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Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun
Episode 11

by Amy McNulty,

Episode 11 is the penultimate episode of the Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun anime, so it's appropriate that the first segment focuses on the Nozaki-Sakura relationship. Not that there's much of a "relationship" there thanks to Nozaki's cluelessness. As usual, Nozaki views everything through his "ideas for the next manga chapter" lens, but his attempts to surprise Sakura in an effort to surprise his readers prove amusing, as Nozaki fails to understand that pulling pranks and crafting narrative twists are not the same thing.

The male cast gets the spotlight in the second segment when a rain storm forces Hori, Mikorin and Wakamatsu to spend the night at Nozaki's. For their own personal and paranoid reasons, they don't want to let the others know that they help Nozaki with his manga, so they attempt to hang out like "typical" guys would. Nozaki encourages the sleepover, eager to sketch gender swap exchanges at every opportunity for a sleepover Let's Fall in Love issue.

The joke quota is back on track this week after a slight dip in laughs last episode. A short pre-credits segment showing how Nozaki first met Ken is especially amusing if you're a fan of Nozaki's strange admiration for his passive editor. With the series close to ending, getting the backstory behind one of the show's running gags is appreciated. The segment does highlight one of the few criticisms I have of the show as a whole, though: little background information. Why did Nozaki wind up writing a shōjo manga? Where are his parents? (I suppose he's one of those frequent lives-on-their-own teenagers we see in anime and manga. It'd be interesting to see if his parents' opinion of his manga could provide for humorous situations, though—assuming they're still alive.) How did he become so good at domestic duties? Given how overworked manga artists are, how does Nozaki manage to produce a monthly manga while attending school? Why is he roping his friends into helping—won't his publisher send any professional assistants? These are nitpicky concerns (that may be addressed later in the manga), but Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun is so clever, it could probably come up with hilarious answers to each one.

We entered the story as Sakura entered Nozaki's life, and even though the show frequently highlights other characters instead of Sakura, we seem stuck in her point of view. We don't often get a peek into how characters evolved into who they are in the show before Sakura's confession. Nevertheless, it's a gag-heavy show based on a four-panel manga. Too much character and story development would be out of place, so it doesn't matter much that we never see what happened before the series started. At the very least, episode 12 promises to bring some resolution to the plotline that started the series: Sakura's unacknowledged feelings for Nozaki. Although since it's a comedy, we're not counting on the two of them riding off into the sunset—unless empirical-minded Nozaki thinks it'd make good material for his manga.

Rating: A

Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Amy is a YA fantasy author who has loved anime for nearly two decades.


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