Manga Review: Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun 1 by Izumi Tsubaki
Confessing your love to your high-school crush is always a nerve-wracking experience. It’s possible that your beloved returns your affections, but more likely you will receive a flat “not interested”, or “buzz off” or perhaps she will laugh in your face and tell you you are a hideous deformity that no woman could ever love and you should do yourself in as a favor to everyone–but enough about my high school days. Let’s talk about Chiyo Sakura, who has eyes for no one but her tall and quiet classmate Umetaro Nozaki.
Sakura fumbles a bit and says something that sounds like “I’m your fan!” which is sounds more like “I have a crush on you” in Japanese. Nozaki doesn’t seem the least bit surprised and gives his classmate an autograph. It turns out that Nozaki is not-so-secretly a mangaka (comic book creator) who gets published in shoujo (girls’) manga under the pen name Sakiko Yumeno.
Despite being expert at depicting chaste romance on the page, Nozaki is clueless about Sakura’s crush on him, and she winds up becoming one of his art assistants. As time goes on, we meet their friends and associates, all of whom are clueless in some way. And so this romantic comedy begins!
This shoujo manga is done in what’s called the 4-koma format, which is kind of like a newspaper comic strip (which are vertical in Japan.) Four panels per strip, with some sort of gag in each. This gives the story a rapid-fire feel as unlike a daily strip which must recap constantly, several pages of strips appear each month.
As this is a series about making manga, it gets into some meta humor. For example, because the magazine Nozaki’s stories appear in is aimed at junior high school girls, editorial has decreed that the characters cannot be shown doing anything illegal lest impressionable children copy that. Not only does this mean that Nozaki can’t show his juvenile deliquents smoking or underage drinking, but he can’t even depict them breaking traffic laws! So he must find a different method to use a particular romantic moment.
Oh, for the few readers who aren’t already experts on manga conventions, the “-kun” in the title is an honorific, like “Mr.” or “Ms.” “Kun” is used between or to teenaged boys primarily, it’s a bit less formal than “-san.”
The jokes are pretty funny, especially if you’re familiar with shoujo manga cliches, and the art serves the 4-koma format well (plus there’s jokes about the art.)
However, because this is primarily a gag strip with romantic elements as opposed to a romance strip with comedic elements, the characters’ cluelessness means that relationships progress little if at all over the course of the volume.
Content notes: some humor revolves around gender roles and certain characters not fitting into the society-approved categories.
Recommended to romantic comedy fans who are okay with the characters being dolts about romance.
Oh, and there was an anime adaptation, so here’s the ending theme!
