During 2014, I was going to college and going through a bit of a rough patch. At one point, I went to my college's anime club, a different one from the previous college I went to, and they showed two episodes of this anime, Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, aka Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun. I didn't go to any other meetings after that, as the club was too late in the day for me to keep going on a weekly basis at the time. But I did like what I saw of Nozaki-kun, so I decided to watch the rest of the series on my own. I finished it and I liked it...but then I just forgot about it. I couldn't have told you the first thing about it at the time, other than it poked fun at shoujo manga. So when I found out that it's going to be pulled from Netflix at the end of this month, I decided to rewatch it (First saw it in Japanese, then watched it in English) and...I suddenly remembered why I forgot about this show. I may have liked it to an extent at the time, but rewatching it now...honestly, Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun is pretty boring. To me, it is.

Basically, the story focuses on a young girl, Chiyo Sakura, who really wants to ask out a guy, Umetaro Nozaki. She bungles her confession, and he responds by...giving her an autograph, signed Sakiko Yumeno. Chiyo then realizes that Nozaki and Sakiko are one and the same, and that Nozaki is actually the creator of a popular manga series she likes, with Sakiko Yumeno being a pen name he uses. Nozaki then asks her to help him with his manga, as he found out she's in the art club and is good at painting. While not the ideal scenario she had in mind, this does give Chiyo the opportunity to help him out and get to know him better, so she accepts his offer and becomes one of his assistants. Over time, she meets many of his other quirky assistants and friends, and suddenly, life becomes much more exciting. Now if only they'd stop getting into so many misunderstandings.

Yeah, Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun is a parody of shoujo manga, regularly poking fun at and lampooning its usual cliches and tropes, often times taking them to their logical extremes for the sake of comedy, just as much as it plays them straight. I wouldn't have minded this...if it wasn't for several things going against it. One: All of the characters are stock stereotypes that play their cliches and tropes completely straight. Chiyo is just a bland everygirl defined by her crush on a guy, Nozaki is just a weird, oblivious idiot who has absolutely zero self-awareness, Mikoshiba is a hot-headed wuss, Kashima is just the popular girl, Hori is just there to physically abuse Kashima and be the straight man to Nozaki's dumbass, and all the rest of the characters are nothing more than just walking jokes and cliches. None of them show any signs of any depth to them beyond their one archetype, and many of them just act stupid.

Speaking of acting stupid, the second main problem with the series is that nearly every single one of its jokes, punchlines, or gags all involve characters either getting into misunderstandings or just flat-out not talking to each other about their issues. For example, in one episode, Kashima gets it into her head that Hori secretly wants to crossdress and play the heroine in a play. It's obviously not true, but instead of, y'know, asking him about it, she instead begins sending him girl clothes, accessories, and shoes, and since she refuses to say anything more, Hori assumes she's bullying him. The entire series is like this, as its entire backbone is having characters make wild assumptions and let their imaginations go wild rather than, y'know, simply sitting down to talk to each other and clear things up. Granted, many of these misunderstandings drive the jokes, but this method got old. FAST. I know this is more of a me problem than anything, as I've seen way too many shows where misunderstandings and characters refusing to clear things up cause unnecessary drama and drag out the conflict for way longer than it should be, so if you're into this kind of comedy, cool. More power to you. Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun's method of comedy doesn't work for me, but it has managed to find an audience, so it's totally cool if people like it for that reason.

Honestly though, I don't really have much positive to say about the show itself. The animation is fine, but a lot of it just consists of characters standing around, exaggerated faces for the comedy bits, and the character designs are pretty generic. I swear, Wakamatsu and Hori could swap their hair colors and hair styles, and you would not be able to tell the difference between them. The soundtrack is also pretty hit or miss. The opening theme is pretty catchy and well-sung, the soundtrack mainly consists of piano pieces and tuba noises, and...the ending song is obnoxiously grating. Who's bright idea was it to make a helium-voiced seiyuu repeat the same phrase over and over again in the most obnoxiously high pitched voice possible?! I skip the ending theme because of this and I just can't bear to listen to it, even from the first note.

Rewatching this, I remembered why I completely forgot about this show the first time I watched it, as its attempts at poking fun at shoujo manga cliches don't work due to its need to have everything still be as cliche as possible and repeating its stale gags over and over and over. In the end, Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun doesn't really stand out in any way. But hey, it may not be for me, but plenty of others like it, and that's perfectly fine. If you get enjoyment out of it, cool. I guess I should be thankful that Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun is just generic at best.