Maybe Getting Friend Zoned Isn't the Worst? - Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun Review

In my time as an anime watcher, I have never been one to watch a show in season, unless it absolutely cannot wait. Recently however, I have been more open to watching newer shows and actually expanding my boundaries as to what kind of shows I find myself watching. This brings me to my newest show, Gekkan Shounjo Nozaki-kun, one of the funniest shows that I have watched in a very long time. It has an extremely simple premise but actually turned into the best parody of the shoujo genre since Ouran High School Host Club did it.

Like I said before, this show has a very simple premise. The opening scenes introduce us to Chiyo Sakura, a young school girl who has a crush on schoolmate Umetarou Nozaki. However, when Chiyo attempts to profess her love to him, Nozaki mistakes her for a fan and gives her an autograph. Confused, Chiyo tries to convey that she always wants to be with him which prompts the oblivious Nozaki to bring her back to his apartment where he asks her...to help him out with some drawings. Yes, Nozaki is actually a famous shoujo manga artist. Chiyo agrees to be his assistant in order to get closer to her beloved and so this ridiculous story begins. On the surface, the premise of this show sounds rather boring, we have a couple essentially paired off in episode 1 and these characters seem almost too dense for words. However, Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun manages to be something absolutely fantastic. You see, Nozaki himself has never actually experienced anything close to love which makes his role as the author of a shoujo manga questionable at best. How he has managed to succeed is because he uses his schoolmates as inspiration for his work. This leads to hilarious adventures where Nozaki goes to the most absurd lengths in order to find inspiration for his work. In the process, the show manages to evoke and then subvert all of the traditional tropes that shoujo manga and anime employ. Chiyo spends most episodes reading into just about everything Nozaki does and finds herself in the usual shoujo manga positions. For example: "Nozaki-kun is sitting next to me!!! We're sharing an umbrella!!! He made me lunch!!!" All of these situations end up with Chiyo realizing (hilariously) that Nozaki is simply using those situations as inspiration for his manga. This show lives and dies off of constant creating and subverting your expectations.

Nozaki goes for the gusto when it comes to subverting shoujo tropes

Despite the ridiculous tone of the show, there is actually a few bigger themes at play here. Because the driving force of the plot is Nozaki's manga, each character is looking for romantic situations. However, each character has a different idea of romance which makes the situations even more accurate and makes the comedic effects of the parody even better. Nozaki bases his manga off of his friends from school. One we have Mikoshiba, who on the outside appears to be the slick casanova, cool and popular on the outside but instead is extremely insecure and feels the pressure to live up to everyone's expectations. In a nutshell, he is every shoujo protagonist ever which is why Nozaki decides to base his protagonist, Mamiko, after him. Then we have Yuu Kashima, the "Prince" of their high school. Kashima acts exactly like the traditional love interest from a shoujo manga; cool, athletic and commands the attention of all the girls in school. However, Kashima is actually a girl. So as one would expect, she is Nozaki's inspiration for the male interest of his manga. Yes, Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun actually takes all of these stereotypes and gender flips them. We have the completely oblivious and passive aggressive boy, who turns out just to be a girl who is ignorantly blunt. Nozaki himself is clueless to the point where it is questionable why exactly Chiyo is even interested in him.

The fun of Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun is to see how exactly these characters interact on screen and Nozaki's mad attempts to break away from the cliches of shoujo manga. For example, the first episode takes a crack at the cliche of having a girl ride on the back of her love interest's bike. Nozaki asks Chiyo to ride on a bike with him, which of course makes her unbeleivably excited, only to find that he wants her to ride a two seater bike. Nozaki then tries to figure out every way that he can possible make this bike romantic which of course, leads to hilariousness. Mikoshiba and Nozaki play a dating sim in which they find out that none of the girls interested them because they couldn't get over the fact that the in-game best friend gave up three years of his life to help you get with the girl you wanted. This show made me laugh out loud at certain points and my experience with shoujo anime and manga is rather limited. The cast of characters is phenomenal and I found that I loved the episodes where every character was involved. Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun is one of those shows that despite its ensemble cast is able to involve just about everyone and it does it with regularity. The show easily could have focused on just Chiyo and Nozaki but instead has entire episodes that feature them as side characters. I particularly loved the episodes that focused on Kashima because she was my personal favorite character though being completely honest it was hard to pick one because every character was just that lovable.

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun loves to subvert traditional shoujo tropes. Having a female character, like Kashima, be so princely is just one example.

<Spoilers are in this next paragraph>

The only real negative thing that I can say about this show is that there really is no resolution...to anything. There are definitely pairings, weird as they are but by the time you get to the final episode, nothing actually happens. However, while this aspect of the show bothered a lot of people, I actually found the ending to be perfect. This is a show that is parodying aspects of the shoujo genre and has subverted those tropes for its entire run. Having it end in a cliched way would not exactly suit this show. Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun's success comes from how it distorts those tropes so evoking them in such a way by the end would be a disservice to everything that came before. Therefore, I like the idea of the anime being Chiyo gets hilariously friend-zoned for 12 episodes rather than a cliched ending.

From an audio and video standpoint there wasn't a whole lot that really stood out. If anything, the show was great at using extremely cliched shoujo anime music in the most comedic of ways. I can't exactly say that anything really stood out. However, I did find the opening really really catchy and rarely ever felt like skipping it. The ending song however was extremely underwhelming. Visually the show is at the level that you expect from any anime nowadays. It doesn't do anything especially new or creative with the designs of its characters but I guess that's actually the point. Regardless, the show looks and sounds fine which is really all you can ask for.

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun is probably the most surprising show I've watched in a long time. I knew going in that it was going to be a fun, laugh out loud show but I don't think that I expected myself to enjoy it as much as I did. It is a comedy, plain and simple and never tries to be anything else. If you're looking for a show that will make you laugh (I guarantee it), then this one is definitely for you. Don't be scared off by the fact that it is a shoujo anime because there is much more here than meets the eye. Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun is one of the best shows from 2014 and it would be a disservice not to give in a shot.

My Score: 5/5