I have all ready seen the anime, so I knew I would love it. So far, the anime has done a good job at sticking to the manga which I really love. The story is so funny, and the characters are great. I love how the characters have their own unique personalities. It's always refreshing to read a story with characters that are all different and complex in their own way. I love the relationship between Nozaki-kun and Sakura especially. I'm super excited to continue this manga. I'm honestly going to try my best to binge read it just like I binged watched the anime, and then I might watch the anime again. ( )

Chiyo Sakura discovers that Umetarou Nozaki (the Nozaki-kun of the title), a boy she likes at high school, is secretly the artist behind her favourite shojo manga. He writes romantic stories but doesn’t seem to have the first clue about real-life romance. He hires her as an assistant, and their story is told in four-panel snippets.

I read this on the recommendation of my cousin, a former manga buyer for a comic-book store, because I was looking for some slice-of-life manga stories: no big plot or high stakes, just little bits of fun. It was cute, if very dramatic in terms of people’s emotional reactions (although given that this was my first manga, I didn’t really know what to expect). I did laugh out loud a fair bit, especially when Nozaki-kun said things that could be (and were) wildly misinterpreted. I also liked that the book contained notes on the translation and explanations for some of the scenes or dialogue that might not be obvious to a North American audience. It was light and just what I was looking for. I’ll read the next volume for sure! ( )

I got the first four volumes of this from the local library and banged through them pretty quickly. Each chapter is a series of four-panel gag strips, which is a little off-putting, but the humor is pretty consistent and had me laughing out loud at least once per volume. I'll pick up future volumes. ( )

Whatever you do, do not try to read this on the bus. ^^;; ( )

A high school girl named Sakura tries to confess her love to cool-looking Nozaki, only to get roped into doing the beta (inking the solid black areas) for his manga – it turns out that he's secretly a shoujo mangaka. Sakura then meets several of Nozaki's other helpers and learns a bit about some of the more annoying aspects of shoujo manga creation, like overly controlling editors and having to make sure nothing in the story breaks Japanese laws.

This is, I think, only my second series ever that deals with the manga industry. The other one was The World's Greatest First Love. It was primarily a romance, but it did give a few peeks into the life cycle of a manga volume, mostly from the viewpoint of manga editors. Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, on the other hand, is primarily humor and looks more at the manga writing/illustrating side of things.

I have no clue how much of the manga creation stuff in this volume was true, but, regardless, it was funny. This series turned out to be one of the best I read during my vacation. I laughed at Nozaki's efforts to create romantic moments in his series that contained no illegal aspects. Sakura got to be his guinea pig for potentially romantic options, which usually weren't very romantic at all.

Then there was Mikoshiba, another one of Nozaki's helpers. He looked like a handsome playboy but was actually extremely awkward – and also unwittingly the inspiration for the heroine in Nozaki's manga. There were lots of other great characters besides him: Seo, a brash girl who made nearly everyone who met her angry; Kashima, a “princely” girl who had tons of female admirers (and who probably couldn't remember any of their names); and Maeno, Nozaki's former editor, who forced all his artists to include tanuki in their works, just because he liked them. Nearly everyone Nozaki knew and every potentially romantic situation he encountered was worked into his series in some way.

One of my favorite moments in this volume was when Nozaki played a dating sim. He was so fascinated by the player character's weirdly helpful best friend that he accidentally found himself shipping them, to the point that he pulled an all-nighter just to create a short fan comic for them in which they could actually end up together. It was both funny and kind of sweet.

Humorous manga can be hit or miss. This one turned out to be much better than I expected – a bit odd, but solidly enjoyable.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )