Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun


Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun is a Japanese four-panel manga series written and illustrated by Izumi Tsubaki. The chapters are serialized online in Gangan Online and have been published in tankōbon volumes by Square Enix. An anime adaptation produced by Doga Kobo aired from July to September 2014.

Plot

High school student Chiyo Sakura has a crush on schoolmate Umetarou Nozaki. When she confesses her love to him, he mistakes her for a fan and gives her an autograph. When she says she wants to be with him, he invites her to his house and has her help on some drawings. Sakura discovers that Nozaki is actually a renowned shōjo manga artist working under the pen name Sakiko Yumeno. She agrees to be his assistant in order to get closer to him. As they work on his manga Let's Fall in Love, they encounter other schoolmates, who assist them and serve as inspirations for the story.

Characters

Main characters

;
;
;
;
;
;
;

''Let's Fall in Love'' characters

;Mamiko
;Saburo Suzuki

Media

Manga

began serializing the manga in Square Enix's online magazine Gangan Online on August 25, 2011. As of August 2025, the series has been collected into seventeen tankōbon volumes. Apart from the comics, an official fanbook and an anthology manga, Yasunobu Yamauchi, Tachibana Higuchi have also been published, both on August 22, 2014. North American publisher Yen Press announced that they had licensed the series at Sakura-Con in April 2015. Individual chapters are called "issues".

Drama CD

released a drama CD on June 26, 2013, featuring the casts below which differ from the later produced anime. It reached at 32nd on Oricon's CD Album rankings.

Anime

announced an anime adaptation on March 21, 2014, and the anime's official website posted several videos, revealing key cast and staff members, which differ from the drama CD. The anime is produced by Doga Kobo and directed by Mitsue Yamazaki, who had worked on Hakkenden: Eight Dogs of the East and Durarara!!. Series composition is handled by Yoshiko Nakamura. Junichirō Taniguchi, who did the second season of Genshiken and the Puella Magi Madoka Magica film, is in charge of character design. It premiered on July 7, 2014, on TV Tokyo, followed by TV Osaka, TV Aichi, TSC, TV Hokkaido, TVQ, AT-X over the rest of the week. The opening theme, titled "Kimi Janakya Dame Mitai" is composed and performed by Masayoshi Ōishi, and the ending theme "Uraomote Fortune" is performed by Ari Ozawa under her character name, Chiyo Sakura.
After the announcement, a campaign was launched around the fictional manga magazine Monthly Girls' Romance Nozaki publishes his series in. First, the author Izumi Tsubaki tweeted on April Fools' that an issue of the magazine had been released. Later in June, an actual manga tankōbon, made to look like the magazine and containing bonus content and sample chapters, was printed and distributed in limited numbers. In August, a website for the magazine was launched and the special manga reprinted and distributed nationwide in September. After the anime finished airing, the website was removed.
On July 25, 2014, Sentai Filmworks announced it has licensed the series for home video release. Media Factory released it on Blu-ray and DVD formats in Japan starting on September 24, 2014, across six volumes. Mini-OVA specials were bundled with each Blu-ray/DVD volume.
The series began streaming on Netflix on May 1, 2020, including dubs in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Episodes

All episodes were written by Yoshiko Nakamura.
No.TitleStoryboarderEpisode directorAnimation supervisorOriginal airdate

Reception

The manga's second volume reached 18th place on Oricon's weekly manga chart, its third volume reached 11th, and its fourth volume debuted at fifth with 117,310 copies. The fifth manga volume debuted at fourth place, selling 185,392 copies. The series placed third on a list of top 15 manga recommended by bookstores in 2013, and ranked 11th in the list of top 20 manga for female readers of the 2014 edition of Takarajimasha's Kono Manga ga Sugoi! guidebook, which surveys manga industry professionals. It also ranked 11th at the 8th Manga Taishō in 2015.
The official fan book reached 14th, and the anthology book reached 17th on Oricon's weekly best-sellers chart.
Greg Smith of The Fandom Post found the anime adaptation to be a "both a celebration and a send-up of shoujo manga at the same time". He found it to have a natural flow and enjoyed the emotions and expressions presented by the characters. He gave the series an A, noting it was one of the two consistently funny comedies of the season. He liked that "there was in general a lack of meanness or malice," and that it effectively showcased the absurdity of shojo tropes. Andy Hanley of UK Anime Network gave the series 7 out of 10, highlighting its charming and lovable cast as well as the show's visuals, although he would not call it a comedy classic. Dee Hogan, in an article for The Mary Sue, found the show to be "simultaneously very funny and sneakily brilliant" and wrote about how the show "manages the rare feat of a triple-reversal, and all three deal with our understanding of gender roles in fiction".
The reviewers at Anime News Network listed the anime as one of the best of the year for 2014, with Amy McNulty and Theron Martin naming it their top pick. Kelly Quinn of Tor.com also listed it among her top 10 best shows of 2014.