A Maid Story Review and Q&A🇬🇧

Ohayo minna-san and welcome in this new rewiew ^.^

Today we’re going to the colorful maid world and we’re going to talk about a non-japanese manga, a non-italian manga but an american manga. As you may have noticed from the title, I’m talking about A Maid Story, drawn and written by Keikokup.

Linnea Kataja, better known as Keikokup, is a mangaka artist with an Instagram audience of over 30.000 people. She started publishing her stories on Webtoon in February 2018 with A Maid Story and since now she published 3 stories in total, the other two called RockRom! and Goodbye White Bunny.

The main character of this story is Haruka, a gorgeous girl with “long and slender legs, fair skin and jet-black hair” who can charm anyone. What job would she do but the maid? Actually, she works in a Maid Cafe in New York as a Maid Queen. But, even if she seems kind and gracious, she is cold and unpleasant, as well as being an otaku. But, as always, every person has a reason to behave in the way he or she really is, and our Haruka is not far behind. Why is Haruka so in sensitive? You have to read the manga!

You don’t have to find excuses, you don’t need them: the manga is free and short, what else do you want? But if you want to buy the papery version you can find it on the artist’s web shop. There are also prints, t-shirts and pins with the best artworks of the mangaka.

The thing that struck me most of this story in terms of illustration, in addition to the different colors used for the lineart depending on the mood of the protagonist, was the skill in realizing ... the drawings on the moods of the protagonist!

I think that’s incredible how colors can change, from the pink and white for soft scenes, to an intense red and black in Haruka’s scenes of “loss of consciousness".

Wait! It isn’t over yet, I have a little surprise for you…

If you aren’t sure to read the manga (you immoral!) you have to know that I contacted the mangaka for a little interview and she was so kind for answering to all my questions.

ATTENTION! This interview has spoilers (just a little bit eheh) 

I conclude by making my heartfelt congratulations to the author for his excellent work and for his stories that I hope, sooner or later to review on this blog.

QUESTIONS

1)    Let’s start with few basic questions: when and why did you start to draw? There are some mangas or animes that inspire you?

I’ve been drawing since I was a kid so art has always been a part if my life. There was no reason to it at the time except that I wanted to draw my favorite cartoon characters, but once I found out about anime and manga I started mostly drawing that. I like all kinds of anime and manga, but I would say my favorite anime (movie) is Perfect Blue by Satoshi Kon and my favorite manga right now is Life by Keiko Suenobu. Perfect Blue is a wonderful and complex psychological thriller, and Life deals with many heavy topics and focuses on bullying, and has some of the most complex and interesting facial expressions and emotions I’ve seen in manga. Growing up I was also obsessed with Shugo Chara by Peach-Pit, I loved Amu and the punk inspired character designs of the characters, they are cool and cute at the same time.

2)    Where’d you come up with A Maid Story in the first place?

I come up with most of my story ideas while walking around and daydreaming, I usually can't remember a start point but an image will come to me and ill start building a story around that. For A Maid Story, I believe the first image that came to mind was (spoiler warning) the scene near the end as Haruka was watching her apartment building burning. After that it’s like a puzzle, filling in the blanks and discovering more of the story as its written.

3)    Why did you decided to publish it on Webtoon?

    I had never published before on webtoon at that point, and I wanted to take advantage of new platforms that could become more important for comics later on. I've heard people say that the medium of comics is dying because people don’t want to buy the physical books as much as they used to, but I just think comics are migrating more towards being posted online so I wanted to start to take advantage of that.

4)    How long did it take to write, draw and ink a chapter?

  It's hard to tell how long it took exactly since I work on many different projects at once. I also drew most of the comic before I posted the webtoon so I had most of the episodes prepared already. However, in total it took about six months from start to finish (which is longer than I wish it would've taken).

5)    Who is you favourite character and why?

In A Maid Story, Haruka is my favorite of course! I really like writing characters that are bad people :,D I love reading characters in stories that have some kind of fatal flaw or have messed up personalities because it's interesting to find out what made the person that way in the first place. It's like watching a train wreck you want to look away from but can't stop watching.

6)    Which character do you most identify with and why?

 I also identify with Haruka the most (but not because I'm like her, hopefully!), with her struggles and emotional problems as well. The parts in the manga where Haruka has night terrors is inspired by my own life since I used to get night terrors quite often and would see demons/figures in them. The demon in the beginning is inspired by a demon I once saw in a dream. Luckily I don’t get night terrors anymore, but I used that experience to help write Haruka. I also identify with her just because were both otakus (lol)

Thank you so much for the interview and for writing such a thoughtfull review, I love it!!

Thank you for everything! I hope you enjoyed this interview and the review and I can’t do anything else but wish you all the success!

Now I can finish this article with my congratulations to Keikokup for her excellent work and for her stories, which I hope to review all.

I hope you liked this. Let me now if you wrote a manga or if you have a shop and want to do a collaboration so I can write a review about it. I accept everything, as long as it concers mangas, animes or the japanese world ^.^

A Maid Story Webtoon
Keiko's Shop
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Keiko's Ko-Fi