Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun is about a girl named Chiyo Sakura who has a crush on Umetaro Nozaki. When she tries confessing her feelings to him, she doesn’t manage to get it out right; but by saying what she said, she comes to learn that Nozaki is the author of a shojo manga that she’s read in a shojo manga magazine; he writes under the pen name, Sakiko Yumeno. Sakura becomes Nozaki’s assistant.
Episode 10 reveals that Nozaki’s story about the rain got a strangely positive reaction, and now his editor wants him to write a story about the secondary characters. These characters are based on Wakamatsu and Yuzuki, but he’s not sure if he should really go ahead and advance their relationship, Just them, Wakamatsu shows up with a movie ticket that Yuzuki gave him. It was pretty funny when Wakamatsu asks Nozaki what he should do, and Nozaki’s response is that Wakamatsu should go and tell him how it went. Looks like Nozaki caught a lucky break!
But poor Wakamatsu ends up not having a good time while he’s with Yuzuki. Her inability to read situations causes her to give an opposite reaction to scenes than what you’d usually expect. And when they talk about the movie afterwards, Yuzuki doesn’t remember who the main heroine is and keeps talking about some character who apparently isn’t in this particular movie. When he later makes a comment that he shouldn’t have come, Yuzuki shows him a ticket to an amusement park and says she’ll ask someone else; however, Wakamatsu objects and says he wants to go. He then finds himself wondering why he reacted like that. After this, he also keeps checking the glee club room to see if he can find Lorelei, unaware that Yuzuki is Lorelei.
For the most part, I didn’t find Wakamatsu and Yuzuki’s “date” terribly funny; it probably doesn’t help that Yuzuki is my least favorite character in the series. But it seems to be getting obvious now that Wakamatsu may have subconscious feelings for Yuzuki, but I can’t figure out why for the life of me. At least this helps to give Nozaki some fodder for his manga.
The second storyline in the episode sees Hori thinking that the next play should be a musical, and Yu is frustrated because she can’t sing. Sakura and Nozaki take Yu to get help with her singing from Yuzuki, but Yu’s singing is so bad that Yuzuki is unable to help her.
Yuzuki lucks out, and Hori changes his mind and decides to do a regular play after all. Unfortunately, one of the actors has a broken bone, so Hori is taking his place. During rehearsals, Yu and Hori’s characters have a swordfight, but it turns out they’re not very compatible for the roles. Nozaki tries to take Hori’s place, but he absolutely fails; this contributes to the comedy of the episode. In the end, though, Mikoshiba is dragged into it. As Hori watches, he realizes that Mikoshiba’s mannerisms remind him of Mamiko from Nozaki’s manga…
Between the two stories, I have to say that I enjoyed the one with Yu and Hori more than I did the story about Wakamatsu and Yuzuki. It does seem like this series is setting up the Yu and Hori pairing and the Wakamatsu and Yuzuki pairing. During this episode, I found myself wondering how Wakamatsu would react if he ever learned that Yuzuki is Lorelei and if this would change his opinion of Yuzuki any.
But when it comes to potential couples, it’s a lot harder to tell if a Nozaki and Sakura relationship could happen, because Nozaki doesn’t really show his emotions much.
It’s hard to believe that there’s only two more episodes remaining for Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun. At this point, knowing the kind of series this is, I expect that very little will be resolved by the end of it and that the series will end with the status quo. But when you consider that this is more of a gag anime than a series with an overarching story, it’s easier for me to accept that there will more than likely not be a resolution to any of the various storylines that have appeared during the series.