Blend-S: Who is Maika chan?

Introduction

Her name is Maika Sakuranomiya. If anything, you could call her the main lead in the show, Blend-S. Maika’s story starts off showing a rejected job application. Because of her unconscious glare, many people are afraid to approach her. This has caused her to develop a complex with her eyes, which prevents her from making friends because it scares even family members. Fortunately, her family love and worry about her regardless.

 

Design

Character design wise, she is from a very traditional Japanese house. Being sheltered her entire life, she finds some aspects of modern Japanese culture to be confusing. 

Such as wearing the cloth that comes with her swimsuit as a cape. This is a cute comedic scene and shows Maika’s purity and innocence. Maika also seems to put on a little bit of traditional Japanese red makeup on her eyes.

Her character is yearning for adventure, but is not the least bit spoiled by her upbringing. She’s insistent on making her own money rather than easily asking her father for funds to pay for a trip overseas. She’s curious about foreign things and is innocently naive about them as well. 

When the group is invited into Dino’s apartment, Maika is quickly disappointed to see him take off his shoes. Her view on different cultures might be warped due to the lack of interaction with foreigners, which cause her to have high expectations.

Personality

In the ending credits we see a younger Maika in wonder, listening to her older sister telling stories about different countries. As the song continues we see her allowing her imagination to run wild as she encounters many civilizations with our main characters acting as ambassadors to her dreaming voyage. Because she doesn’t know much about people in general due to her intense glare and her traditional lifestyle, she has expectations for different cultures to be…well..very different. She get’s impressed by her boss, Dino’s apartment, which has blinds and houseplants, even though it’s nothing more than average and simple to us viewers.

Working at Stile

Dino, Maika’s boss, is just as interested in Maika as she is in him. But maybe for different reasons. She’s impressed with his blonde hair, tall stature and kindness. Dino is able to see beyond Maika’s cold glare and see’s great potential for her in his Cafe, which requires many different archetypes for customers. He places the role of, “Sadistic” onto Maika as she is a natural. The other workers at Stile, clearly see Dino’s infatuation with her cuteness, but she is too pure hearted to see through him.

Maika has poor word choices and accidentally continues to call her customers pigs and worthless. She has a difficult time in the beginning and even questions her abilities. But as the series goes on, we see that she is not only very good at playing the “Sadistic” character. She is also a very hard worker and takes her job very seriously.

Maika is also interested in getting to know her coworkers and gets along with them very well. She is respectful to her senpai, Mafuyu, yet still sees her as adorable. And is impressed by the skills of Kaho at the arcade. Maika is even close enough to her sister to get mad at her when she visits her at work.

As the series progresses, she enjoys going on trips and non romantic dates with the cast. She’s definitely an honest, hardworking, yet naive and cheerful character. She’s just as interested in becoming friends with everyone just as much as she is working with them. She might come off as a bit boring to some people, but it would be better to see her as a person who continues to try her best even when life gives her unlucky odds. She is interested in everyone she meets and is afraid to cause trouble for others.

Conclusion

Well that concludes Maika Sakuranomiya, our cheerful naive Japanese girl from the past living in modern day japan. Next time I’ll be reviewing the cheerful yet tsundere, Kaho Hinata! Stay tuned!