Kaichou wa Maid-sama! Chapter 77 Discussion

BlasianAngel said:
It's always been obvious that Tora is interested in Misaki, despite his constant cold behavior towards her. It's cute to finally see him start to show his fondness for her. ^^

Despite what anyone says, I've always liked Tora.

Nissandwich said:
I smell an ending to this arc coming up.

BlasianAngel said:
It's always been obvious that Tora is interested in Misaki, despite his constant cold behavior towards her. It's cute to finally see him start to show his fondness for her. ^^

Despite what anyone says, I've always liked Tora.

BlasianAngel said:
It's always been obvious that Tora is interested in Misaki, despite his constant cold behavior towards her. It's cute to finally see him start to show his fondness for her. ^^

Despite what anyone says, I've always liked Tora.

Lelouch22 said:
This was a disappointingly average, moderately unsatisfying chapter. It was infinitely better than the last, which is among the worst in the entire manga, but, aside from Misaki’s development, the rest was pointless mediocrity, at best.

The most enjoyable aspect to this chapter is that Misaki never deterred from her resolve to bring Usui back, which is excellently consistent characterization, and I loved that she spoke Usui’s name while sleeping, partially due to fact that it reminds Tora that he’ll never earn anything but a begrudging friendliness from her, which is completely appropriate, since he effectively assaulted her upon first meeting her, and is only now able to interact with her because she’s basically forced to acquire his assistance.

I suppose my biggest complaint is that Usui, once again, was practically absent from the chapter, aside from a few panels in which he looks at various objects. The story’s already weakened a bit by the lack of Usui and Misaki interactions, but nearly removing him altogether from the last two chapters has been an unfortunate, but obviously temporary flaw. To make this disappointing disparity even clearer, Tora was involved in 32 pages over the last two chapters, while Usui was only in 3, which is thoroughly ridiculous.

Another significant criticism that I must address in regards to Fujiwara’s writing is that, due to Tora’s unnecessary prevalence in the last two chapters, the story has seemingly shifted him into the role of a main character, while needlessly and temporarily dismissing Usui’s importance in the narrative. 77 chapters into the story, and it’s suddenly decided to waste considerable time on tediously developing Tora’s emotions and internal motivations. It’s almost as though this is paving the way for some spin-off story, in which a relationship starts between Tora and Misaki. Obviously that’s not the case, but, what with the insufferable dance in the previous chapter, the ridiculously contrived moment towards the end of this chapter that involved Tora placing his jacket over a sleeping Misaki, and the continued, deliberate, failed attempts to paint him as this deeply sympathetic character with the whole subplot about his arranged marriage, it certainly highlights the fact that Fujiwara is placing far too much unwanted emphasis on a character that is purely secondary and has practically no relevance in this manga, aside from being a “hot”, conflicted character. Of course, relevance could and should be given to him temporarily, but these attempts are consistently undercut by the ridiculous notion that he should even be given something more then mere relevance. I don’t give a damn about Tora’s feelings when Usui and Misaki’s romance is the central focus of this arc, since there is a massive, unmistakable divide between Tora’s slight feelings and the relationship between Usui and Misaki. One is incredibly important and meaningful to the narrative and the other is riddled with cliché contrivances and excessive, pandering ship-service, thus creating a lack of purpose, significance, and emotional weight to any of the material that has elaborated on Tora.

Also, hopefully Tora isn’t traveling with Misaki to England by himself. Hell, I don’t want him to accompany her at all, but if it’s not at least with the rest of the Miyabigaouka clan, then it’s just another terrible, worthless, contrived development that will inevitably only lead to a furtherance of the atrocious, pandering shipping “moments” that Fujiwara suddenly seems incapable of resisting to include in every chapter. Not only that, but the next section of the arc really needs to be entirely devoted to Usui and Misaki’s unbreakable love for one another, which will very likely be tarnished ever so slightly if all of her attempts to reach Usui are interrupted by Tora’s possessive arrogance and a plethora of incredibly unnecessary “moments” between them, which, of course, will never mean anything, but they ultimately detract from the focus of this arc, which is entirely centered around Misaki’s love for Usui, but, for whatever reason, aside from a few spoken words by Misaki, these last two chapters have shifted that focus temporarily, which induces the appearance of tonal and thematic inconsistency. It’s not as though he’ll even be tangentially involved after this portion of the story, since his extremely slim usefulness will be erased as soon as this arc concludes.

The thing is, even though he has a very long way to go, I actually want Tora to eventually become a sympathetic, understandable character, and one of the best ways to depict that transition is by having him legitimately become a friend to Misaki, but I really, really dislike how Fujiwara seems solely capable and willing to portray that change through Tora’s possible “interest” in Misaki, which is a considerable flaw, and a waste of satisfying character development, since it results in just another contrived, predictable plot convenience that doesn’t actually rely on purely kind intentions, thus creating a disconnect between his gradually evolved characterization and the significance behind this “meaningful” development.

Despite the numerous problems I have with the last two chapters, I fully expect the second half of the arc to be fantastic. As such, I can't wait for the 78th chapter, since Usui and Misaki will finally see each other again. Too bad it won't be released until January.