not. She's just really, really aggressive and flips to cute at her job as a maid. Usui is the school's heartthrob, who's naturally turned down every girl who's asked him out and set his sights on Misa, even if it means keeping her maid job a secret. There's also a few side characters, including maid cafe costumers that attempt to kidnap Misa, the "Idiot Trio" who follow Misa around school, and the few girls in the school that Misa protects.

I'm going to be blunt about this: the quality of this manga is crap on Tokyopop's part. One of the first of many of their cheaper-paper manga, it disappointments. It's a pain to read, not unreadable, on darker and thinner paper that's a bit see through. The book's cover is weird feeling and not-sturdy. It isn't bonded well together either, you could bend it in half. Just saying, if you want this manga wait until TP does a reprint of it in better quality.

The art is decent, and adds a bit of life to what would otherwise be an average-shojo. The characters are drawn proportionate and there is little use of chibis. The maid outfits are drawn really nicely, down to every frill and detail.

Art: 4
Characters: 4
Quality: 1
Story: 3.5

Overall: Barely a 3. Probably bought down by TP's quality. If you want a grade for the series alone, I'd give it a B. It's really good, but the publisher could have done a better job on it. It's just a bit tiring with see-through paper and small text.

I'd recommend this to the shojo-crowd looking for something different. The first volume is good, but I'm predicting the series might get a bit formulatic over time. It's a breath of fresh air for those that have read lots of shojo and are looking for something new.