2014, 12 episodes:
AniDB; also
known as Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun.
Parody series about young girls' (shōjo) manga. Chiyo has a crush on
fellow high school student Nozaki, but through comical
misunderstanding discovers he's a manga writer and artist – but this
has to be kept a secret from the rest of the school.
The general premise here is the reflection of high school events
in the format demanded by a girls' manga series, and particularly the
way Nozaki draws inspiration for his strip from the people and things
around him (casually gender-swapping roles and changing details to fit
the stereotypes). But this feeds the other way too: all the principal
cast are manga readers, and this influences the way they think about
things in real life, especially Chiyo's ongoing crush on Nozaki.
It's not the most appealing of premises, but a distinctive cast and
lively writing style manage to keep things going surprisingly well; as
someone mostly unfamilar with the source genre, I wasn't expecting to
enjoy this anything like as much as I did, and in fact I'd regard it
as one of my favourites of the 2014 summer season. A particularly
pleasing short sequence dealt with the stereotype of the hero going
off into probably-fatal battle and his girlfriend promising to wait
for him… which was done as a girl dumping her luggage on Nozaki so
that she could run away from a teacher more effectively.
The first few episodes deal with introducing the cast, but after that
there's little progression; it's mostly a series of one-shot jokes
without much connectivity between them. If you can put up with that,
and with the inevitable lack of conclusion to any of the storylines,
I'd definitely recommend this as a light-hearted palate cleanser.
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