Review: MAID WAR CHRONICLE

I wanted to end this month on a tidy and hopeful note.  I don't know if I entirely succeeded with this choice of manga, but it's probably as good as anything I was likely to find in my boxes of books to review. 

MAID WAR CHRONICLE (Maid Senki), by RAN.  First published in 2007 and first published in North America in 2009.

PLOT:

The kingdom of Arbansbool has been without a king for years, waiting for the crown prince Alex to come of age.  On the verge of his coronation, the royal castle is attacked and young Alex must flee for his life with only a squad of royal maids to protect him.  Gifted with holy weapons from a hidden shrine, they must learn how to fight like knights to protect not just themselves but the future of the kingdom itself.

PLOT:

This isn't the first battle maid manga we've looked at this month, but it's definitely the better of the two.  It's not without its own issues, but Maid War Chronicles has less perviness, more ambition, and actually cares about the maids in the title beyond their potential for fanservice.

I'm certainly thankful that Alex is not our protagonist because he is quite frankly a little shit.  He's haughty, loud, with a pervy streak that's way too close to Melodias from Seven Deadly Sins for anyone's sanity.  Even in hiding, he still expects to be treated like a prince.  It's only halfway through the first volume that it finally sinks in how much trouble he is truly in.  It's a shame that the plot requires him to live because every scene with him is grating. 

The actual protagonist role goes to Cacao, a circus acrobat-turned-maid who ends up becoming the leader of the group and the most adept fighter (complete with the ridiculously overdesigned magic sword you see on the cover).  She's the one who actually goes through a proper character arc in this volume, at first wanting to leave her position (and Alex, who gropes her routinely as part of a terrible running gag) and return to performing but slowly coming to accept her responsibility towards Alex and the other maids.  The downside is that Cacao seems to be the only one with something resembling an actual personality.  The other maids (who also have goofy food-related names) are mostly basic archetypes: the ditzy one, the brainy one, the shy one, etc.

The manga settles into a routine fairly quickly.  Alex and the maids travel to a new location, where they encounter a man (or sometimes multiple men) who either aided the invaders for personal gain or is skeptical of Cacao and her crew.  They have a big fight, Cacao pulls out her giant magic sword, and they live to see another day.  It's a fairly standard shonen action formula, but it keeps things fresh and allows the narrative to keep moving forward and that's more than can be said for anything else I've read this month.

ART:

As an artist, RAN seems to have one foot in the past and one in the present (at least, the present of 2007).  Alex and the other men in this manga remind me a little of Yoshihiro Togashi's work, while Cacao and her fellow maids are cutie pies with round, squishy faces that are in line with manga art of the era in which it debuted.  Even then, they still have a few retro touches like the ahoge in their hair.  His paneling is fairly dynamic, particularly once people start fighting.  He's particularly good at the finishing blows, which tend to be big splash panels where Cacao's skirt flares out dramatically as she swings her sword downward.  He also puts care into the backgrounds, whether it's the busy streets of the capital or the dense woods at the fringes of the kingdom.

Alas, while it's not as focused on fanservice as your average maid manga, Maid War Chronicle can't get away from it entirely.  While it does go out of its way to avoid things like panty shots, he does like to start each chapter with Alex sexually harassing the maids in some fashion.  He definitely starts to let his freak flag fly a little more with each new chapter, such as the sequence where one of the maids is required to get naked so she can slip inside the cage of a giant cat (don't ask).  So far his lust for action is winning out over his regular lust, but who can say how long that balance will be maintained.

RATING:

Maid War Chronicle won't blow anyone's mind (as evidenced by its cancelled English-language release), but it's a perfectly competent shonen action manga that manages to clear the low, low bar for maid manga by virtue of treating at least one of its maids like an actual person.  

This manga was published by Del Ray Manga.  This series is complete in Japan with 9 volumes.  2 volumes were released and are currently out of print.