If Kashima and Hori are not your anime couple of the year, I honestly don't know what to say to you.
Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun is an all around-great show that everyone should watch, especially fans of the shoujo genre. I've mentioned previously on this blog that shoujo was my gateway into the manga side of the fandom (via Fruits Basket back in the early 2000s) but eventually I got burned out on the tropes that came with the genre. Nozaki-kun pokes fun at those same tropes while still developing it's own characters in the same way its predecessor Ouran High School Host Club did, and Kashima and Hori play a big role in this.
Kashima herself is a flip on the "prince" archetype frequently found in shoujo manga, completely embracing the traits that cause her fangirls to fall all over themselves. Meanwhile, Hori frequently loses his tempter when Kashima's fan club interrupts practice. They way that they interact with each other is hysterical. However, their dynamic becomes much more interesting when the mutual respect that they have for each other becomes clear. Hori respects Kashima's acting more than he'd ever admit, and Kashima does have a bit of the "I hope senpai notices me" bug in return. This quickly becomes hilarious considering that her personality is the base for the "senpai" archetype, but the show doesn't stop poking fun at it there, resulting in the best parody of "a princess and her white knight" that I've ever seen.
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| True love is when you pretend to be a bull because you misunderstand your senpai's intentions |
Images from Crunchyroll.com.
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