Maid-Sama!/Headscratchers

So it appears that Misaki is extremely unpopular as a Student Council President; her only supporters are the minority female students (only around 20% of the school population), so how did she become president in the first place?

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In the Dream Episode, Usui has never met Suzuna. How exactly did he know what her personality is like? She was pretty much spot-on in the story. Unless he follows Misaki a lot more closely than previously thought... or don't think about it that much and just say it's just dream and was probably a coincidence.

• Since Misaki is the one actually having the dream, her mind probably filled in a lot of the details.

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In chapter 50, Igarashi Tora goes through a whole production of asking Misaki to date him. Misaki is, of course, too Tsundere to just out and say that she's already in love with someone else... so she fumbles through a refusal based on social status which is set up to cause friction between herself and Usui. So... what happened to "no, because you tried to rape me, you asshole"?

• I haven't read far enough into this series to see these scenes, but I have seen enough of the Near-Rape Experience trope in manga to chalk this sort of thing up to Values Dissonance. It even happens in some of the all-time great romance comedy manga (including Maison Ikkoku and Video Girl Ai, and it's toyed with in Kimagure Orange Road but ultimately subverted there), and the aggressors are the otherwise likable and sympathetic male leads. I'd just presume that the reason Misaki doesn't find her own Near-Rape Experience worth mentioning, as a reason to reject Igarashi, is because she's Japanese. Now, if Igarashi didn't actually stop himself, but rather had to be stopped by someone else, then I'm wrong here and we're talking about a different situation.
  • I'll refrain from spoiling specifics, but in brief, it was Attempted Rape and not a Near-Rape Experience, Igarashi did not stop himself, he did prove himself to be a generally two-faced and unlikeable human being and Misaki was pretty well pissed off at him over it at the time. I'll allow for Values Dissonance and Japanese culture informing her attitude, but even with that, it still seems like it would be the first reason to come to mind to refuse him when he asked her out, especially since they'd had no real positive interaction between incidents that would soften Misaki's opinion.
    • Okay, in that case I totally agree; that does indeed look like something by which to be bugged.
• Personally, I would say that this has more to do with her own character than any kind of Values Dissonance. Misaki has more or less defined herself as a strong, independent and capable woman who doesn’t need men for anything at all, which is why she’s a very “tsuntsun” violent tsundere to begin with. Thus, with this background, it’s no wonder that she would rather die than actually acknowledge that Igarashi did in fact manage to overpower her (after all, the whole point of the Attempted Rape scene was him trying to prove his power to her); and while it’s true that she considers him a complete Jerkass, she also does pity him for being a lonely rich kid with issues. Also, as seen on this page, at first she looks angered and probably about to react aggressively at him, but when she realizes that he actually looks pretty serious for a change (which is probably part of his act as always, but with him it’s hard to tell), her mood changes and she gets taken aback, which would explain why she wasn’t directly dismissive of the whole affair (with a: "no, because you tried to rape me, you asshole") and instead considered the potential implications of someone asking her out (since she already likes someone) which of course made her even more awkward, thus leading to her just spluttering excuses for her refusal. Of course, ultimately, we all know that the main point of the whole scene was both to cause friction between herself and Usui and to establish Igarashi even more than before as a complete Manipulative Bastard, but that’s beside the point.
  • This explanation makes sense! Thank you, that bugs me less now.
• Tangentially related: No-one seems to remember that the Idiot Trio originally intended to rape Misaki, or at the very least molest her; without getting into the whole 'luckily Misaki was sick and therefore weak so her normal strength was absent allowing Usui to rescue her' thing, the fact is that their intentions were pretty clear. Granted, nothing came of it, but it was basically the same situation as with Igarashi except that Misaki was both weakened and outnumbered in the first instance. Since then the Trio has become comic relief but really, they just showed up at Maid Latte (after being threatened/blackmailed by Usui) and everything was hunky-dory. If you take that as an example apparently Misaki doesn't have much of a problem with would-be rapists so long as they don't actually rape her. This isn't meant to be a criticism of her character so much as it's pointing out that her apparently glossing over Igarashi's assault seems par for the course. Granted, we consider the Trio comic relief because of their subsequent character development vs. Igarashi never really leaving Rich Borderline-Sociopath Douchebag territory...

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Why did Misaki go from the strong, independent Tsundere Student Council President she was in the beginning to the whimpering, blushing mess she is now?

• Your Mileage May Vary on this one. She's softened toward Usui and become much less aggressively misandrist after recognizing and having to correct several foulups with the guys of Seika, but I don't see that she's become a "whimpering mess." (Blushing a lot is par for the course for any tsundere.)
• Indeed, you can't have a tsundere without the actual deredere you know. And besides, she’s still strong and independent, it’s just that she has now learned that regardless of how strong and capable she is, doing absolutely everything by herself is not healthy at all; and besides, there’s a big difference between trusting others and being able to work in tandem with them to actually being weak or incapable, which is actually the whole point of the development of her “president persona” (at least in my opinion).
• Wow, dude. Real women never wear dresses much? So a girl can't even develop from being a total island of a Straw Feminist to a still-independent, but now realizes she sometimes needs help and to work with others who also realizes that not all men are Exclusively Evil?

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Why does everyone think that Honoka is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing just because she doesn't like Misaki? Seriously, is NOT liking Misaki a crime on this show?

• It's not that she doesn't like Misaki. It's that Dark Honoka isn't the nicest thing ever.
  • More specifically, what's getting Honoka classed as a BISC is that she's normally cute and sweet to the point of being childlike, but when provoked, she drops the cuteness and becomes dark and threatening and extremely blunt. The indication seems to be that "Dark Honoka" is her real personality while the cuteness is an act that she puts on.

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Usui is explaining his heritage, so spoilers ahead. He says his grandparents' home is in England, so why is the arrow pointing to Wales? Is that just a mistake on the writer's part, or is Usui saying that Wales is just the English countryside?

• I don't think it's supposed to be pointing to Wales specifically, just the UK in general.