KathyKatz

While watching this anime, I felt like I was watching a fanfiction. Why a fancfiction you wonder? Well before I get to that point, let me explain every category regarding Maid-sama and the reason I decided to grade it with each score.

So first of all, let us begin with the story. The story follows our main character, Misaki Ayuzawa a high school student that earned the title of Student Council President in her school, Seika High School. A school mainly made up of boys and a couple of girls that have transferred. Yet, our main character wouldn't be interesting if she didn't have something special to her now would she? She has a secret, she works part time at Akihabara at a maid cafe. Misaki, of course, to keep her pride keeps this a secret from pretty much everyone except her family, but her world is easily turned upside when the HOT and HANDSOME and may I add WAY TOO PERFECT TO BE REAL, Takumi Usui finds her wearing her maid costume. At that moment it's where our crazy antics begin, so along with all of the high school schenanigans seen at high school anime the stoy was kept interesting by throwing in interesting antics for our female and now male  lead to overcome. Unfortunately the story could have done better without the filler episode about a dream from Misaki (Not sure if this is actually a thing in the manga since I am writing this review as someone who only watched the anime). Also, the story suffers a bit as a rival love interest is introduced in the late quarter of the story, he did have a bit of backstory to him, but he pretty much stood no chance against Takumi considering we were near the end when he made his appearance.

Next, we got the animation department. This anime is from 2010 so I think the animation looked good for its time, but I think it did relied a bit on the girl-hits-guy-into-orbit action which is represented by simple cutouts. Considering this is a comedy anime as well this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but there could have been a bit more effort on the crowds instead of just relying on simple cutouts. Backgrounds tend to be a bit lazy at times, but overall the art is pretty good. We got our good-looking shoujo boys, of course, and the anime even adds these flowery emotion particles along with their shoujo filters which is always fun. Overall, I don't think it's disappointing and actually find it to be fitting for this type of show.

Having analyzed the animation, we then have sound. For this category, I take into consideration both the soundtrack and the voice acting. The voice acting was on point, I believe every voice actor managed to fit their character just right. Also, I Liked the contrast between the happy-sweet OP focused on Misaki with the rock type EDs we got for Takumi. I think the visuals for the OP fit the theme of the show while the ED was fine. While on the sountrack department, I have something to say the soundtrack was mostly good, but there was this song that was really over-used. I lost track on how many times it was used during the show, but I think it's going to be in my head, for like a week or more. I know it's called the main theme (yes, I googled the name), but I believe there's a limit on how much you can use one track in your show.

Finally we have our last category, characters. Maid-sama has a lot of characters so I would never finish if I took my time to explain every single one of them so I will just focus on the characters that actually had an impact on the story. So we first have our protagonist, Misaki Ayuzawa, a hard-working girl with a REAL hatred for men, she bad-mouthed guys for a while in the show. May this be due to her issue with her father or something completely unrelated? We never know. Despite this, she's quite tomboyish herself often dressing up as a guy herself so coincidence? I think not. Accompanying our female lead, we have Takumi Usui, the epitome of MALE PERFECTION as he's talented at absolutely everything, has the right amount of charm and good looks to have girls just fall in love at the mere sight of him. He's the reason why I thought I was watching a fanfiction at some point. We know nothing really about Takumi Usui despite what I have already mentioned, and the clues given to us by the EDs (If you watch the EDs that is). His character didn't really had much going for him as he didn't really felt real, this may be only the case for the anime though.

With the main characters, we have our set of secondary characters to spice up the story. First, we have the three guys that were constantly addressed as "The Three Idiots," Ikuto Sarashina, Naoya Shirakana, and Ryuunosuke Kurosaki. If I am completely honest, the only one I was  able to tell apart was Naoya as he had a whole episode dedicated to himself. In the secondary cast, we also have Misaki's friends, Sakura Hanazono and Shizuko Kaga. Sakura is the way too innocent and naive one while Shizuko is the one that keeps things in line when Misaki is not around. The last secondary character that I'll mention will be the rival love interest, Hinata Shintani. He basically just appeared to push the plot forward. Since his first appearance he had no chance of ever getting Misaki despite them being kind of childhood friends, which was kind of sad.

Overall, the anime is a good way to kill time, and a good classic shoujo despite its flaws. Maid-Sama is definitely a good show for anime beginners to enjoy so if you are into a romantic shoujo comedies then Maid-Sama may be to your liking.