Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun

Chiyo Sakura is a cheerful high school girl who has fallen head over heels for the oblivious Umetarou Nozaki. Much to Chiyo's confusion, when she confesses to her beloved Nozaki, he hands her an unfamiliar autograph. As it turns out, the stoic teenage boy is actually a respected shoujo manga artist, publishing under the pen name Sakiko Yumeno! A series of misunderstandings leads to Chiyo becoming one of Nozaki's manga assistants.

Throughout the hilarious events that ensue, she befriends many of her quirky schoolmates, including her seemingly shameless fellow assistant, Mikoto Mikoshiba, and the "Prince of the School," Yuu Kashima. Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun follows Chiyo as she strives to help Nozaki with his manga and hopes that he will eventually notice her feelings.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Mikoshiba, Mikoto Main

Okamoto, Nobuhiko Japanese

Sakura, Chiyo Main

Ozawa, Ari Japanese

Seo, Yuzuki Main

Sawashiro, Miyuki Japanese

Nozaki, Umetarou Main

Nakamura, Yuuichi Japanese

Kashima, Yuu Main

Nakahara, Mai Japanese

Hori, Masayuki Main

Ono, Yuuki Japanese

Wakamatsu, Hirotaka Main

Kimura, Ryouhei Japanese

Tomoda Supporting

Hino, Satoshi Japanese

Miyako, Yukari Supporting

Kawasumi, Ayako Japanese

Suzuki, Saburou Supporting

Miyano, Mamoru Japanese

Tanaka, Shou Producer

Beniya, Yoshikazu Producer

Kamata, Hajime Producer

Matsuzawa, Tooru Producer

Reviews

Sep 20, 2014

Jarrbearr

Recommended

If you're looking for an anime with romance and relationships, this isn't what you're looking for. If you're looking for an anime with endless hilarity and gags that runs off love and romance, this is what you're looking for. This anime thrives off misjudgments and the characters.

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun is an anime thats been the laughing central of this summer. With the theme of manga-artists becoming more popular lately such as, Manga-ka to assistant-san or mangirl ,it's becoming much more attractive and interesting to watch. This is a gem that's becoming popular due to its laughable characters and misinterpretations that occur all the time.

The ... story follows Sakura, a girl who tries to tell her crush that she likes him, but gets misinterpreted and ends up becoming his assistant. She often tries to get closer to him, but always gets misjudged and makes for some hilarious comedy. The story follows their life at school along with some other cast members to make the show enjoyable and a lot more entertaining to watch as a whole. With the running gag of it being comedy, some things may seem predictable, but it still stays original and has comedy in every episoded.

The characters are all really unique in their own way and is the strongest part of the show. With all the different characters you get hilarious situations that really makes the show stand out from the rest that's airing and one that takes comedy to the next level with their personalities.

You have Sakura, a girl who tries often to get close to her crush, but is always misinterpreted. She's a great person who makes the show better with her retorts and delusions that she thinks is going to happen, but the exact opposite happens. Over time she develops a bond with Nozaki and really makes for some friendship and gave a light feeling to make you smile at every scene.

Second you have Nozaki, a manga artist and one that people often misjudge. Since he stays up to draw and produce manga, he looks like he gets into fights, but really is only just aches and pains from the constant drawing and late nights. He's oblivious to Sakura's feelings and really makes up for some hilarious reactions that he gives to what he thinks she's doing.

The art style is nothing new to the 2014 style, yet brings out details that makes it better than some of the anime airing. With all the details in the characters clothes, to the beautiful scenery that they go through in their situations, it brings out a sense of comedy to support the bickering and the interactions between all the characters. With the art being one of the strong points, you have beautiful details in every aspect that they bring to the table. The characters all have unique features and traits that belong to them and wonderful backdrops such as the school, or just at their house.

The opening is nothing to be praised for, but is super catchy. The background music for this anime is one that supports the mood that the anime gives off perfectly. The opening and ending gives off the perfect feeling to start every episode and is one that I never skip. The voice actors are all really well and give the characters life to make the anime as enjoyable as possible. The voice actor for Sakura is relatively new to voice acting, but does a wonderful job portraying her character and is one of the best in the show.

Overall this anime is one of the best of Summer 2014 line up and is definitely worth watching. With it's wonderful characters and hilarious situations they get themselves into, this is one that brings out the comedy in the simplest things. You have the standard 2014 art style, yet it makes it better by adding details to make every quality shine and make it so everything stands out to the fullest. The OST is wonderful and support each scene perfectly and the opening is so catchy that you just can't help but enjoy listening to. I recommend anyone who didn't check this out yet to start watching it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Sep 26, 2014

Baddie007

Mixed Feelings

Another mangaka themed anime has ended and frankly, I was taken as to how a reverse romance between mangaka X assistant has taken place, where it's a girl that's going after a guy, oh and the guy, however was still the usual oblivious about the girl's feelings for him, however the story part of this anime, in my opinion deserves a fair 6, since it was more like a almost there kind of thing where in the end gets spoiled up, ok so it was a bit of turn off, but then again the romance genre of this anime did played up well, but still ... in my opinion it wasn't enough for me to give it a high score than 6. Art was good, but the turn off was how Kirishima Yu was illustrated in which the way she was drawn isn't consistent, at one point she wore a maxi skirt and on the next she would be seen wearing a mini skirt, also, I hate the way that she looks more of a bishoene than a bishojo, however I gave it a 6, since Seo and Chiyo's design were good, but still the way they're designed wasn't consistent in some episodes, the sound part of this anime, well.......I just have nothing to say about it (so mods, don't give anymore fuss about it, if you guys please). Ok, the characters, the characters, the characters , the characters, so what we have was a multiple romance arc that not only involves not only Nozaki X Chiyo, but also Seo X Wakamatsu, Kashima X Hori and Mikoshiba X Mikoshiba ( and yeah, he is his own romance arc) well it was pretty obvious that the characters themselves where divided into a couple of romance arc and this part deserve a 7, and that's where the enjoyment part is, but in a overall sense where I'm pertaining to the last episode, where I won't say co'z there is this mod on my back stalking me on my reviews and recommendations, all I can say is that I can never understand why the Nozaki X Chiyo moment where it would have been great was suddenly given an almost there ending.


So here are my ratings:

Story: Fair 6.

Since the plot was just too simple and yet a bit unique.

Art: Fair 6.

Despite of the inconsistencies as to how the character's were designed when it come to one of them and I'm referring to Kashima, it was still ok, but I still give it a 6.


Sound: Mediocre 5.

No comment here, so mods back off, pls.


Character: Good 7.

Since they way that it was divided into 3 romance arcs was unique.


Enjoyment: Good 7.


My enjoyment for this anime really was depended on the said 3 romance arc.


Overall: Fair 6.

I wish I could explain about the last episode of the anime, however there is this _ghost_ who is been stalking my reviews and recommendations lately. Well, it was good but the last episode was a let down but not enough for me to give it a low score.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Mar 12, 2016

D-ohnuts

Not Recommended

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun is about a girl named Chiyo who tries to confess to her crush. He misunderstands her confession and decides to take her as his assistant, because, as it turns out, he is a romance manga author, and he seeks inspiration from the people he knows to create his characters.

At first, the show is alright at what it does, it's your average character-driven comedy. For the first few episodes, it introduces the characters and establishes their personality. It's nothing special, but it has potential.

These are the stock characters and their relationships from shoujo manga that are parodied:

1: Chiyo is ... the main girl who falls in love with the serious and mysterious main guy who is Nozaki. The latter is oblivious.

2: Mikoshiba is like the main girl from several shoujo romance manga that frequently stumbles on her own words and embarrasses herself in front of others, causing her to monologue wistfully about being an idiot. The joke is that, despite being a guy, he acts like a girl, therefore Nozaki writes him as a girl in his manga. Do you get it?

3: Hori is like the Tsundere girl who gets pissed at the handsome suave person who Kashima is. Basically, a gender-flipped Misaki and Usui from Maid-sama, minus the stalking and sexual harassment.

4: Wakamatsu is like the sweet, ever-forgiving girl who gets frustrated at the rude person who is Seo. He falls in love with Seo's voice, however, without realizing it's hers. Just like in superhero comics.

The show is meant to be a parody of shoujo romance manga, which is part of what got me interested in watching in the first place. I've read some of those, so I know what their usual flaws are: basic characterization, forced romance, lack of creativity in terms of premise, etc. If you've read one, you've read them all. So when I heard this was a parody of that, I was looking forward to it.

However, comedy anime is unfortunately not very good at remaining consistently funny, and often would rather remain repetitive rather than come up with something new or original. This is sadly the case with this show. It has the same problem as a lot of comedy anime seem to have these days, which I like to call "punchline decay": it sticks to a very rigid formula and gives the characters one or two personality traits, which I have previously mentioned, and bases all of its jokes around them. Nearly every joke that ever gets made in this show boils down to the same punchlines. They're not so much characters as much as they are running gags. But running gags require variations in order to stay fresh, which doesn't happen with the characters in this show. I certainly don't watch comedy shows expecting deep, three-dimensional characterization, but it gets stale quick if the characters have nothing more to them.

This is where my problem with it lies. Most of the parody just boils down to taking romance character stereotypes, changing the gender... and that's it. There isn't anything to the parody beyond that, especially pointless since the same characters or situations had already been gender-reversed or parodied in certain other series to begin with. More often than not, it plays out these situations without much in the way of irony to make a joke work. (I don't consider making a character type who is usually a girl into a boy to be ironic if it goes down that path too often.) Very rarely does the show ever actually do anything of actual substance with the parody aspect, which is a shame, since the show is at its best whenever it does that.

Similar to a harem anime, the only novelty in this comes from introducing new characters that fit into one character archetype, and once you already know what the joke will be with each character and it has already beaten their gimmicks into the ground, the show has nothing to offer. To put the character's lack of dynamism into perspective, half of the characters don't even have any personality of their own, and instead their personality is entirely dictated by their relation to another character. Chiyo's personality is dictated by her love of Nozaki, Wakamatsu's personality is dictated by his dislike of Seo, and Hori's personality is dictated by him beating up Kashima, etc. There isn't anything else to them really. I'm fine with background characters or supporting characters in comedies being one-dimensional, but not the main ones.

In regards to the romance manga parodies, it doesn't do a whole lot with it. It makes a few obvious jokes about that, like having sparkles or rose petals flying around the characters, and what it's like working as a mangaka. One example of such humor is a gag where three of the characters challenge each other to draw three assorted things. Two of them draw well, and the other draws poorly, except for the last one which they all draw poorly. Hilarious. I could never have seen that coming. The rest is your typical school comedy.

One of the points of a comedy is to subvert your expectations. Mikoshiba saying one of his dating sim lines and getting embarrassed afterward surely subverted my expectations the first time I saw it. Unfortunately, it didn't subvert them the fiftieth time nor the hundredth. It only subverted my expectations once for each of its characters, and then never again.

Basically, my criticism is that the show is cliché, in spite of meaning to poke fun at clichés. It's not bad for being conventional, but even if this were my first comedy anime, I still wouldn't like it that much due to its repetition. I'd still be thinking, "alright, I get it, this character has this trait to them. Are we getting to another joke soon?"

Admittedly, there were a couple of moments I thought were hilarious: Nozaki and Mikoshiba playing a dating sim in episode 4, and Nozaki having his characters stand on boxes to avoid misproportions when drawing in episode 8. I enjoyed these jokes because they showed unusual ways to deal with unexpected drawbacks in trying to draw or get inspiration for a story, which I found relatable. However, while these two scenes were funny, I didn't feel like it was worth watching the whole show just to laugh at only two scenes and be bored for the rest. I can't help but feel like even if I had dropped the show, I wouldn't have missed out on anything.

The show has a lot of good ideas, which could have ended up resulting in a genuinely clever show, but in my opinion, it never attempts to actually do anything with said potential nor does it take any risks, merely relying on the same 5 or 6 jokes and ends up a mediocre comedy, just as forgettable as the very same romance manga that it wants to parody. It's cute, but I tend to like shows when they have more substance than that. If there were more characters, there might be more different jokes based on how they interact with each other, but most of the humor revolves around their one personality trait regardless of who's interacting with who.

As much as I've been harping on the subject for the entire review, I don't want to make it sound like I believe that this show is any more repetitive than most other comedy anime, because it isn't. I only wrote this review because I watched this show at a time when I really became annoyed by this trend. If I had seen it at a different time, I wouldn't have given it a second thought. From recollection, most of any given episode takes place either at school or at Nozaki's apartment, and most episodes revolve around him trying to find ideas for his manga. Part of my apathetic opinion on it might be because I think I tend to like comedy anime better when there is a larger variety of situations that the characters find themselves in. I just feel like Nozaki-kun doesn't have enough variety in its humor to hold up for 12 episodes.

If you generally like comedy anime, then I'd recommend watching it and you'll probably enjoy it. This is by no means a terrible anime, even though I don't care for it. Otherwise, if you're like me and think a lot of comedy anime tends to miss the mark on humor, this likely won't do anything to change your mind. If you're looking for something more original in terms of characters and humor, you're better off looking for something else instead. There's certainly worse shows out there in regards to this, but there's also far better ones as well.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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