English Dub Review: Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Sakura Chiyo confesses to another high school student, Nozaki Umetarou however he confuses her for a fan and hands her an autograph. After attempting to say that she wants to be with him the two go over to his house and she helps him out with his manga. Then she realizes that he’s the popular shoujo manga artist, Yumeno Sakiko after getting home and finding his work in the monthly magazine. Sakura struggles with her attempts to confess to Nozaki with no end in sight. During the school year, she meets Nozaki’s other assistants and their quirky friends that help with the manga creating process.

 

Our Take:

Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun is a fun rom-com series to watch and it’s also a great series for any anime watcher interested in the manga making process. I liked how the opening of the series was full of energy with the colorful character introductions, the screentone pattern show, and the upbeat intro song. The erasers and ink pens like sound waves and the main cast fights against the annoying raccoon mascot with their tools were great at showing how the series is centered around manga. Now the ending is pretty sweet with the stills of Sakura in various places. There’s also the extra scenes after the ending which help with the transitions to the next episode.

The romance between Sakura and Nozaki is a ton of pining from Sakura mixed with small juicy moments from Nozaki’s nonchalant actions. The height difference is just excellent with how small Sakura is in comparison to Nozaki’s tall muscular frame. Their meet-cute story is actually pretty good with how he helped her on the day of their high school entrance ceremony by climbing over the school gates and makes great use of their height difference.

However, most of those romantic moments are often smothered when Sakura realizes that Nozaki misses the romantic connotation completely or that he’s really asking for something else. It can get a little frustrating with Nozaki’s denseness considering that he writes shoujo romance for a living. I would go so far as to label his denseness on the level of a harem protagonist. Furthermore, we don’t really see him voice his opinions on Sakura which leaves the romance feeling more one-sided at times. Nozaki does have his moments though. For example, his surprises for Sakura when he wanted to spice up his manga and the walk home from school that had none of his surprises along the way. Aside from Sakura and Nozaki, there are other relationships in the anime however like these two, they don’t have a concrete path like in a typical romance series.

Wakamatsu and Seo are an unlikely couple considering how Seo torments Wakamatsu with her usual routine, but they do get along to the point of even having dates. Admittedly I was a little worried about Seo’s wild personality and Wakamatsu’s shy personality, but the two appear to have a decent relationship in their own way.

Hori and Kashima are a duo that respects one another and there are moments where you think they’ll realize that they’ve fallen for each other but they’re not quite there yet. These two have a hilarious dynamic with Kashima flirting with other girls and Hori just 100% done with Kashima skipping out on class and theater club activities. Hori even does Nozaki’s manga backgrounds in exchange for plays featuring a princely character for Kashima to star in their theatre club.

The comedy in the series is refreshing and even references a few typical shoujo manga scenes like walking home from school and rainy days. There are even some jokes on other hobbies like figure collecting and video games. Nozaki’s methods for gathering materials for his manga are wild and can get out of hand. Some of the scenes are hilarious, I particularly liked the dating sim game and the rainy day scenario. There’s also Mikoshiba a.k.a Mikorin, Nozaki’s special effect assistant who is adorable with how easily embarrassed he gets after making flirty comments. Hori and Kashima’s antics are also entertaining with a few misunderstandings thrown in. For example, when Kashima found Nozaki’s shoujo manga in Hori’s bag.

The series weaves in between comedy and romance, and the cast of characters make it believable because every one of them has their own quirks and unique personalities. However, the series does tend to lean more to the comedy side than the romance since none of the cast actually get together by the end of the series. Additionally, the voice actors have really nailed down the characters. Nozaki’s voice actor, Ty Mahany really captured his stoic demeanor, and Sakura’s voice actor, Juliet Simmons did a lovely job with Sakura’s cheerfulness.

There’s also the animations that were really great coming from Dogo Kobo, the studio that produced Tada Never Falls in Love and Himouto! Umaru-chan. The sword fight in the drama club for example was really dynamic. There’s also the sound effects which even heightens the character’s actions. The scene where Hori and Sakura act out the characters for Nozaki’s play for the drama club was glorious with the dramatic piano music.

Then there’s the manga creation process which separates this series from the usual high school rom-com animes. Now Sakura, Mikoshiba, Hori, and even Wakamatsu have their roles as Nozaki’s assistants. Sakura does beta, Mikoshiba does special effects, Hori does the backgrounds, and Wakamatsu does the screen tones. Each of them assists in the creation of each panel and help with Nozaki’s crazy social experiments in order to get ideas for his manga.

The series includes the publishing side of the business with Nozaki’s editor, Ken, and former editor Mitsuya. They show how much an editor can help or harm a manga respectively. Admittedly I was curious about why Mitsuya could still be in the business because of his repeated mistakes on Nozaki’s fellow manga artist, Miyako’s work. For example, the titles of her stories often turn explicit and the numerous tanukis that appear in her manga because of his preference towards them. However they never really explain it and just carry on to the comedy.

Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun is a series that I would recommend to people who love a good rom-com with quirky characters thrown in weird situations or people just getting into anime in general because of the story and animations.