The plotline of GSNK is a very standard high school romance setting, with the main character, Chiyo Sakura, being in love with the upperclassman Nozaki; however, Nozaki doesn't know about Chiyo's love for him despite her obvious efforts to get with him. Being mainly a comedy anime, Nozaki's obliviousness to Chiyo is the stem of most of the show's gags.
The series starts with Chiyo confessing her love to Nozaki, only for him to completely missunderstand and end up giving her his autograph. We find out that Nozaki is actually an illustrator for popular shoujo manga "Let's Love"; a generic Shoujo love story acting as a parody to the genre as well as a parallel to the main storyline.
Throughout the show, Chiyo helps Nozaki out with his manga along with his other school friends, each portraying a popular shoujo manga trope: Kashima is the "ouji-sama" character, who turns out to actually be a girl. Mikorin is a deredere style character, despite being male. Seo is the delinquent-style "ore" character; but, you guessed it, is female. Hori is a male tsundere who acts as a 'tsukkomi-boke' duo with Kashima. Finally Wakamatsu, a basketball jock who is afraid of Seo's aggressive strength even though he's a guy.
I would say that the show is not so much of a romcom as a parody of shoujo manga, adding twists to the character tropes for comedic effect. The show often compares the 'real' world with that portrayed in Nozaki's manga with some of the character's in "Let's Love!" being directly based on the personalities of Nozaki's friends.
A common complaint with romance in anime and manga is that it hardly ever has a good ending, with no real conclusion of who gets with who ever being reached. While this is most certainly present in GSNK, it is there as a parody of the trope and the show often mocks itself for this flaw.
PRODUCTION
The animation for this show was pretty standard for a comedy anime, with bright colours and an over-abundance of "only the mouths move" scenes. Somthing that it does do quite well is to incorporate some of the genre-mocking tropes into the animation. Many visual effects such as the "action lines" or the "fluffy backdrop" are used in bucket fulls.
There is nothing particularly interesting about the show's soundtrack, although the show's OP is some wierd jazzy song which I didn't really think fit with the show's tone, but was a nice song nontheless.
CONCLUSION
Overall the show was most definately a comedy, rather than a romance; so if you're looking for any kind of solid romantic storyline go somewhere else. On the otherhand if you are well versed in the Shoujo or romance genres then you will probably find many jokes pretty relatable.
Although I have avoided talking about the source material, it is one of the very few that I can actually I say that I read before watching the anime. It's an ongoing 4koma that has much of the same content as the anime. If anything I'd probably say that the manga works better due to the nature of mocking the very thing that it is.
It also has a wide range of nichijou-esque reaction faces, which can further your collection of images perfect for arguing over the internet.
META
Length- 1 cour / 12eps / 4.8 hrs
Release- Summer 2014
Studio- Dogakobo
Source- 2011 4koma by Izumi Tsubaki
RATING
Watch?- Yes, as a comedy
Best Character- Seo
Worst Character-No one
Best Feature- Chiyo's reactions
