Nov 7, 2016
Romantic, school, comedy, 4-koma manga adaptation... It's rare for me to even hear these four things and actually then watch the series, never mind enjoy it to the extent I did.
The show's overly clichéd premise has to be one of its biggest strengths as without it, the show's tongue-in-cheek humour would be out of place. Gekkan Shoujo knows it sounds clichéd, it knows we think we've seen all this before, it knows what the genre expects of it... and it goes in the complete opposite direction.
I have never actually laughed out loud whilst watching comedy anime, until now. There was one episode in
...
particular which was the turning point for me: episode 5. Also known as the tanuki episode (you will understand). Before episode 5 I had written off Gekkan Shoujo as nothing more than one of 'those' series which would stop at nothing to make me laugh. If I had to explain the reasons behind this turning point, it would have to be the characters. At this point in the story the series is allowed to be what it wants to be: a character-driven comedy. The comedy in the show doesn't come from bizarre and 'hilarious' scenarios the cast are thrown into, but from the every day interactions of the cast with each other.
And the cast really are something splendid. Most of the comedy comes from Nozaki's completely clueless behaviour towards Sakura and to pretty much everything in the series. I am a self-proclaimed hater of the 'clueless air-head character trope' but even I have to admit that Nozaki's comedy hits the spot every time. This is how you make a character like this.
Sakura is the normal happy-go-lucky cute girl who has fallen in love with Nozaki. Sounds completely boring, right? And, for the most part she is just the set up for Nozaki to deliver punchlines, but she also brings something very interesting to the romance aspect. Sakura spends the series learning about Nozaki's endless list of flaws and ignorance when it comes to love but, despite all this, she still loves him. In the time they spend together throughout the series, they only grow as friends and thus Sakura's love for him develops as she learns more and more about him.
Mikoshiba, the dumb best friend of Nozaki. Except he isn't dumb. Mikoshiba is a complete flirt on the face of it but is also a socially awkward shy otaku who is only truly comfortable around the likes of Nozaki and Sakura. Most of Mikoshiba's scenes do fall a bit flat due to the inconsistency of his character and it's possible that he is the reason behind me only giving the cast a 9/10.
Hori is the mature upperclassman... Who isn't really mature.
Kashima is the popular flirtatious prince of the school... Who is actually a sensitive girl.
Seo is Sakura's best friend who fades into the background... Except she doesn't fade into the background; she's really loud and forces herself to take centre stage in every scene she is in.
Wakamatsu is the normal background character.... Except he isn't a background character, appears in nearly all the episodes and is actually an interesting character.
The art is nothing more or nothing less than you'd expect from anime of this decade and I did not see the quality falter in any scenes.
The sound is nothing really special, the EP is forgettable but the OP was nice enough for me not to skip.
In summary, the show's is fuelled by it's ironic comedy and by characters which do not fit the tropes we have come to expect from these types of shows. Because of this, the series is a pleasant watch and is, in my mind, the best comedy in recent seasons.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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