High-schooler by day, shojo manga-ka by night.
Creative Staff:
Story & Art: Izumi Tsubaki
Translation: Leighann Harvey
Lettering: Lys Blakeslee
What They Say
To the eyes of classmate Chiyo Sakura, high school student Umetarou Nozaki–brawny of build and brusque of tongue–is a dreamboat! When Chiyo finally works up the courage to tell Nozaki how she feels about him, she knows rejection is on the table…but getting recruited as a mangaka’s assistant?! Never in a million years! As Chiyo quickly discovers, Nozaki-kun, the boy of Chiyo’s dreams, is a manga artist…a hugely popular shoujo manga artist, that is! But for someone who makes a living drawing sweet girly romances, Nozaki-kun is a little slow on the uptake when it comes to matters of the heart in reality. And so Chiyo’s daily life of manga making and heartache begins!
The Review:
Technical:
Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun Volume 1 is a standard-sized paperback release, with front cover featuring the titular character in a dynamic pose, fully equipped with pen and manga manuscript. The background is a plain white that wraps around to the back page, which includes chibi-fied versions of Nozaki, Chiyo, and Mikoshiba—the more prominent characters in this volume. It’s rather barren design-wise, but makes for a clean and slick look.
Lettering throughout the volume clearly keeps in mind the delivery of the characters, as fonts are changed depending on the mood, with the more ominous lines giving a spooky font, and lines delivered by romantics given a comically flowery font. It’s the type of decision I would have expected from a scanlation, but to see it here is more proof that the letterer is open to their approach in humor and doesn’t reflect on any kind of lack of professionalism on their part.
Sound-effects are sparse, and when they do show up, are tiny and left in their original Japanese, with a translation floating nearby. Considering how dialogue-centric some gags are, it’s actually more common to find snarky asides outside of speech bubbles than you would find SFX. Because of this, however, it feels as if laughter has been the only SFX translated to English since technically it would fall more under the category of “dialogue” than “SFX.”
My only major technical gripe lies in the placement of the extra comics—one appearing on the back of the front cover, and three more appearing at the end of the volume itself. While I do enjoy Yen Press’ pattern of making use of the blank space on the backside of the front and back covers, to divide the extra comics in such a way feels odd, especially for a Volume 1 where you’re only now being introduced to the characters. Add to this the apparent flub in having the translation notes for the volume being at the end of chapter 4 rather than at the end of the volume itself, and it feels like a rushed release.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Initial setup for Nozaki-kun plays out like a traditional shojo manga, with main girl Chiyo confessing her love to main guy Nozaki. Things take a turn for the weird, however, when Nozaki misinterprets her confession (“I’ve always been your fan!”), responding in kind with an autograph. Taking the misunderstandings further, Nozaki invites Chiyo over to his place only to have Chiyo find out that Nozaki is the manga author of popular shojo series Let’s Fall….
Each page of Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun is composed of 4-panel comics, with each chapter falling under a common theme. In this sense, the series feels like a daily newspaper comic, with the main exception being that it has a stronger sense of continuity between each gag, going as far as forming some sort of running narrative, as the cast begins to expand and interactions between people are constantly mixed to keep things fresh. The first volume keeps a particular focus on Nozaki, Chiyo, and playboy/closet-nerd (and inspiration for Nozaki’s manga’s female protagonist) Mikoshiba, but doesn’t shy away from adding other characters, all of whom are somehow related to the larger umbrella of Nozaki and how they benefit to him as a shojo manga author.
Intentional or not, a good majority of volume 1’s jokes come from each character acting outside of one’s pre-conceived notions of them—Nozaki being a large, intimidating student that writes romance, Mikoshiba being flirtatious with the women but more bashful around those he’s more comfortable with, Seo being a tomboy with a beautiful singing voice. However, the characters never come off as being a one-trick pony, sticking around past their “introductory arc” and standing well enough on their own not solely based on their shtick, but how it’s used in tandem with interacting with the rest of the cast.
A good amount of time is spent throughout this first volume introducing characters, but it never feels tedious, as topics used to introduce characters are broad, ranging from Chiyo’s one-sided crush on Nozaki, to Nozaki’s more meta jokes about working with an editor in the manga industry, to even Mikoshiba’s more nerdy tendencies as he gets overly invested in dating simulator games. Even the more orthodox plotlines taking place at school work well enough, in part due to series author Izumi Tsubaki clearly understanding her characters and how they would interact with each other, making for some of the most humorous moments in manga I’ve read as of late.
In Summary:
Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun makes for some nice light reading when you’re in need of something more humorous to preoccupy your time with. Its single-page gags make for easy reading in small spurts, but provide enough of a continuity to support a longer-running narrative. Furthermore, its cast of unintentional goofballs and miscreants work well off each other, Tsubaki’s borderline shojo-art-style complimenting her characters as they continually bump shoulders with each other in their slowly expanding world.
Content Grade: A
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: Teen
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: November 17th, 2015
MSRP: $13.00
