Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun or Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun…

Here’s a scene: Chiyo Sakura, a high school student, is in love with this guy in school, Umetaro Nozaki. So, what’s a girl to do when she has such strong feelings that can’t be contained anymore? She gathers up enough courage to confess her feelings and hope for the best, right? The outcome of that plan however, wasn’t what she expected. She receives an autograph from him instead.

It’s not often that a girl’s confession gets mistaken for admiration but that’s exactly what happened to her for he was also a renowned shoujo manga artist. It would seem that despite being an expert in producing love themed works, Nozaki is completely oblivious to Chiyo’s feelings for him. So, she took the next logical step. She became his assistant.

And so, that is how this anime’s romantic comedy began. Luckily for Chiyo, she actually has the artistic skills to back it up. With the available opportunities to be close to him  as an assistant, she hopes that one day she would be able to get her feelings through to him. For her sake, I sure hope that’s true. Her cheerful and friendly disposition may not be enough to draw his attention.

Umetaro is always thinking about his work. What his characters will be modeled after or how best to draw a romantic scene involving a bicycle. He gets Chiyo involved in this research process much to her pleasure but she almost always finds herself in odd situations that could hardly be called romantic. Umetaro never smiles but Chiyo knows that behind that expressionless face lies a sensitive soul. There are other side characters that play a role in this anime. Each one of them bringing in a different comedy aspect to the story. Episode 2 introduced two more characters and it is by far the most hilarious I’ve seen so far.

This series also has a serialized manga, which was first published in Gangan Online back in August 2011. It has since been listed no. 3 as one of the top mangas recommended by bookstores and ranked no. 11 in 2014 edition of Kono Manga ga Sugoi’s list of top 20 manga for female readers. If that doesn’t impress you, there’s also a drama cd released in June 2013 by Frontier Works.