‘Class 1–7 Soutarou Kanou’ — “Maid Sama!”

Video ID not provided: Please check your shortcode.Video ID not provided: Please check your shortcode.

In “Maid Sama!” (“Kaichō wa Maid-sama!” or “The Pres­i­dent is a Maid!) stu­dent class pres­i­dent Mis­a­ki Ayuza­wa is the first female class pres­i­dent of Sei­ka High School, quite an achieve­ment as the school used to be male-only but was recent­ly con­vert­ed to a co-ed school. An excep­tion­al stu­dent and ath­lete, she is deter­mined to reform the boys of the school, who are still unac­cus­tomed to the new girl stu­dents, and make the school a bet­ter place for both sexes.

In episodes #14–15, ‘Class 1–7 Soutarou Kanou’ and ‘School Vis­i­ta­tion Asso­ci­a­tion & A Glass­es Rab­bit’, Mis­a­ki is hard at work get­ting the stu­dent coun­cil to help plan and coor­di­nate a suc­cess­ful open house. How­ev­er, fresh­man stu­dent Soutarou Kanou, who is extreme­ly with­drawn and even ter­ri­fied and hate­ful of girls, wants to sab­o­tage Mis­a­ki and the open house, and the best way he knows is through hypnosis.

Although it isn’t appar­ent, Kanou begins his cam­paign by first hyp­no­tiz­ing (or drug­ging, hard to tell) the stu­dent coun­cil trea­sur­er and sec­re­tary, but that’s only the begin­ning: his true tar­get is the stu­dent coun­cil pres­i­dent her­self. By broad­cast­ing drowsy music over the school pub­lic address sys­tem, Mis­a­ki is lured to the broad­cast con­trol room, where, in her sleep state, she is hyp­no­tized (by means of the clas­sic swing­ing coin). Once under, she is giv­en a post-hyp­not­ic sug­ges­tion to act as though she is drunk. For­tu­nate­ly, Taku­mi, the per­son at the school she is in a off-and-on ‘friend­ly’ rela­tion­ship with, hap­pens by, sees her asleep and car­ries her off to the clin­ic to rest. When she awak­ens, she starts fol­low­ing the sug­ges­tion, doing things like try­ing to strip and even ask­ing Taku­mi to undress her, all of which Taku­mi wit­ness­es and even cap­tures some of which on his phone.

The next morn­ing, Taku­mi shows her the evi­dence. Mis­a­ki is mor­ti­fied. She thought it all was a dream. She does remem­ber being in the con­trol room and see­ing Kanou, but he wore a mask and habit­u­al­ly wears a hood­ed sweater and glass­es so he was impos­si­ble to iden­ti­fy. Taku­mi is cer­tain she was hyp­no­tized and her per­son who did it want­ed to destroy her, and knows who that per­son was. Taku­mi approach­es Kanou, who tries hyp­no­tiz­ing him into hat­ing Mis­a­ki (dra­mat­i­cal­ly over the com­mer­cial break) but it does­n’t work.

Once Mis­a­ki dis­cov­ers Kanou’s iden­ti­ty, she con­fronts him, as Taku­mi is run­ning around, try­ing to find Mis­a­ki. Just as Taku­mi find them, Kanou claps his hands, break­ing Musask­i’s train of thought, then tells her that if she falls asleep any time over the next 24 hours, she will imme­di­ate­ly hate Taku­mi. For the rest of the day and night, Taku­mi fol­lows Mis­a­ki, even to going to the maid café and phon­ing her in the mid­dle of the night. The next morn­ing, Taku­mi is wait­ing for Mis­a­ki at her house when she leaves for school and stays with her all the day. See­ing that his scheme is about to fail, Kanou meets Mis­ak­i’s friend Shouichi­rou, the coun­cil vice-pres­i­dent and hyp­no­tizes him to offer Mis­a­ki a painkiller with the side effect that it induces sleepi­ness. At the end of the episode, Mis­a­ki has her head in Taku­mi’s lap just as Kanou approaches.

Mis­a­ki demon­strates that she was able to stay awake, if only by lis­ten­ing to Taku­mi’s talk, and that Kanou’s hyp­no­sis did­n’t affect her. As pun­ish­ment, Mis­a­ki has Kanou assist the girls run­ning the cafe­te­ria at the school dur­ing the open house, where he is to wear a for­mal out­fit and bun­ny ears. Even though he tries to escape, no mat­ter where he runs, wait­ing for him is the bale­ful gaze of Mis­a­ki, even the one time he tries to hyp­no­tize some­one to take his place, even Kanou is sure she’s some­place else.

But it all has a hap­py end­ing: because of Mis­ak­i’s efforts and the com­pa­ny of the girls in the cafe­te­ria, Kanou final­ly begins to see girls and women as some­thing oth­er than he thought before, and that includes Misaki.

Com­men­tary: The stan­dard media-type hyp­no­sis, but car­ried out more ful­ly than most appear­ances. The scene in the clin­ic where Mis­a­ki acts drunk is quite amusing.

Rec­om­men­da­tion: The series can best be described as light-heart­ed and amus­ing and pret­ty stereo­typ­i­cal, espe­cial­ly in the rela­tions between Mis­a­ki and Taku­mi, these two episodes are cute and amusing.