Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun

It's a rare thing to find a romance anime that appeals to both a male and female audience. It is even rarer to find one that does so without sexualising its characters. Gekkan Shoujo gives us hope for the stagnant, often juvenile climate of the romance genre. It doesn't rely on obnoxious misunderstandings to keep the two main characters from joining together (although misunderstandings do still exist with a sense of self-aware humour), nor does it need onsen scenes, pantyshots and implied homolust to keep the audience's attention towards its characters. All it's interested in doing is giving the audience a good laugh while nudging afew heartstrings along the way, and it does so with its head held high. A quick glance at the synopsis would be enough for some to roll their eyes and dismiss the show as 'Yet Another Shoujo Anime'. An innocent girl attempts to confess to the boy she likes in an empty classroom room dyed of scarlet (the setting of seemingly every confession scene in anime), only to find out that he is actually a famous shoujo mangaka. And one of her favourites, no less. Uh-huh. Right. But Gekkan Shoujo knows better. It is aware of its absurd premise and the clichés inherent to the genre. It embraces them, plays with them with a clever sort of irony, never taking itself too seriously nor forcing its viewers to feel a certain way. At its core it is certainly your typical shoujo anime, but the way it handles itself is quite the opposite. The story primarily follows the events of Chiyo and the titled Nozaki. Chiyo, perhaps reluctantly, but nonetheless willing to follow the company of the boy she likes, assists Nozaki in his daily tasks as a mangaka, hoping one day he might realise and respond to Chiyo's feelings. Gradually she begins to understand that Nozaki doesn't quite live up to the 'cool, handsome and composed' image she had of him, and that in reality, he is so lacking in common sense that it is a mystery how he was even serialised in the first place. Nozaki's obliviousness is undoubtedly the show's main source of laughter. In one scene, Nozaki accidentally draws one of his characters above the ground and, having the issue pointed out to him, draws a random box underneath the character, nodding his head and acting like everything is now right with the world. He then starts drawing boxes underneath the character in every scene afterwards, which understandably results in one of Nozaki's friends yelling to him how it makes no sense for the character to be carrying around and standing on random boxes all the time. Nozaki's response? "Right. I have to add an explanation." The comedy works so well because Nozaki's train of thought always makes, at least in his own little world, a slight fraction of sense. He just has no idea how people actually behave and ends up misinterpreting the actions of others in a completely asinine, facepalm-inducing and yet hilarious manner. That's not to say that each joke is masterful and clever, or even that all of them work (because a few certainly do fall utterly flat), but the simple manzai format works in perfect harmony with the ridiculous premise of the story. It knows how to make fun of itself while still holding onto a semblance of sincerity. One of the more respectable aspects of Gekkan Shoujo is how it also focuses on its side characters beyond the usual 'idiot friend', 'strict class president' and 'arrogant love rival' archetypes. Hori and Wakamutsu in particular are two characters who would normally be treated as nothing more than background fodder in the average anime for not having a colourful character design or 'wacky' personality. But in Gekkan Shoujo they are given important roles and treated with about as much attention and respect as Nozaki and Chiyo. They even have their own love interests who play relevant roles on their own (as opposed to simply being a plot device, as many often are in anime). There's a surprising amount of complexity to the character dynamic despite the general simplicity of the show's format. I suppose if there was one thing to criticise about the characterisation, it would be the inconsistency of Mikoshiba. He's handsome, eloquent-- so much so that virtually every girl in the school is head-over-heels for him-- but at the same time he is portrayed as introverted, socially awkward and obsessed with otaku hobbies, to the point where he uses eroge to study real-world interaction. The latter aspect of his personality does not feel convincing in the slightest, so his comedic scenes often fall pretty flat. To feel comedy is to empathise with the characters, and there was little to no empathy between me and Mikoshiba. Those watching strictly for the romance will likely find themselves disappointed, because, really, aside from a small handful of scenes, maybe three or four, it is virtually non-existent. The most heartwarming thing about the show is not the idea of the two slowly becoming a couple, but that Chiyo still loves Nozaki from the bottom of her heart despite finding out about his glaring flaws. The love here feels genuine, far more so than most 'serious' romance anime where the girl screams at the guy when he stops acting like a prince. Progression itself isn't what makes or breaks the romance in a story. Gekkan Shoujo is visually pleasant. The characters (particularly the males) are drawn realistically, and while it does still portray them all as idealised and attractive, it never goes overboard by drawing them in lewd or excessively 'moe' scenarios. The sound on the other hand is nothing special aside from the opening track, although, to be fair, it is a pretty great OP. It captures the silly yet relaxed nature of the show exceptionally well, and by the final episodes I found myself thinking it sacrilege to skip it. Sure, while it may not be doing anything outstanding enough to be remembered decades in the future, Gekkan Shoujo is still an excellent experience for anyone who simply wants to relax and have a few laughs. It doesn't bombard the viewer with melodrama or degrade its characters through fanservice, and what little romance there is is handled with care and sincerity. That it also happens to appeal to so many people at once without leaving anyone uncomfortable is perhaps just a bonus. Oh, and Chiyo is possibly the cutest thing ever.

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 isthe 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.

*WARNING: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS, BUT NOT HEAVY SPOILERS* The idea behind the story is not an entirely bad concept. Of course it has become a generic plot idea to base an anime on creating a manga. I mean c'mon, it seems like every year there is either an anime or a manga where the theme is based on creating a manga. However, the way this show presents the manga creator and the interactions between him and his assistants can be quite warm on the heart. So, why does the story get a lower score from me? Because of HOW it tells this story and how itall goes to shit at a fast paced speed. The story goes something like this.... The main character is Sakura Chiyo, who happens to be in love with the most painfully aloof guy in the entire fucking world, Nozaki Umetarou. One day Sakura confesses her love to Nozaki while they're at school. Because of the fact that Nozaki is either in complete denial, or possibly stupid, he assumes she's a fan and signs an autograph for her despite her not even asking for one. So, this eventually leads to Nozaki asking Sakura to become his assistant since she's an artist herself. Obviously, like any other generic anime female character would, she doesn't try to explain to him what she really meant and she agrees to becoming his bitc...I mean assistant. Now the thing about this plot is that it heavily revolves around the interactions the characters have with one another. This is why I say that despite the IDEA of the story not being a bad one, it's told in one of the worst ways possible. Why is it told in one of the worst ways possible? Because majority of the characters you meet throughout the series make you cringe. Let me just start off by saying which character I like the most, and that would be Mikoto (Mikorin) Mikoshiba. It is surprising that with such poorly written characters that Mikorin managed to stay consistently well written and consistently entertaining. You see, Mikorin is obviously supposed to be the hot guy of the show (and the guy Sakura should have chosen, but that's for another story). Even though Mikorin is considered very good looking, he is a complete otaku dweeb who gets painfully shy around a group of people. Some have considered his character too far-fetched and that if someone was that good looking then they would not behave like such a socially scared nerd, but that is all far from the truth. We cannot simply dismiss a character because he doesn't appear realistic, or just because he doesn't fit other generic anime stereotypes everyone seems to be used to. Mikorin is definetly one of the better written male characters in a slice of life anime, and he was the main reason I was able to finish this series. Now you are probably wondering what was so wrong with the rest of the cast if Mikorin was so great. Just keep in mind that this is purely based off of what I consider to be my objective reasoning as well as subjective reasoning (because nobody in this world can be 100% objective all the time). Let's start with Sakura, who was not terrible nor great...she was who she was. Her entire existance is based on the fact that she loves Nozaki. There is really nothing else about her that makes her standout as an individual character other than the fact that she's the main character (and kind of cute at times). Nozaki is someone who is mentally unaware of almost everything around him, despite him being this so called amazing manga creator. He comes off as so bland and so unaware of social cues that it begins to infuriate you by the second episode. We all know his character isn't supposed to be this sporadic and overally emotional guy, but his drab demeanor could have benefited from some sort of development of his personality. Since the two main characters are obviously nothing special, and since the entire plot is based upon Sakura's love for Nozaki, the series was in dire need of some dynamic characters. Although, the series could have possibly been better without the rest of the cast altogether... You have Yuzuki, who happens to be great at sports and great at singing despite being even more aloof than Nozaki. That's right boys and girls, we couldn't have just one severely obtuse character that already intensifies the frustration factor. Instead, the creators decided to give us two severely obtuse characters, hooray! There is also Yuu, a girl who hits on all the other girls at the school and makes all the guys jealous of her "swag". I actually thought the idea of her character was quite enticing, but the writers fell flat with keeping you entertained by her. There is also the worst character of this entire fucking series, Masayuki...we'll get to why he's the worst a little later. The last person I will name is Hirotaka, the character that nobody gives two damns about. The only reasons why I am mentioning him is because of his interaction with Nozaki and Yuzuki. I would name everyone else, but the rest of those characters either don't matter and should have never been in the series in the first place, or they were there because they HAD to be in the series but they didn't contribute to making the plot any better. From watching this series it appears as though the creators wanted to defy typical anime stereotypes that are shown in every other series known to man. There is only one problem, they decided to take these stereotypes and simply switch the genders...which makes them what? Still stereotypes! Instead of Yuu being a man who gets all the girls, her character is a woman. And despite Masayuki being the opitomy of an abusive tsundere piece of shit (which is a more common stereotype for female characters in anime) his character is a man. Masayuki always seems to be annoyed with Yuu for absolutely NO reason, and if he has a reason it is never ever justified. Now, I am already uncomfortable with how physical female tsundere characters can be towards other male characters, but when it is the other way around it becomes even more uncomfortable (especially since the ONE thing that seperates men and women is physiology, and unfortunately the general amount of women are not able to physically handle a hit from a man). Masayuki is constantly punching and kicking Yuu around, despite Yuu never really doing anything for it to be deserved. However, the creators are trying to convince that since Yuu seems to be into other women and because she comes off as a male character that we should all be okay with this already fucked up stereotype of beating up people you call your friends (or those they have a crush on). Normally you see in other anime that when a female character hits a male character it is okay because of the fact that it is a woman hitting a man, which is already not okay. However, the stereotype is switched here and we should all simply except it because a female character is considered "barely female" so long as she behaves like a man *rolls eyes*. You can claim that I may be reading into it, but even if their interactions don't require anyone to read into that deeply it doesn't stop it from being exaspirating to watch. You also have the interactions between Yuzuki and Hirotaka, whom depending upon who you are, had probably contributed to some of the more pointless scenes of this series. Yuzuki could have been entertaining by herself, but the fact that she was dragged down by Hirotaka's obsession for why he thought Yuzuki would pick on him added to the amount of frustration I already had for this show. More often you see in other anime series that cliche of the male character coming across as if he didn't like another cliche female character, even though he did actually liked her (which I guess we are to assume was the case here). However, I could have excused this cliche so long as there was some sort of development between the two...but there was none. Speaking of character development, did I mention there is none?...abso...lutely...none. Now, I was willing to look past that flaw, but the problem is that these characters are so poorly written and their interactions are so cringe worthy that if each one had developed in a fervent way then it could have saved the plot. The only character that was a well written cliche and wasn't in dreadful need of development was Mikorin and his "otakuness". This series had the opportunity to defy cliche stereotypes and create a great and unique slice of life anime. Instead the writers not only contributed to these cliche stereotypes, but they made them more profound. Keep in mind, this is a more popular aime series and is well loved by many fans. So my reasons for not liking it does not reflect the way you as an individual has to feel about this series. I say give this a shot regardless of how I feel, but no amount of convincing will change my opinion on why I gave this show the rating that I did. SIDE NOTE: I heard from a friend that they happened to enjoy the manga more than they did the anime. So I suppose that is always worth looking into.

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