Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun Limited Edition Premium Box Set
Publisher: Sentai Filmworks
Runtime: 300 minutes
Release Date: March 29, 2016
Available Editions: Complete Collection – DVD – Blu-Ray – DVD & BD
If One Punch Man was the anime of 2015 (because let’s be real here), then Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun would be my top anime for 2014. Translated to Monthly Girl’s Nozaki-kun, this is a 12 episode long romantic comedy anime that aired in the summer of 2014. This series was just released in America by Sentai Filmworks, who are responsible for the licensing of many other anime including the original Persona 4: The Animation, The Fruit of Grisaia, and Devil Survivor 2: The Animation (oh will you look at that, they’ll be in charge of Haikyuu’s home release too… why are you mocking me).
Monthly Girl’s Nozaki-kun is based off a monthly 4-panel webmanga by Tsubaki Izumi that started in 2011. The manga is currently still ongoing and is published by Yen Press in the US. The story is revolves around the adventures of Chiyo Sakura, a high school freshmen who tried to confess to her crush Umetarou Nozaki. She… then ended up getting his autograph and going to his house… to help him with his manga. Upon looking more closely at the autograph given to her, Chiyo discovers he is actually the creator of a shoujo manga called “Let’s Fall in Love” under the name “Sakiko Yumeno”.
Despite her confession being a clear letdown since Nozaki is oblivious as hell, Chiyo agrees to help out Nozaki and meets the rest of his crazy manga editing team, their sparkling (literally sometimes) and violent friends, and ultimately where some of Nozaki’s character inspiration comes from. Welcome to the tales of Chiyo as she tries to win over Nozaki, the most deadpan characters of all time who somehow manages to draw a popular romance manga even though he’s openly admitted (very enthusiastically too if I may add) he never has been in a relationship before. This romance is going places.
Japan only recently released a Blu-Ray box set featuring the complete season and all the mini-OVA specials. Previously they put out two episodes per disc with an extra short episode. While Japan is known to always have pretty fancy box sets for any anime, game, and even manga, the set we got in the US is pretty impressive. So let’s get down to the unboxing!
This monster of a box holds all three disc cases and the hardcover booklet. If we take everything out, one contains the complete Blu-Ray collection, the other is the complete DVD collection, and finally, the bonus original soundtrack CDs. The artwork found on the cases, actual discs and the box were also used on the original individual Japanese DVD and Blu-Ray home releases as well.
The Blu-Ray set is just two discs including the special features. The DVD set is a total of three discs, special features included. The features for our release included all the mini OVA episodes, Japanese trailers, commercials, and creditless opening and ending sequences. Sentai Filmworks have stated that these are also available to view online on their site.
The final case holds three CDs: the original soundtrack spanning two discs and character songs, both of these were exclusive as CD bonuses with the Japanese DVDs only. I am always hyped to get any sort of soundtrack release over here because first of all we normally never get any and two, CHARACTER SONGS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO ME. HEARING ONO YUKI (Hori’s Japanese voice actor) SING GIVES ME LIFE, PLEASE UNDERSTAND. The first CD has character songs for the main male cast Nozaki, Mikorin, Hori, Waka, and …Suzuki, a character that Nozaki created is singing a song in an anime about manga. Each song also has an instrumental version. The other two CDs are background music from the anime, there’s a total of 52 tracks.
Also fun fact, the DVD case covers are reversible! Uh wow look at all the tanuki…
Next is the Monthly Girls’ Romance Special Edition Booklet, this hardcover full color 84 paged book is made to be like a magazine, it’s even named after the manga magazine from the series “Monthly Girls’ Romance”. There are all sorts of features, including episode commentary, character designs and comments, Japanese voice actor round table discussions, and translated lyrics to the character songs. Again, character songs are very important.
And lastly these two were tucked away with the CDs, a 4″ x 6″ sticker sheet and 13″ x 19″ poster! This poster features one of my favorite artwork from the series. Being Hori-senpai is suffering.
In all, this Limited Edition was so worth the wait and many thanks to Sentai Filmworks to bring this over. Even if Limited Editions aren’t your thing, this short anime series is downright silly and fun. The animation stays true to the manga’s art and the dub is also top notch with an amazing cast. So if you want to know how a romance manga doesn’t work in real anime life, Monthly Girl’s Nozaki-kun is your go-to-anime.
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