As Mis­aki finally begins to break down the door to Usui’s prob­lems in Kai­chou wa Maid-sama (manga), I’m reminded yet again of just how ridicu­lous pre­dictable and com­mon this trope is; yet despite the uno­rig­i­nal­ity, this tried and true for­mula still deliv­ers much enjoy­ment for me~

The setup has got to be one of the most over­done within Shoujo manga: the self­less and car­ing hero­ine, either by nature or becomes that way from friendship/love, meets the ideal guy, whose stoic per­son­al­ity always serves as the front to a dark and trou­bling family/childhood back­ground. After build­ing up the rela­tion­ship through sev­eral arcs (usu­ally help­ing sup­port char­ac­ters), the girl must directly con­front the guy’s fam­ily prob­lem in order to heal his past scars and firmly estab­lish their happy future~ Read the rest of this entry »