Maidsama Out of all the shoujo romance manga Ive read that get hyped up by first time readers through their insane biases and rose tinted glasses this is probably the one that lives closest to that hype. Maidsama is one of the more interesting of these typical shojo romance manga. Normally in these series it feels like the authors slowly run out of ideas for what the characters do and need to have happen for proper character development so they just check off boxes of cliches and tropes to pad time or force moments. MaidSama doesnt do that. No love hotels no convenient fireworks zero misunderstandings not even a panic at high school graduation for what to do with their life. The only one thats done strangely is the childhood friend love rival literally dropping from the sky. Other than that single jarring incident MaidSama flows smoothly from beginning to end. As per usual lets meet the main duo. Starting with our main character Misaki. Misaki is the student council president who has a reputation for being a dictator. She goes to a newly coed school and feels its her responsibility to make new girls feel welcome and reign in the rowdy boys. She does this by giving the boys no quarter. Shes a stickler for the rules and everyone knows it. She works hard to maintain the image of someone the girls can rely on and the boys should fear. She has to have the top of the grades and basically does all of the student council work herself. You may have noticed Im talking about her image and reputation instead of listing things to describe her. Thats because Misakis image is her character. She is the demon student council president. Without that image she cant achieve her goals. The two things are inseparable. As the title suggests Misaki has a secret that goes against that image. She works at a maid cafe. The reason she works there is that the pay is much better than anywhere else and the staff is all female. Usui Takumi is our male lead. He also has an image. Hes the resident male idol of the school. Every girl wants to date him. Every boy wants to be him. He does nothing to deserve this image despite simply existing. That isnt to say he doesnt deserve this image or that its a negative of his character in any way. He simply doesnt try to have this image wanting to keep himself mostly away from others. Theres not really much else thats known about usui from the beginning. Hes mysterious but not entirely on purpose. He does crazy things and makes mistakes when dealing with people. Particularly with Misaki. The dynamic between these two is the heart of Maidsama. Misaki doesnt want a boyfriend much less one like usui to protect her image as the student council president. Usui for the first time in his life wants to work hard at actually earning something in this case Misakis affection. Hes not perfect at it either. He has the princely image but he himself couldnt be further from that image. When he tries to rescue Misaki from dangerous situations he finds her already sorting things out. Even when she cant handle something he makes the mistake of grabbing her and holding her close to protect her not knowing that thats the exact thing she hates most. He also rarely ever talks about himself. Hes a walking question mark. He barely seems human. He may as well just be some perverted alien. Through trial and effort by being patient and learning he slowly earns the trust of Misaki and eventually its just natural for them to be together. He has to earn her trust and convince her that her reign as a demon president isnt the way she should go about helping the school. She has to learn how to actually earn the trust of the student body. Yelling at them and being angry will only earn vitriol. Maidsama like any story isnt perfect. The craziness and jokey nature of the main 2 being superhuman gets to a point where it isnt a joke and those 2 are actually just superhuman. The latter half also gets to be a little more action oriented than you would expect. Theres a romance scene that stands out to me that i wont go into detail about that the author seemed to wanted to try to recreate a few times.The scale of whats happening gets a bit crazy and it kinda tears at my suspension of disbelief. What isnt unbelievable however is everything else. MaidSama isnt the type of story to make me personally cry or get super emotional but it doesnt need to for me to recognize everything that makes it stand out. The intense romance the humanity of the characters the feeling that what we see is actually deserved for the characters instead of falling into their laps. I love Maidsama.