my humble opinion on 'kaichou wa maid-sama' ~ I never read or watch ongoings!

can this count as criteria to decide what are you favourite works - the fact that you make an exception to your rules and start watching/reading an ongoing, despite that you were previously against this?

plot and characters

I cannot deny the obvious. KwMS is shoujo. shoujo has its own characteristics. shoujo may seem a bit far from reality. in the end, I started watching the anime because of the very fact that I wanted a romance, I wanted a shoujo. however, this is more than a simple shoujo for me. I have watched and read dozens of shoujo works, but this one is special

why?

'cause this shoujo is not entirely shoujo. at least, not the ordinary one

why?

as many have noticed (therefore, this is not purely my subjective opinion), Misaki is not the typical  shoujo character, fragile and wanting to be constantly protected and taken care of in a huge war between human and monsters that involves the whole universe... nor she is an all-forgiving 'maiden in love' who is unable to oppose others, including the 'male protagonist'. this fact was perhaps the main reason why I like KwMS so much

another reason came to me after I spent quite a time with this work. both anime and manga have one very important characteristic. they apply to my condition of verisimilitude - there is only one 'imagine that...', only one assumption, and the rest of the story never crosses the borders of realism. moreover, this assumption is not expressed in '...that such a person exists' speaking of any character in the story, including Usui. everybody in KwMs looks like a normal person - yes, there are such people, there must be such people, even if they are rare species. unlike ordinary shoujo stories where characters are absolutely ideal, or at least ideal for a certain part of the audience, characters in KwMs are not assumed to exist, they do. instead, the assumption we face is - 'imagine that all these guys have been able to meet due to...' - attending the same school, working together, living in the neighbourhood, etc. this coincidence is far more acceptable. they were able to meet, however strange or miraculous it might seem, but why not? the probability theory is inexorable. the chance of their meeting was small - but we cannot say there was no. the only fact we have to assume is that this chance out of many others came to reality
speaking of romance, sometimes rough statistics can help to understand the contents better. how many kisses there were in the anime? only 2. how many hugs? I remember only 1. how many other touching moments that made my heart beat fast? uncountable. this romance is about true feelings, not about watching a crowd of bishies fighting for one useless main heroine
speaking of other characters than Misaki and Usui, they could be really poorly done, taking into account the genre. an average shoujo work makes only those characters important who relate to the main heroine in a way of either being her own rival, or being a rival of her beloved. a more serious shoujo may have a group of characters supporting the heroine and a group of her 'enemies' in some way. this is what we have in KwMs, and those characters are beautifully portrayed. also, note the number of the 'third line' - not only the closest surroundings of Misaki is done in detail, but even Satsuki's sister, the beach house owner, or the guys who were involved in incident with Miyabigaoka, etc. unexpected depth for a shoujo

humour

I rarely create an additional paragraph in my reviews, but KwMs has a special aspect I must describe. the greatest contributor to this side of KwMs is, of course, Sakurai Hiroaki-sama. this person should be carved in stone so that other anime directors know whom to follow up. I adore his DGC, and while watching KwMS I recognized so many elements that he cherished and kept alive through these years - the overall feeling of light humour in every episode and things like
SD

the inscriptions inside the frame of the video

 funny faces and sound effects

 different (ir)relevant objects

KwMs is able to make fun of everything including irrelevant characters which are usually created in all seriousness

including also proper names - instead of thinking up of some name, they emphasise the level of ridiculousness of the situation

and including Usui himself. while bishies in other shoujo works prove to be cool with how they are wielding ancient swords or modern bats, riding horses or bikes, Usui proves his coolness with... breaking an egg

this is what I call self-critical attitude and appreciate greatly

graphics

I have never been a fan of JCStaff, however this studio is responsible for many good animes I watched. and they were good in terms of graphics no less than anything else. pleasant to watch and bright enough to cheer you up
the characteristic feature is that the moving objects are done in a usual manner but the backgrounds are all pencil and watercolour

and some of the frames are so obviously special

music
Mizuno Saaya-san is not an outstanding singer, so I cannot say I am particularly happy with the opening theme, but 'tis not too bad, either
the REAL balm for my soul was the using of heidi.'s two songs. visual-key-rock is not a usual accompaniment for a shoujo, huh? since then, I am their fan!
another delighting thing is the background music. pretty, suitable, absolutely 'hitting the bull's eye' of every moment in the anime. though most of the OSTs are not really suitable for separate listening, the more I watch some scenes from the anime, the more I understand that the background music is absolutely perfect accompaniment for all the scenes
what I liked a lot is the album with YumeMishi songs - the singer is a seiyuu, again, but he DOES sound like a professional singer and his voice was ぴったり - absolutely fitting - for his character, a rock band leader and vocalist. 'yume no hana' is one of my favourite songs
are there any shortcomings at all in KwMs? oh yes, they are character image singles. really boring, I could not even listen to any of them from the beginning to the end. not bad, but not good. just... mediocre. especially comparing them with the 'virtual live' album. well, at least all the seiyuus are good at singing unlike many other popular seiyuus who only scream or squeak or pronounce their lines instead of singing them (I particularly dislike Working!! OPEDs. all of them)

seiyuus
I almost forgot to write this paragraph because there is nothing to say actually. they are all absolutely gorgeous and realistic. everybody was 'at the right place'. especially exciting 'tis to hear Fujimura after I heard her as Niche in 'Tegamibachi', or Asumi after I heard her as Popura in 'Working'. if you want to enjoy the seiyuu's work even more, you absolutely MUST listen to the audio dramas. while anime was thrilling enough, dramas are even more embarrassing. several times I paused the track because I was either laughing from the funny situation and perfect implementation of it by seiyuus, or I was especially impressed by some particular intonation, or I wanted to listen to a phrase which was hard to understand because a lot of difficult words were pronounced with high speed or I was nose-bleeding because of Okamoto. audio dramas are rarely THAT good for me
 

conclusion

I can open whatever episode and start watching without exhaustion and boredom. both the romance and the funny elements belong to the kind you can reread and rewatch many times and enjoy them more and more. I love this work more than anything, and there are only a few others that can stand on the same position