[Anime Review] Monthly Girl’s Nozaki-kun/Gekkan Shojou Nozaki-kun (2014)
Director: Mitsue Yamazaki
Episode Runtime: 24 minutes per episode/12 episodes
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Studio: Dogakobo
Internet Streaming: Crunchyroll
Licensed by: Sentai Filmworks
Main Cast:
- Ari Ozawa as Chiyo Sakura
- Yūichi Nakamura as Umetarō Nozaki
- Ayako Kawasumi as Yukari Miyako
- Daisuke Ono as Mitsuya Maeno
- Kenta Miyake as Ken Miyamae
- Mai Nakahara as Yū Kashima
- Mamoru Miyano as Saburō Suzuki
- Marie Miyake as Mamiko
- Miyuki Sawashiro as Yuzuki Seo
- Nobuhiko Okamoto as Mikoto "Mikorin" Mikoshiba
- Ryohei Kimura as Hirotaka Wakamatsu
- Yuuki Ono as Masayuki Hori
Review: by Kendrick
Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun was one of the best anime to come on during the Summer 2014 anime season. It took what could have been another dime-a-dozen shoujo anime and turned it completely on its head.
The story is about a young girl named Sakura that finally gets up the courage to confess her feelings to the guy she likes. This was already a plus because there are plenty of shoujo shows where that is the whole premise. Thankfully, the asking out comes immediately. That is where everything starts.
What I Liked:
The young man is Nozaki and, through Sakura’s vague confession, he thinks she is a fan of his manga. Here is where the brilliant subversion of everything we have to come to know about shoujo comes in. Nozaki is a shoujo mangaka. He invites her to help him work on the manga. This is where we get to meet the amazing characters that make up the show.
Nozaki bases his manga off of the people he sees in daily life, so one would expect the main character of this manga to be female. This brings us to the first twist.
The female protagonist is based of of his friend Mikoshiba. Mikoshiba is an otaku in a bishounen’s body. He acts like a total lady’s man when around women but is hiding that he is actually terrible with groups of girls.
Then there is Seo. Seo is a bishoujo, but has a yankee way of speaking that is so blunt as to be unlikable. I think you can see where this is heading. Every character seems to subvert who we think they are supposed to be and what role they are supposed to play.
The juxtaposition between Seo’s manner and her angelic singing voice and the way that Kashima is a female that looks like a male (and is great at attracting girls), but is crazy in love with her senpai are just a couple of examples that lead to laugh-out-loud hilarity.
What I Didn’t Like:
The only thing I didn’t like about the show was that it was so short. I’m definitely looking forward to another season.
Summary
This show was good because usually when 4-koma (a 4 panel comic strip) are turned into anime, they never have a coherent story.They are usually just bit after bit. Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun did not feel like this. The show flowed and by the end, I wanted to see more.
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( votes)Images Courtesy of Random Curosity
