She forgot her bloody nose mask. It keeps her clothes from getting dirty.
"Do friends cover each other with blood from bloody noses?"
- Serika
Nao is just a normal high school kid who's a tad shy and withheld. He doesn't have any friends but seems just fine with it. Enter Serika, a girl in his school looking for a friend. Also, she is the single strangest person he has ever met, constantly having nosebleeds whenever she looks at him and rarely showing an expression on her face besides absolutely serious. She's also decided that he's going to be her new best friend...
Choku! is the first manga by Nico Tanigawa and holds many similarities to their more popular series of No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular! However, instead of making comedy off of the social ineptitude of the main character, it instead forces said character to grow by introducing someone even more socially inept than him to an absurd degree.
This manga provides examples of:
- And Now You Must Marry Me: Serika is not shy about believing she will marry Nao one day and constantly invokes this, usually around other people.
- Attractive Bent-Gender: A recurring gag in the series involves Nao being forced to be a Wholesome Crossdresser.Even the girls think Nao is cute when he's dressed as a girl.
- Badass Adorable: Inverted. Nao is not badass by any means...but his cuteness is described by Serika as a "Dangerous Weapon." Whenever she looks at him, she forgets everything going on around her. See Class Trip to see why this is a dangerous thing.
- Badass Biker: Serika drives a motorcycle to school, and has a ridiculously cute sidecar that Nao is embarrassed to ride in.
- Bittersweet Ending: Serika fails to graduate and has to repeat her third year of high school. However, she reflects on her and Nao's relationship, and learns that they can still love each other without seeing each other as Lust Objects, and agrees to wait to have sex until he's comfortable with it.
- Black Comedy Rape/Attempted Rape: Serika ends up in a fit of lust at one point and forces herself on Nao after thinking that he wanted them to have their first time. Nao fails to fight back, but his cute expression causes Serika to have a nosebleed so bad that she passes out from it before anything could happen and thinks the whole experience was a dream.
- Brainless Beauty: Serika once says she thinks Nao having low grades is a charm point. He doesn't exactly agree.
- Butt-Monkey: Nao, usually entirely by accident on Serika's part. Pretty much any chapter involves him trying to stay away from Serika and her finding a way to ruin something important to him.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Nao after Serika thinks the two are dating. So Serika's mom does it for him. By accident.
- Chivalrous Pervert: Serika. She would do anything for Nao, but she also loses a lot of blood by just looking at him.
- Class Trip: Nao misses out on his, due to Serika looking at him sleeping in her sidecar, causing her to take her eyes off the road at the worst possible time.
- Closet Otaku: Downplayed. Nao tries to hide his interests but given he's a loner and the one person who he talks with is Serika, is like it really matters
- Cloudcuckoolander: Serika, to an absurd degree.
- Comedic Shotacon: Nao's homeroom teacher. Serika is always giving her the evil eye.
- Cool Sidecar: Inverted. Serika's sidecar is certainly interesting, but an adorable looking seal isn't exactly cool.
- Cosplay: Nao is forced to dress as a Vocaloid for a part time job. A female one. Serika dresses as Black Rock Shooter.
- Covert Pervert: Nao. He's not that big of a pervert, but he certainly doesn't look like one at first glance.
- Dating Sim: Nao's favorite type of game. To his displeasure, Serika forced him to play some with her.
- Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Serika is a quirky girl that makes the life of Nao much more interesting by entering in it but also makes it 10 times more difficult as she's constantly ruining important things to him, like causing him to lost the Class Trip he wanted to go, forcing him to get into private classes, causing her mom to leave him temporarily, spoiling his favorite videogame and ruining any chance he has of socializing with some else so understandably he's not happy of the attention he's getting from Serika as much as he wants her to stay away from him. As the series progresses it becomes obvious she doesn't want to improve Nao's life as much as he wants him to become a NEET that's entirely dependent on her, which is actually Nao's biggest fear.
- Dirty Mind-Reading: Serika believes she can read someone's mind by looking in their eyes. She picks up dirty thoughts from Nao, who instantly denies all of them.
- Ditzy Genius: Serika. She does very well in her classes, getting nearly perfect scores on her finals, but has No Social Skills.
- Emotionless Girl: Inverted with Serika. She feels plenty and expresses herself, but it's usually with the same deadly serious expression.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: Serika cuts her hair after she realizes that Nao loves her without seeing her as a Lust Object, and learns how to reciprocate that feeling.
- Fanservice: From time to time, usually with Nao, amusingly enough. Then there's the chapter at the arcade.
- Hikikomori: Nao's mother is afraid that he would become this, as he started spending every day just going to school and coming home to play Dating Sims. She trusts Serika, despite her quirkiness, to help him break out of his shell.
- Lust Object: Nao is this to Serika and his teacher. Serika learns to respect him later on however
- Made of Iron: Serika manages to recover from a motorcycle crash pretty fast. Lampshaded by the narration that says she will alright in the next chapter.
- Miss Swears-A-Lot: Serika is found of using the S word as it was intended to be used.
- NEET: Nao is afraid he will become this if he doesn't shape up and figure out what he wants to do after high school. Serika, however, is perfectly with him lazing home all day while she goes to college and works part-time, and spending her days off doting on him.
- Nosebleed: From the female lead, for a change.
- No Social Skills: Both the main characters, but mainly Serika. Serika tries to tutor Nao so he can avoid taking remedial lessons. Unfortunately, her limited social skills make her explanations rather hard to understand. He starts getting the material once an actual teacher steps in and takes over for her.
- Old-Fashioned Rowboat Date: Nao, while trying to make up with Serika.
- Parental Abandonment: Downplayed. Nao's mom leaves on a business trip a few chapters in, but she lefts very clear she's gonna come back. She leaves again after a few chapters any way
- Relationship Upgrade: As of Chapter 17.
- Running Gag: Nao crossdressing, nosebleeds from Serika, Serika appearing at the worst time, and many others.
- Shorter Means Smarter: Subverted. Turns out that Serika is a genius. She's 10 cm taller than Nao.
- Sick Episode: Nao has the cold and Serika skips school to nurse him back to health.
- Stalking is Love: Overtime. Justified as Nao never really had someone care as much about him as Serika and she's overall very nice...just strange.
- Stupid Sexy Flanders: Nao has this effect on most everyone when crossdressing.
- Tiny Guy, Huge Girl
- Toilet Humor: In the very first chapter, Serika meets Nao and says that she finds taking a shit with her lover (who she already sees Nao as) is romantic. She is aware she is in the boy's room. She prefers it there.
- Umbrella of Togetherness: Serika tries to Invoke this by bringing an umbrella for her and Nao to share, hoping that it would rain one day. Of course, it doesn't rain for most of the time she tries this, and the day it does rain, her umbrella gets stolen. They almost end up sharing a similar moment when he shares a rain parka with her, but they end up waiting the storm out because her ensuing Nosebleed almost made her pass out.
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Let's just say one of the arcade employees had an interesting run in with Nao in the bathroom...
- Urban Legends: Nao and Serika start one when a janitor thinks the two are a ghost. With all the blood Serika left behind, this isn't surprising...
- Weakness Turns Her On: Serika really likes Nao in part of his very un-manly body and personality.
- Wholesome Crossdresser: In the first chapter, Serika forces Nao to wear a wedding dress. He wears it well. He pretends to be a female student later to try and help another girl scared of men, which comes back to bite him...
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Serika takes school days off when Nao is sick and when he gets suspended, and takes the week off before finals to cram study. Despite getting high grades and doing well on her exams, she fails to graduate because of her poor attendance.
