More anime, 4 to go for me. This time we've got Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun. Nozaki-kun is about a high school mangaka or manga writer/artist known for shoujo manga, in English terms, manga aimed towards girls. However, contrary to the stereotype of a female mangaka we get a completely deadpan male.
From that description, it's pretty obvious that Nozaki-kun is a slice of life anime. However, it also starts off with a bit of a gag scene where another main character, Sakura Chiyo, tries to confess to Nozaki. It's too bad that he construes this as her wanting his autograph. Somehow this leads to Chiyo becoming an assistant to Nozaki. As much as that setting sounds like the back drop for a full out romance, at least from the first episode, it seems that that might just become a recurring gag. To add to the comedic effect, we find out that Nozaki really seems like a complete airhead when it comes to romance even though he's shown as one of the best shoujo mangaka.
Overall, I'm a bit torn on how to rate Nozaki-kun. On the one hand it is a generally well crafted gag based slice of life/comedy anime. However, on the other, it doesn't seem to have characters strong enough to really shine. Nozaki feels a bit lifeless and Chiyo feels like the personification of a girl in love trope. That said, there's really not much offensive about the anime as a whole. I would say that it's worth a watch but if you don't immediately like it, I can't really say it would be worth watching how it continues. For a rating I'll just go with a 5/10 as it's honestly quite middling for me, I'm not offended by it nor do I think it's particularly good. I could put up a picture but I'm not sure there's too much of interest here. Let's power through the remaining anime reviews. Until next time.
--CsMiREK
