By Hiro Fujiwara
Tokyopop, 193 pp.
Rating: T (13+)

As the Student Council President in an all-boys school that was recently converted to co-ed, Misaki has her work cut out for her. With so few girls attending, the boys haven’t given up their habits of leaving dirty magazines around, wandering the halls half-dressed, and just being sloppy in general. Misaki is more than up to the task of whipping the boys into shape and making a more friendly environment for the small and timid female population. The only problem, however, is her current part-time job at a maid cafe. What will the boys at school do when they find out that their tough-as-nails president dresses as a maid and serves “masters” all afternoon? Well, Usui, the best boy in school at breaking girls’ hearts, has stumbled upon her secret, so she’s about to find out.

This book was actually pretty fun, if a bit mindless. Misaki is a pretty standard angry girl-type heroine, though it is pretty funny to see all the boys at the school cowering in fear of her. Seeing the weird behavior the boys seem to get up to (there was more than one instance of boys in towels chasing each other through the hallways) is also pretty entertaining, and I really liked the antagonistic relationship between Misaki and Usui. It doesn’t really get romantic until the very end of the book, and in all honesty I can’t imagine a really affectionate relationship between them, but the interaction between the two is still cute.

Most of the chapters in this book were one-shot stories that dealt with Misaki keeping the fact she worked at a maid cafe a secret. Usui learns her secret pretty early on, but there is another scare involving a group of boys she bullies pretty regularly at school, and another instance where a group of boys that idolize her nearly find out. There’s also a chapter about taking care of the school festival and how her bullying sometimes backfires. It’s all pretty simple stuff, and there’s no real overarching plot as of yet, with none on the horizon, but the comedic hijinks of Misaki chewing out the students and Usui tormenting her is working pretty well as entertainment so far.

Also, if any of this sounds amazingly sexist, it kind of is. Between Misaki’s secret shame of working at a maid cafe and the sloppy, obnoxious male population at the school, there’s a little something there for both genders. It doesn’t really take itself very seriously though, so it’s hard to hold that against it.

There’s also a short story at the end of the volume called “A Transparent World” about a boy who passed away and the quiet girl who had a crush on him. It’s actually kind of a sad story to put at the end of a book like this. It’s a very bittersweet love story and a surprisingly worthwhile read, unlike most bonus stories like this.

All in all, this was a pretty entertaining, if shallow, read. It uses a lot of common shojo plot devices, but it manages to keep itself from being bland and stale, mostly with a pretty decent sense of humor. I’ll probably be looking for the second volume, mostly to see if the plot picks up, but also because this is a pretty decent “guilty pleasure”-type book.

Volume one of Maid Sama! is available now.