Manga / Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun

"My name is Chiyo Sakura, 16 years old. I asked the boy that I like out, and he gave me his autograph."

Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun (Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun) is a web-published yonkoma shounen gag manga from Izumi Tsubaki, the author of Ore-sama Teacher, which began serialization in Square Enix's online magazine GanGan Online (home of manga such as Daily Lives of High School Boys and No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular!) in 2011.

Lovestruck high-schooler Chiyo Sakura confesses to her crush, the tall, handsome and mysterious Umetaro Nozaki, who whisks her away to his house—but not for the reasons you'd expect. Turns out he's a renowned Shoujo manga artist and thinks she's a fangirl who wants to be his production assistant! Hijinks ensue as Sakura takes up the role to grow closer to the oblivious Nozaki and meets an array of friends and classmates, each of whom impact the manga Nozaki creates in their own special ways.

While the series is ostensibly shounen, it is also an Affectionate Parody of shoujo manga and its making, and many of the genre's signature tropes, cliches, and stereotypes appear in some way or form.

A drama CD was released in 2013, and an anime adaptation by Dogakobo began airing on TV Tokyo on July 7, 2014. The anime is available for streaming on Crunchyroll and licensed by Sentai Filmworks (with a dubbed home video release in 2016) and the manga is licensed in the US by Yen Press. A Chinese live-action drama adaptation titled The Comic Bang was produced for iQiyi in 2022.

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This manga provides examples of:

#-G

• 100% Completion: When Sakura plays an Otome Game in Chapter 105, she keeps saving so she can try every possible dialogue option, much to Mikorin's annoyance.
• Accidental Passenger: Seo tells Sakura about a time when she was a kid playing with a boy called Okada, and how one day she put him in a back of a truck and said truck suddenly started moving... Seo offhandedly ends the story there, realizing she's telling the wrong one, and she never reveals poor Okada's fate.^note The answer was only revealed in the official fanbook, where it reassures readers that the truck went to a strawberry farm and Okada safely returned, and even gave Seo strawberries as a souvenir.
  Sakura: Wait, what happened to Okada-kun?!
• Accidental Kiss: Hori and Kashima exchange one in Chapter 143 when a member of the drama club accidentally bumps Kashima into Hori. Neither of them are upset - Hori understands that it was just an accident on stage, and Kashima just thinks that she must have become a master of kissing scenes - but the entire drama club (including Kashima) are convinced that Hori is devastated at losing his Sacred First Kiss and annoy him with constant attempts to comfort him, ultimately climaxing in Kashima begging Hori for permission to give him a "real" kiss in a more romantic setting.
• Acquainted in Real Life:
  • Mayu's friend starts a blog under the name Mayumayu, which Mikoshiba then begins to follow under the pen name "Mamiko". Both Mayu and Mikoshiba believe the other to be a girl and continue to text back and forth.
  • In Let's Fall In Love, the girl Waka has a terrible relationship with the jerk Oze at school but finds one of her greatest comforts being phone conversations she has with a kind man in the evenings, never knowing that they're the same person. Nozaki based this off of Wakamatsu and Seo's relationship, with Wakamatsu having mixed feelings towards Seo but being in love with her singing voice as Lorelei.
• Adaptation Distillation: Though a fairly faithful adaptation, the order of the chapters adapted changes frequently and some chapters are often altered or have scenes left out in order to fit more chapters in the episode. In particular, Sakura and Nozaki's first meeting is nearly completely changed from the manga.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • The anime usually follows the manga strips it chooses to adapt pretty faithfully (especially in the first 2 and a half episodes) while building on the scenes from the manga, and it gives (a little) more plot by further emphasizing Sakura and Nozaki's relationship (such as the anime-original ending). As such, anime viewers may be led to believe that the romance between Nozaki and Sakura is central to the plot, when it's not.
  • An In-Universe example happens in Chapter 89. When Nozaki adapts a novella used in the literature class into manga, he adds a scene of the two protagonists going to the donut store together. Sakura ends up getting it confused with the actual novella content and writes it in her test, confusing the teacher.
• Adapted Out: The anime opening hints at Mamiko's connection to Sakura and Nozaki's first meeting (where in the manga Sakura's one-ribbon hairstyle inspired the character's design, even though Nozaki doesn't remember); however the adaptation of that first meeting in the last episode ends up cutting out the scenes that established said connection.
• Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole:
  • Nozaki is sick in Episode 6, and Sakura, Hori and Wakamatsu have to guess what Mamiko would say. Mikoshiba isn't even mentioned despite Sakura knowing that Mamiko's personality is based on Mikoshiba's. The manga does explain Mikoshiba's absence; when asked about it by Sakura, Nozaki states that since Mikoshiba is buying or playing a newly-released Dating Sim, his cell phone will be turned off. This part was omitted from the anime, leaving a plot hole.
  • The last episode of the anime shows Nozaki's actual first meeting with Sakura was in first year, but he doesn't seem to remember it and has treated the misunderstood Love Confession as their first proper interaction, and it's not made clear why. This is because the adaptation leaves out a couple of scenes of that meeting in Chapter 48, including one which explicitly states that the sleep-deprived Nozaki went home afterward and forgot about the encounter thanks to a good sleep.
  • All the gags in Chapter 61 revolve around how Sakura and Nozaki are ignorant of smartphones and their apps due to only owning older clamshell phones. This makes little sense to those more familiar with the anime, which shows Sakura always having owned a slate smartphone and Nozaki owning a flip smartphone model common in Japan.
  • Only girls are shown when the art club appear in the manga, and Chapter 86 confirms they have no guys. This can confuse those familiar with the anime, who would have likely noticed the two male members appearing in the background during the art club story in Episode 7.
  • The anime emphasizes the importance of the prospective relationship between Nozaki and Sakura, whereas the manga treats it mostly as a gag. This is due to the fact that Nozaki is not aware of his surroundings, and Sakura is satisfied with very little when it comes to Nozaki, so the romance between them is nowhere as important as the adaptation makes it seem.
• Adjective Noun Fred: "Monthly" = adjective, "Girls'" = noun, "Nozaki-kun" = Fred.
• Adorkable: Applies In-Universe to a Let's Fall In Love minor character, Tenjouji, when he unexpectedly wins the popularity poll. Nozaki thinks he's popular because he's the arrogant bad boy rival, but according to the poll comments his manga readers like him because he comes across as dumb yet endearing. invoked
• Affectionate Parody: Of shoujo manga and its making. The series is primarily about people who work on an extremely cliche shoujo manga series. Thus, it is very self-aware regarding the demographic's tropes, lampooning and playing with them as often as it plays them straight. It also takes the cliches to their logical extremes in the real-world setting, to hilarious results. As such, both the manga itself and Nozaki's manga in-story are parodies of shoujo manga (though the manga itself is technically shounen, since it runs in the shounen online magazine GanGan Online).
• Age Lift: The Chinese live-action adaptation changed the main cast from high schoolers to university students. This is out of pragmaticism since the Chinese high-school curriculum is so much of a Training from Hell (discussed in that trope's Real Life section) that no Chinese viewer can reasonably believe a Chinese high-school student can have the time, effort, and/or parental support to become a professional Sequential Artist.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Volume 8's extras has an omake where Kashima asks Hori to pay her head and hug him while he's gotten drunk off of brandy cake. The loud noises and Kashima looking disheveled as she goes to tell Nozaki and Mikoshiba, who are outside the same room as those two, make them realize it kinda seems just like when Hori's angry and beating Kashima up if they can't see it with their own eyes.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys:
  • Parodied in Chapter 32 when Nozaki receives an over the top Dating Sim from his editor and decides to play it with Hori and Wakamatsu. The trio soon becomes amazed by the persistence of the female lead in chasing the cast of largely Jerkass yet pretty guys.
  • Nozaki decides to come up with a "bad boy" character in Chapter 30 because they seem more appealing.
• All Men Are Perverts:
  • In Chapter 49, judo club members want some illustrated how-to's for grappling. Mayu draws some based on Nozaki's shoujo-style art, but the rest of the club boos, claiming they're not sexy enough. Mayu has to use Mikoshiba's racy manga and figurines as models, with increasing levels of raciness as fellow members demand more fanservice.
  • Chapter 59 sees Mikoshiba sending an email under the pseudonym of "Mamiko" to one of the judo club members who is posting the artwork under the guise that it's a blog for a female student in the club, because well, it'd be seen as a bit suspicious if a guy sends a message to a junior high school girl right? The two judo club members promptly react to the email with cheering "HIGH SCHOOL GIRL! MINISKIRT! WHOOOOOOOOO!" after realizing the email has a female name.
• An Odd Place to Sleep:
  • The flashback of their first meeting shows Sakura first met Nozaki when she was late to school and she saw that he had fallen asleep on top of the school gate while climbing it to get into school, since he was also late.
  • As Wakamatsu always falls asleep when listening to Seo's singing, this is naturally abused in Chapter 84 when Seo purposely sings or hums near him at school which makes him go straight to sleep regardless of his location. He falls asleep in the hall several times and also a few classrooms.
• Arson, Murder, and Lifesaving: Wakamatsu's list of complaints towards Seo include always hitting him with a basketball, always making him run errands, always making him carry her stuff, and giving souvenirs to only him.
• Art Shift:
  • In the anime, scenes from In-Universe manga are depicted as still panels made to look like they were actual printed pages from said manga.
  • Both the anime and manga portray panels from "Let's Fall In Love" and Nozaki's other works with a glossy Shojo artstyle that looks nothing like the actual series.
  • The character creator's models in chapter 138 are differentiated from the actual cast with the model's faces tending closer to a realistic style, with clear lips and noses as well as smaller eyes.
• Author Appeal: In-universe - in chapter 133, the usual misunderstandings causes Ryousuke to assume that Nozaki's manga is some sort of intensely fetishistic work of bisexual masochism which Ryousuke is assuming is Nozaki's tastes, when his shoujo romance manga almost couldn't be further from the case.
• Bait-and-Switch: The fireworks scene in the anime. Sakura confesses to Nozaki during the fireworks, and fears he didn't hear her. But then, he leans in close to whisper in her ear, and tells her that he feels the same...about liking fireworks. He thought she was referring to the display.
• Bait-and-Switch Performance: Inverted: Seo teaches the tone-deaf Kashima to sing better, and Wakamatsu overhears, mistaking Kashima's singing for Seo's—unaware that Seo is the best singer in the Glee Club, and that he adores listening to her singing.
• Bait-and-Switch Sentiment: The punchline is often set up this way, with a character seemingly about to do or say something romantic/heartwarming but then doing something completely different.
  • As Nozaki walks home with Sakura when sharing an Umbrella of Togetherness in the rain, he laments that he wishes time would stop. Sakura wonders if he's thinking the same thing (that he doesn't want to stop walking with her). It turns out Nozaki doesn't want time to continue because he's dreading coming home to wet laundry.
  • Nozaki attempts a simulation where he, Sakura and Mikoshiba try to look for each other at the train station without using their phones. When reporting back to Miyamae, Nozaki notes there's some things that haven't changed compared to the olden days. Miyamae snarks to himself that he's probably going to say something cheesy like "the thrill of waiting to meet up". Nozaki's actual answer? "Lost child services." (Mikoshiba had reported himself as a lost child to make it quicker to find the others).
  • Wakamatsu once expressed to Nozaki that basketball is amazingly fun due to Seo...no, he's not in love with her presence in the basketball club, he actually being gratified by her absence today (as is the rest of the basketball club).
• Beach Episode:
  • Chapter 46 has everyone going to the beach, and of course there's some lampooning of the typical events that happen there.
  • The pool episode variant happens in Chapter 90, where Mikoshiba and Nozaki attempt to invoke Ship Tease by having Hori deal with his newfound complex feelings for Kashima by having them interact in a pool setting. Hori picks up on this and plays along by following what he thinks are their cues, to mixed results.
• Beautiful Singing Voice: Played for Laughs. The choir club's mysterious "Lorelei", nicknamed for a mythical German siren, is a hauntingly good singer. However, people's romantic idealizations about who she is are instantly crushed when they find out that her real identity is the abrasive jerk Seo.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: The flashback of the anime version of their first meeting shows that Sakura fell for Nozaki because he helped her over the gate and cheered her up when she was late for her first day of school and stressed over it. The manga version is less straightforward; Sakura was still grateful for Nozaki trying to help her out, but the events that unfolded were more bizarre (at one point Nozaki carried Sakura over his back as he wandered around thinking about Mamiko's design).
• Beleaguered Assistant:
  • Although Nozaki's a pretty competent mangaka, he nonetheless acquires a cast of assistants who put up with his eccentricities. Of course, they each have their own share of eccentricities. Hori takes the cake in being the most beleaguered of his assistants. Where the others are merely in charge of things such as inking and adding tone or effects, Hori is landed with the task of drawing all of Nozaki's backgrounds because Nozaki doesn't know how to draw them himself. And on top of that Nozaki doesn't even give adequate instructions on what needs to be drawn most of the time.
  • In Chapter 59, we get to see that Mayu is even too lazy to reply to cell phone text, and entrusts his schoolmate Kobayashi to text on his behalf.
• Beta Couple:
  • Kashima/Hori and Seo/Wakamatsu are the secondary ShipTeased pairings in the series and even beat the main ship Sakura/Nozaki in the fanbook pairing poll, winning 1st and 2nd places respectively.
  • In Nozaki's manga, the secondary pairing after the main couple Suzuki/Mamiko are Oze/Waka (who are based on Seo and Wakamatsu respectively).
• Bifauxnen and Lad-ette: Seo and Kashima. The former is a very rough and abrasive lad-ette who frequently gets called to play in sports team (especially basketball), while the latter is a charming flirt who gets nicknamed "Prince" and has a bunch of fangirls.
• Bittersweet Ending: The first season of the anime ends with Sakura watching fireworks with Nozaki and thinking that while she's happy she got close to him, he still only sees her as a friend. She decides she's happy with that for now. The overall tone is less comedic and more wistful than Chapter 38 of the manga, which covered the festival but did not have a fireworks scene and was a standard chapter story-wise.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • Stationery:
    • Pilot becomes Pallet.
    • Uni becomes Inu.
    • In Episode 6, Sakura brings in a bottle of ink named 朋開. It is a spoof of Kaimei (開明), a major brand of carbon ink.
  • Pocari Sweat becomes Pucari Set.
  • PS becomes "PD."
  • Sony becomes Tony.
  • Pepsi becomes Papsi.
• The Blind Leading the Blind:
  • Mikoshiba asks Nozaki to help him practice for a mixer. He quickly regrets that decision. He then gets Sakura to set an example of how a girl would act at a mixer. She also turns out to be a really bad choice.
  • Kashima asks Mikoshiba how to get Hori to notice her more. Using vast experience with this situation, his advice boils down to essentially being an aggressively clingy girl. Surely enough, Hori later complains to Nozaki and Sakura that Kashima was being "super annoying as of late".
  • What do you get when a person who's never played "King's Game" tries to play with other people who've never played "King's Game" before? The Anthology Extra Chapter, of course.
  • Subverted when Kashima asks Nozaki for help on understanding the concept of having an unrequited love and it works, despite Sakura believing that this trope should have very much have been played straight.
  Sakura: Why has it been made possible?!
• Blue with Shock: Characters' faces often become blue and visibly distressed, especially when Nozaki is up to his hijinks.
  • When Sakura reads the fanfic Nozaki and Mikoshiba made in Chapter 8.
  • When Kashima is carted away by Nozaki in Chapter 15.
  • When Sakura pulls off Nozaki's fake hand in Chapter 31.
• Book Ends:
  • Chapter 1 opens with Sakura confessing to Nozaki in a classroom by saying she's "his fan", which Nozaki misunderstands and responds to by giving her his autograph. It ends with Sakura trying to confess to him again in a classroom... but again, all she can say is that she's his fan, and so Nozaki gives her another autograph.
  • Chapter 16 opens with Kashima speaking to Mikoshiba about how Hori seems to be more distant, and Hori speaking to Sakura and Nozaki about Kashima being annoying. It ends with them speaking to the same people, except Kashima thinks she understands Hori better, and Hori laments that Kashima seems to really hate him.
  • Chapter 51 opens with Nozaki catching Wakamatsu being inspired by a shoujo manga he's reading for summer break goals, and he tries to take it off of him while scolding him to stop referring to the manga. It ends with Nozaki catching him reading another shoujo manga that inspired his previous Out of Character behaviour, and he scolds him again in the exact same manner.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick:
  • When Mikoshiba is shanghaied into being a model for Sakura's art club, most of the girls let him do poses appealing to them. Sakura has him imitate Nozaki at work, other girls have him do stock sexy poses...and one girl has him pose as a guy crawling pathetically after an angry girlfriend after breaking up due to his infidelity. Said girl looks upon the scene with a very pleased smile◊, weirding out the rest of the club.
  • Rei has an Imagine Spot of how Nozaki wants Hori to react to a hypnotized and amnesiac Kashima. Three stages are shown — 1) Kashima forgetting Hori, 2) a shocked Hori wondering how this could happen, and 3) Hori holding Kashima's legs with a dark look on his face and saying he'll just "have to ask her body". Rei (being an avid shoujo manga fan with a dirty mind) thinks it's romantic, while Nozaki (in another Imagine Spot) is visibly disturbed.
• Brick Joke:
  • Early in Chapter 29, Nozaki explains to Wakamatsu the dangers of working with screentones, such as dropping a knife on one's thigh. The chapter ends with Wakamatsu dropping a knife on his thigh.
  • Chapter 87 has Nozaki cycle through a series of reactions for a male lead when his heroine gets gussied up. After progressively more expressive and delayed reactions, the last one looked through was a scenario where the male lead realizes her beauty a couple of days later. Hori ends up doing the same thing, but after a full week, when he comes to realize that he might like Kashima. Lampshaded by the title of the punchline strip, "Page Five Was Foreshadowing".
  • Chapter 106 has Kashima accidentally hypnotized to forget Hori and Wakamatsu to act like a dog. This continues on to Chapter 107, which focuses on the drama (or the lack of it) in Hori and Kashima's relationship after she forgot him. It's only after everything is seemingly resolved that its shown Wakamatsu is still acting like a dog.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Miyako is trying to flirt with Ryousuke, and thinks of this when he mentions his sister (Seo). He immediately quashes her attempts to invoke it.
  Miyako: (flirting) How nice...I...wish I was your little sister...
  Beat while Ryousuke has Blank White Eyes.
  Ryousuke: (grabbing Miyako by the shoulders) No. Becoming Yuzuki is a no-no. Even if you had no choice but to be a little sister, don't be a Yuzuki. Please don't.
• "Burly Detective" Syndrome: Invoked and Played for Laughs. Prior to Chapter 1, Sakura wouldn't stop talking about her crush Nozaki to her friends, so her friend told her to stop saying Nozaki. Then she proceeded to continue talking about him, only substituting his name with things like "the ex-member of the basketball club", "the student in seat 14 in class A", or "the person who bought set B lunch at the canteen".
• Call-Back: Chapter 71, Nozaki asks Mikoshiba to write short phrases related to a game he played before. He intended it to be a reference to Daily Life Paradise, the Dating Sim they played together in Chapter 8, but Mikoshiba writes a bunch of outrageous scenarios from Secret Days, the otome game from Chapter 33.
• Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them:
  • Hori's relationship with Kashima often consists of him yelling at her or complaining about her, but if she ignores him for less than a day his mood plummets enough for his peers to start worrying about him.
  • Wakamatsu, in a distinctly divided example, gets extremely stressed out by the way Seo treats and acts around him, and yet he's outright said he can't live without "Lorelei" (Seo's voice) to help him sleep. Even in regards to Seo herself, he's considerably less stressed when she's gone on her school trip (to the point of being overly nice to everyone at school) but starts to feel down when he thinks about how much fun she's having without him.
  • Seo is treated as The Dreaded by the boys' basketball club, so their initial reaction is of pure joy when she goes off on her school trip. However, the captain watches the other members train and realizes that they're way too carefree now that Seo isn't there to put them on guard, and immediately wishes for her to come back.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • Nozaki doesn't treat his job as a secret, but nobody at school believes he is a professional mangaka. It's even worse with his younger sister, who refuses to believe that he's Sakiko Yumeno, even though he's gone to much length to convince her of that fact — even giving her his autograph (she thinks he's making a good counterfeit) and telling her of his manga's future plot (which she could also predict, because his story is too vanilla). In Chapter 130 he's finally able to convince his two friends from class, but only because Sakura is there to insist on the facts of his work, and of course if Sakura says it about Nozaki then it has to be true. Nozaki is underwhelmed at their reaction when convinced - apparently they found Sakura's ability to spot out Nozaki in crowded photos to be more entertaining anyway.
  • When Seo finally confesses to Wakamatsu that she's Lorelei, the latter doesn't believe it for a second and assumes it's just another one of her pranks. It takes multiple attempts until Wakamatsu's finally convinced she is indeed Lorelei.
• Cast Full of Pretty Boys: Downplayed. Of the 7 main characters, 4 are boys and 3 are girls, but all the boys are some flavor of Bishōnen except Nozaki, who's a Hunk, and one of the girls (Kashima) is a Bifauxnen.
• Catapult Nightmare: After Wakamatsu is finally convinced that that Seo is Lorelei, he tries to go bed while listening to Lorelei's singing as usual. However thanks to the earlier relevation listening to her songs causes him to imagine Seo singing them into his ear — he finds so horrifying that he sits up from his bed screaming.
• Chalk Outline: Parodied in Chapter 84 when Seo's singing makes Wakamatsu fall asleep in the middle of the hallway and she draws a chalk body outline around him.
• Chick Magnet: Mikoshiba and Kashima both have a lot of female fans, though Mikoshiba gets embarrassed if he tries flirting back while Kashima is so popular with girls that she seduces everyone around her with superficial charm. Suzuki is also popular with girls, which is expected since he is the male lead in Nozaki's manga. Wakamatsu also becomes popular with the girls when Seo is away on her school trip, since he becomes more relaxes and becomes inclined to help all of them out.
• Chocolate of Romance:
  • Nozaki, being a Shoujo mangaka, loves Valentine's Day and spends the whole day running around watching girls give boys chocolate. At the end of the day, his classmates are confused when he's so happy despite not getting any chocolate himself.
  • However, he finds White Day chocolates to be boring and not fun to draw, so he tells girls he hates it, making them think he's selfish and just wants chocolate without having to give anyone any.
  • Sakura tries to give Nozaki chocolates of her own, but can't keep up with him running all over the school to find romantic material for his manga. In the end she eats them herself.
  • Kashima wants to give her senpai Hori homemade chocolates, but he hates homemade sweets, so she disguises them as store-bought ones.
• Class Trip: The second years go on a school trip to Kyoto from Chapters 93-96, with Chapter 92 also acting as a precursor. Shoujo tropes related to their activities on the trip are explored and defied by Nozaki, and Wakamatsu and Hori also get a focus story in Chapter 95 at school without the usual gang.
• Cliché Storm: In-Universe example with Nozaki and other authors' manga, though Nozaki's own manga Let's Fall in Love has pretty much every cliche you'd expect from shoujo manga and then some. When Nozaki tries to convince his sister that he writes Let's Love by spoiling future plot details, she doesn't believe him because his work is that predictable and vanilla. Ironically, despite Nozaki's fervent passion for his work and his insistence on researching whatever he's going to put into his manga, Let's Love is repeatedly implied to be so trite to the point this factor is really the only thing notable about it.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Everyone in the cast, save for maybe Ken Miyamae shares a tendency for bouts of thoughts and/or actions that are bizarre and baffling.
• Clown-Car Base: In the class trip arc, Sakura and Seo are coming back from the bath when they see Nozaki talking to someone under a futon. They watch a girl crawl out... followed by four more. All the girls were under there with Kashima, but Sakura and Seo naturally misunderstand the situation.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • Officially at the school, first years will have green bows/ties and Inside Shoes, second years have red, and third years have blue.
  • The anime's opening animation assigns the main cast different colours, which often shows up in official coloured art: Mikoshiba is red, Sakura is orange, Seo is yellow, Nozaki is green, Hori is light blue, Kashima is a standard blue, and Wakamatsu is purple.
• Comedic Lolicon:
  • Played for Laughs in the omake of Chapter 35, where Mikoshiba is waiting for Sakura and Nozaki in the lost children's section of the mall. A young girl, seeing how distraught he is, offers him a snack and he responds with a typical Dating Sim quote: "Don't be so nice to me; I might fall for you". It's really just to show that Mikoshiba really Cannot Talk to Women and can only parrot lines from dating sims at them, no matter how old they are.
  • The first time they meet, Seo accuses Nozaki of being a lolicon since he is hanging out with Sakura, showing off how off-putting her personality is. Light-hearted punchlines of this nature involving the two come up occasionally throughout the series.
  • In Chapter 96, Mikoshiba points out to Kashima that Nozaki finally seems to be showing some emotion. Kashima is confused, so Mikoshiba compares him to a seemingly emotionless robot handing a flower to a little girl. Unfortunately, Kashima misunderstands.
    Kashima: "So basically, both Nozaki and the robot are lolicons?"
  • Also played for laughs in Chapter 58, where Sakura finds Nozaki's manuscript for the special issue of Monthly Girls' Romance. The theme is "Love in age differences". Nozaki pairs up a grown man with a little girl.
    Sakura: This is criminal!
  • Rei Kashima has imagine spots of guys and girls naked if they so much as touch each other, such as when she sees Seo hang around with Wakamatsu and pat Mikoshiba's shoulder... However, Nozaki doesn't get the same treatment when Seo does the same to him, because Rei thinks he's the school groundskeeper (hence an adult) and insists that she "must not get [him] involved with the children". With this in mind, Nozaki demands that Sakura stays away from him so he can avoid being "turned" into a criminal.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • The foundation of Nozaki and Sakura's relationship, at least regarding... their relationship. It all starts when Sakura confesses that she likes him, but Nozaki takes her declaration as liking his work. Henceforth, whenever Sakura tries to drop a romantic hint, Nozaki often uses it for his manga or misunderstands in some other odd way.
  • Nozaki is really poor on perspectives, and screws up on the characters' heights. When Hori points this out, Nozaki says different characters were standing on Scully Boxes in all the scenes. Hori then complains that nobody will carry boxes with them all the time, and Nozaki responds that he'll just have them say boxes are popular In-Universe at the moment.
  • Kashima seems to think that Hori's special way of dealing with her whenever she pisses him off is because she's his "number one". Sakura is quick to point out otherwise.
  • Occurs in Chapter 6 (Episode 3 in the anime) when Kashima points out that Hori stopped growing and he hits her with a prop:
    Sakura: Kashima-kun, are you an idiot?
    Kashima: (lying on the ground with blood on her head) No... strange as it may seem, I'm the highest in the grade...
  • Chapter 20 (second half of Episode 6 in the anime) has Nozaki both down with a fever and an impending deadline. His doctor told him to sleep in his bed, so he asks his assistant for help... by taking his place to sleep in the bed. Happens once more when Wakamatsu then responds that he can't do it because of his insomnia.
  • Hori expresses his annoyance at Kashima and when prompted he explains how she's been leaving him a piece of girls' clothes/accessories in his locker every day... what gets to him most is that all of the items combine to make a pretty nice outfit.
    Hori: Isn't she amazing?
    Nozaki: Why does this make you like her more?
  • In Chapter 77, Seo has this moment, twice.
    • The first time, she decides to stop "favoring" Wakamatsu and treat everyone equally. So when she accidentally splashes some water on him, she chases the entire basketball team with buckets of water.
    • The second time, she tries to be kind and gentle. Her "kindness" involves confessing to a girl on behalf of another guy. And her "gentleness" involves refusing to tell him the answer so he won't be sad. Naturally, this only pisses off the guy.
• Comic-Book Time:
  • In the Long Runner Nozaki shows to Sakura in Chapter 61, the heroine just moved up one grade in 20 years of run.
  • Applies to the series itself. The characters spent the first 36 chapters of the series in their winter uniforms before switching to their summer uniforms. Despite many chapters having passed since, they are still in their summer uniforms, which seems suspicious given that in the Japanese school system the summer semester is the shortest.^note The mangaka is aware that time seems to have stalled and addressed it in a poll that was sent out during GSNK's 5th anniversary celebration; A question asked whether the readers would prefer the manga moving onward through the rest of the school year (which would include Hori having to Graduate from the Story), or having the series exist in a time loop where they remain as they are no matter how much time passes or seasons change. The results of the poll showed the latter won.
• Comic Role Play:
  • When Mikoshiba is roped into going to a mixer, he asks Sakura and Nozaki to help him practice. Unfortunately, both are terrible at it. Nozaki is a workaholic who only thinks about shoujo manga, while Sakura is only interested in Nozaki.
  • Nozaki spends a day in his protagonist Mamiko's shoes in one story, acting like a stereotypical female shoujo protagonist. Of course, being The Comically Serious, he confuses a lot of people.
• Confusing Multiple Negatives: The ending theme of the anime has several examples. Since the song was sung in Sakura's voice, this may imply her frustration over Nozaki's obliviousness. Many Chinese FanSubs just use powers of -1 to simplify these lines.
  The opposite of the opposite of the opposite of the opposite of the opposite of fortune
  The opposite of the opposite of the opposite of the opposite of hate, well, the opposite of that
  The opposite of the opposite of the opposite of the opposite of the opposite of the opposite of the opposite of hate is...
• Creator Career Self-Deprecation: Izumi Tsubaki is an established shoujo manga artist and in this series takes light-hearted jabs at her own profession. Nozaki making all his male characters look alike pokes fun at her own tendency to reuse the same character designs in her manga, with Nozaki's character design itself being one that shows up prominently in Ore-sama Teacher and Magic Touch.
• Creator's Favorite:invoked Nozaki zig-zags this with Suzuki. He likes Suzuki's visual design, and will use it for new characters when he doesn't have a model. He's also firmly behind Suzuki and Mamiko's relationship, such that he can't see them with anybody else. However, the only thing he likes about Suzuki is his visual design; he doesn't seem all that interested in him as a person, and finds his name snark-worthy.
• Creator's Pet:invoked The tanuki mascot characters are an In-Universe example. Maeno pushes for them to be in every story Miyako makes, and she doesn't mind (to a certain degree). They are hated by everyone else, to the point where one is featured being violently destroyed by Sakura and Hori in the anime's opening.
• Cute Sports Club Manager: Discussed in one chapter, where Nozaki sits in on a basketball club practice for research (as the heroine of a sports story can be a cute, supportive girl manager). Wakamatsu wonders if he intends on filling that role. They're joined by Seo, and she and Nozaki (naturally) end up acting like the complete opposite of this trope.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: In Chapter 40/Episode 11, Mikoshiba, Hori, and Wakamatsu are all in Nozaki's room together, all wanting to keep their role as Nozaki's assistants a secret from at least one other person in the group. They all introduce each other, start to chat, decide on an activity to do together, sit down at the table... and reflexively pull out their manga drawing tools.
• A Day in the Limelight: Aside from the stories on the main Ensemble Cast, the supporting characters Mayu, Miyako, Miyamae and Maeno (typically a combination of the last two-three when manga work is involved) also sometimes get their own stories that barely includes the main cast (if at all).
• Death Glare: Wakamatsu unintentionally gives a frightening glare to Ryousuke when he's approached by him, thinking Ryousuke is going to threaten him. Ryousuke in return is terrified by these "eyes of hatred" and wonders what on earth Seo did to him.
• Deconstructed Trope: Many manga scenes or tropes characters attempt to repeat or think about doing in real life usually turn out to be not doable or not give the same effects.
  • Discussed when Nozaki laments to Sakura that he's not allowed to show romantic scenes like two people on one bike because it's against traffic and teenage manga regulations. It even causes the plot of Chapter 35, because Nozaki admits to Miyamae that he's having a hard time thinking of a situation where Mamiko and Suzuki could have some drama in meeting up for a date like the old shoujo mangas do, because of the invention of cell phones.
  • In one instance, Wakamatsu gets far too into his role at the acting club as an eyepatch-wearing villain and goes to basketball practice still in character, hellbent on taking down Seo. Seo points out that the eyepatch will make him trip and fall, and surely enough he does that, knocking himself out. In fact, 99% of this trope occurring in this manga is because of Wakamatsu; he stubbornly tries to use shoujo manga to deal with Seo without learning that real life is not as simple as fiction is, and constantly wonders why he fails.
  • In Episode 9, Nozaki and Sakura imagine a scenario where the main character forgets his umbrella after it rains, and many girls offer theirs, looking like a field of many-coloured flowers. Then they see this exact scenario happen around Kashima, but they comment that it looks more like mushrooms instead.
  • The Volume 8 extras has an omake where Hori decides to try another brandy cake after Kashima gave him one and found it wasn't to his liking the same way the second time around. Sakura jokes it must be the spice of love that was the difference while Nozaki just says the alcohol in the cake probably evaporated due to being around for a few days which changed the taste.
• Defeat Means Friendship:
  • In Chapter 5/Episode 3, Mikoshiba mentions he is now friends with Kashima because of this trope. Specifically, he was decidedly defeated by Kashima in everything.
  • Nozaki assumes this is how Sakura and Seo became friends and imagines a whole scenario of the two girls befriending each other after competing in a relay race at a sports festival. The reality is more mundane — they were just sitting next to each other in class.
• Delayed Reaction:
  • It takes Sakura four hours to realize Nozaki is a mangaka. She was even helping him with his manga the whole time!
  • When Mikoshiba's practising mixer etiquette with Nozaki, Nozaki's first question practically treats Mikoshiba as a girl. Mikoshiba only complains about this after answering that question as if he was a girl.
  • An omake shows Hori assumed upon meeting and recruiting Kashima that she was a guy - despite very obvious signs that she was a girl, like wearing the school skirt. It was only until he saw her walk into the girls' bathroom that he realized her gender.
  • In Chapter 60, while talking about how Kashima's ignoring of Hori has severely affected the latter, Nozaki confides to Sakura that if she were to give him the cold shoulder, he'd also be dealt a great shock as well. She quickly reassures him that she'd never do that, and it isn't only until much later that she realizes the implications of what he had said.
  • This trope comes up in Chapter 87 when Miyako, Nozaki, and Mikoshiba discuss the different ways a guy reacts to his love interest dressing differently. Miyako suggests the guy getting flustered a few moments later, Nozaki considers the guy reacting in a similar manner a few days later. Hori tops it off by realizing his attraction for Kashima a week after she experiments dressing femininely.
• Deliberately Bad Example: Seo is hired by sports clubs because she has zero sportsmanship, and as a result it reforms their teamwork and such.
• Deliberately Monochrome: In the anime, the scene where Kashima tries to sing is rendered in black and white, in the style of an old film reel.
• Derailed for Details: In Chapter 104, Miyako is shocked that her friend got a boyfriend, and immediately asks how they got together. Her friend tells her it began with some gross miso soup at the cafeteria, but Miyako insists there has to be more to the story than that. She asks if he rescued her from an attack by the clams in the soup, or if the soup poisoned her, or if a fairy was in the soup bowl. Her friend is confused and irritated that she's so focused on the miso. (And it turns out to have been a different type of soup anyway.)
• Die for Our Ship: In-Universe, Nozaki first plays Mikoshiba's Dating Sim game using Suzuki's name — he unfortunately takes it too seriously and opts for the bad option for all the scenarios (like telling a girl to get lost and kicking another girl). His reason for doing so is as follows:
  Nozaki: Suzuki only has eyes for Mamiko!
  Mikoshiba: Why the hell did you pick that name?! Change it right now! Start over!
• Diet Episode: Chapter 64 has Sakura and Mikoshiba trying to lose weight out of fear that they've become fatter. They first attempt to simultaneously exercise their arms whilst doing their manga work, then they have Mayu help them with their work-out routine.
• Distaff Counterpart:
  • Best friends Kashima and Mikoshiba are in many aspects this to each other. They both have unisex given names, subvert many typical characteristics of their respective gender, and are known around the school for being flirty chick magnets. They also are almost the exact same height. However, they also have many traits that are the exact opposite of each other. Kashima's a friendly Jack of All Trades genius while Mikoshiba is a socially inept Shrinking Violet whose only "talent" is playing video games. Their hair also parts in opposite directions, and are the colors blue and red, which somewhat evokes a Red Oni, Blue Oni dynamic. Ironically, it's blue-haired Kashima who's the extravert and red-haired Mikoshiba who's the introvert.
  • This also applies to some of the characters of Nozaki's manga. Mamiko is based on Mikoshiba's shy but determined personality and two side characters are based on Seo and Wakamatsu; the girl having Wakamatsu's niceness and the boy having Seo's brashness. The said side characters' relationship is also based on the Seo-Wakamatsu dynamic.
• Ditzy Genius: Kashima and Wakamatsu have the first and second-best grades of the main cast respectively, with Kashima being her class' #1 student and Wakamatsu being within the top 30 of his class. They also have the least amount of common sense in the main cast.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Inverted. Hori frequently hits Kashima for doing stupid things, but it's always Played for Laughs and he is never called out on it.
• Doujinshi: Nozaki and Mikoshiba are so touched by the Ambiguously Gay helper character, who is extremely close and helpful to the male protagonist, in Mikoshiba's dating sim, that they make a doujin where he gets a romantic ending of his own with aforementioned male protagonist.
• Drama Club: Hori and Kashima are members and play a large part in their productions, though Hori's role is mostly backstage. Nozaki occasionally writes scripts for the club as payment for Hori drawing his backgrounds.
• Dramatic Irony: Seo and Wakamatsu's relationship is based on dramatic irony. For starters, he dislikes and barely tolerates her, but is in love with Lorelei after only hearing her voice, except Seo is Lorelei. Nozaki can be seen first cringing and then curled up in mortification when Wakamatsu begins talking about how great Lorelei is to Seo, intending it as an insulting comparison. Later, several characters begin shipping their manga counterparts together, apparently including an oblivious Wakamatsu!
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: Sakura displays this look when she notices that Nozaki used Mikorin as the basis for his heroine in Episode 2. Said heroine acts exactly like he does, which causes her disgusted reaction.
• Dynamic Entry: Hori's very first scene is of him delivering a great flying kick to Kashima, knocking her out in the process.
• Dysfunction Junction: Parodied in the "Secret Days" dating sim, where the female lead pursues guys whose problems range from "acts rich but their father's company actually went bankrupt" to "actually being Satan".
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Early colored art of the manga showed Sakura's hair as pinkish and her ribbons didn't have polka-dots. Later colored manga art has her color scheme closer to the anime's.
  • Hori was, in his first few appearances, inconsistently drawn with his sleeves unrolled, even while he was working (and sometimes they would switch from being rolled to unrolled from one panel to the next). Nowadays his sleeves are basically never drawn unrolled except in chapter cover or color artwork.
  • Mikoshiba's first appearance in Chapter 3 actually has him wearing his uniform mostly properly (a buttoned shirt with the tie), only missing the blazer or sweater most of the other students wear. Afterwards he dresses like he normally does in the anime, with his shirt unbuttoned over a t-shirt.
• Easy Amnesia: All it takes is some amateur hypnotising from Nozaki for Kashima to forget Hori. The drama club (and Rei) spend a whole chapter trying to revert her, but in the end the hypnosis is quickly and easily undone by Nozaki and Sakura.
• Ensemble Cast: While most of the story is framed through Nozaki and Sakura's work on his manga, a fair chunk of the screentime is also shared with their friends.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • In-Universe, when the guys play a dating sim together they don't care much about the heroine or protagonist, instead focusing on how the protagonist's friend is a really great guy who sacrificed his whole time in high school helping the protagonist with his love life. They instantly resolve to write a doujinshi with him as the main character so he can get a girlfriend too, but he has no strong relationships with anyone but the protagonist so it becomes a yaoi doujin instead.
  • Happens In-Universe with Let's Love when two side characters Nozaki hardly cares about are leading a character poll, which annoys him to no end since he wants Suzuki (who's currently ranked fourth after Mamiko) to take first place. The final ranking sees Oze (the side character based on Seo) take second place thanks to Nozaki writing a chapter focusing on him.
• Epic Fail: Wakamatsu wants to complain to Seo in Chapter 14 (adapted in Episode 6). It's just that he fails in so many things, it practically becomes a Love Confession, especially for those who know who "Lorelei" is.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Discussed by the characters in Chapter 123, where Mikoshiba guides Nozaki and Sakura through the world of "Happy-Bad Endings", which are basically the trope done on purpose. Examples given include "The Heroine and her Love Interest spend the rest of their lives together... trapped in a dream world while their friends and families mourn their comatose bodies", "The Hero saves the Heroine, but she's an Apocalypse Maiden and the world is destroyed", "The village is saved by the Hero and Heroine both making heroic sacrifices", and the ever popular "The Heroine is kidnapped by a Yandere, but she's mindbroken and convinced that it's a romantic happy end".
• Even the Girls Want Her: Kashima is a girl yet also a lady-charmer, and she adores playing up the attention. So much so that when she's invited to a group mixer, she ends up stealing all the girls' attention away from the few guys that were there.
• Everyone Can See It:
  • Pretty much everyone in the main cast (and all of Sakura's classmates) have caught on regarding Sakura's crush on Nozaki. The exceptions are Wakamatsu (who needs Seo to spell it out for him in Chapter 88) and of course, Nozaki himself.
  • Nozaki, Sakura, and Mikoshiba, along with most of the drama club and many of their nameless classmates, all know that Hori and Kashima are at the very least particularly partial towards one another.
• Exact Words:
  • In Chapter 48, which takes place prior to her "confession", one of Sakura's classmates asks her to stop mentioning Nozaki, so she starts referring to him in epithets, like "the ex-basketball club member" or "the person in seat 14 in classroom A". Her classmate quickly surrenders.
  • In Chapter 99, a younger Ojou-speaking girl Mikoshiba and Nozaki encounter at school says she's come to see her "Onee-sama" Kashima. Due to the absurdity of the term and Kashima's Chick Magnet status, the two conclude she's just another fan who's fangirling over her like her other followers. Turns out at the end that the girl — Rei Kashima — really was literally referring to Kashima as her older sister.
• Eye Catch: Different each episode, and are typically related to said episode (pre-break relating to the first half and post-break relating to the second half) with the character (or one of the characters) shown saying, "Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun!".
• Festival Episode: The characters attend a matsuri in one chapter, which is adapted as the anime finale.
• False Friend: This trope is conversed in Chapter 8 (animated as the first half of Episode 4). Nozaki is initially unwilling to consult Tomoda when playing Mikoshiba's Dating Sim as he sees anyone who appears to be friendly to the protagonist in fiction to be this—after all, Nozaki is a Shoujo Genre author by trade. After a brief explanation of the trope itself, Mikoshiba complains Nozaki is being Wrong Genre Savvy.
• Fanfiction: In-Universe example. In Episode 4 of the anime, Nozaki and Mikoshiba end up staying up all night drawing a doujinshi pairing the protagonist of a dating sim they were playing and Tomoda, mentioned above.
• Fanservice: Normally either made Fan Disservice or some sort of gag in the series itself, but occasional moments and some official art treat fans to some eye-candy.
  • A picture of Kashima and Hori together in the fanbook (to celebrate the two topping the favourite pairing poll) has 1) Kashima's revealing legs, 2) Hori's exposed chest, and 2) Hori actually grabbing Kashima's leg (with his hand firmly on her thigh) and proceeding to bite it. Yes, Tsubaki drew it and it is official.
  • The fanbook has a gem of Mikoshiba, who topped the favourite character poll, in a suit with his chest half-exposed.
  • The post-break Eye Catch in Episode 7 shows Mikoshiba posing nude (only his back is seen though).
  • The Beach Episode pokes fun at the typical "girls in revealing swimwear" fanservice trope in two instances:
    • Kashima gets asked by one of her fangirls if she's showing too much skin in her swimsuit, and the audience is treated to an upclose shot of the girl's revealing chest. The guys surrounding Kashima all gawk at her, and Hori snarks that the guys are hanging out with Kashima purely so they can oggle at the girls.
    • A few girls cling on to Wakamatsu to admire his physique, which makes him uncomfortable since their chests keep touching him. He runs away and hides behind Seo, who happens to be wearing a bikini that shows off her busty figure. Naturally, one of the girls teases him and says he ran to Seo because her prefers big breasts. The punchline is a confused Wakamatsu telling them that they're just "lumps of fat".
• Fictional Document: The Shoujo Genre magazine Monthly Girls' Romance, where Nozaki's main manga, "Let's Fall in Love! ♡", is published.
• Fictional Video Game: "3-4 members of the main cast play a video game together" is a recurring chapter set-up.
  • The first one shown is Communications with 12 Girls in Chapter 8 (or its anime counterpart, Girls Princess 3, in Episode 4), a conventional Bishoujo Game. Nozaki, who is used to fiction with a more feminine bent, picks up on precisely none of the standard genre conventions.
  • Secret Days from Chapter 32, an Otome Game given away by Monthly Girls' Romance as a prize, featuring a memorably twisty plot, involving a Rich Bastard hero who sadly reveals that his father's company actually went bankrupt, a weak looking hero who moonlights as a tough Delinquent, a friendly senpai who's a Yandere, at least two heroes who are secretly supernatural entities in disguise, and Reincarnation Romance. An Omake reveals that Mikoshiba got the harem ending on his first playthrough.
  • In Chapter 52, Nozaki, Sakura, and Mikoshiba play an old horror-mystery sound novel based on Kamaitachi no Yoru about a Kitsune possessing someone to commit murders in a Closed Circle. Most of the jokes in the chapter involve the three of them getting confused or making mistakes due to the game having no character graphics.
  • From Chapter 81, there's Doki Doki ♡ Rainbow Parfait!, a classic style Dating Sim with Stat Grinding and schedule management in the vein of Tokimeki Memorial. It's Mikoshiba's favorite game, so naturally he gets upset when Wakamatsu and Mayu fail despite the low difficulty and ignore the girls in favor of the sports tournament.
  • Chapter 105 brings us Hot Men Syndrome, the first Otome Game we see actually being played by a member of the target demographic. Turns out Sakura is an obsessive Save Scummer.
  • Mikoshiba plays another otome game in Chapter 123, and is shocked to get a "Happy-Bad Ending".
• Fireworks of Love: In the anime's final episode, Sakura and Nozaki (who has been staunchly oblivious to her feelings) watch a summer festival fireworks show together. Sakura attempts a Love Confession, but it is drowned out by a particularly big firework. As the show continues, Nozaki leans in close... to tell her that he also loves fireworks.
• First-Name Basis:
  • Reflecting their close friendship, Sakura and Seo are the only duo in the main cast that refer to each other by their first names.
  • When pretending to be a couple (for manga material) at a cafe, Nozaki and Sakura trial calling each other Umetarou-kun and Chiyo-chan. Nozaki doesn't find much impact in this and suggests calling each other the English translations of their names (aka Plum and Cherry). Sakura briefly agrees to it, much to Mikoshiba's annoyance.
  • Mayu likes older people and so refers to characters older than him by their first names (except for Wakamatsu to show his respect as fellow sports club members), letting readers hear the rare first name exchanges of characters who are almost strictly on a Last-Name Basis like "Mikoto-san" (Mikoshiba). In return, characters refer to him by his first name to avoid confusing him with Nozaki.
• Flashback Within a Flashback: Chapter 48 takes place before the beginning of the series, and in that chapter, Sakura also recalls her first meeting with Nozaki about a year before.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Nozaki's first meeting with Sakura actually inspired Mamiko's physical appearance (and made Sakura fall for him), but he doesn't remember this because he was so exhausted that day that his memories of it are fuzzy.
• Fortune Teller: Parodied in two omakes for Volume 8. Sakura tells Wakamatsu his fortune...with her own tarot deck that seems to just have Nozaki on all of the cards. Kashima and Seo also use tarot cards...that apparently has Wakamatsu and Hori on some of them and sounds a lot more like they're using it to play Yu-Gi-Oh! or something.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Used as the basis for a joke in Chapter 18, when Miyako sketches a page in which two characters switch bodies after colliding with each other. The punchline is that the tanuki following them also collided and switched bodies... but the others point out since the tanuki look alike, no one can really tell.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Some of the blink-and-you'll-miss-it scenes also seem to double as foreshadowing.
  • In the opening sequence when Nozaki lifts Sakura, she has only one ribbon, hinting at the chapter on their Forgotten First Meeting. Also, as that scene was right after a scene with Suzuki and Mamiko featured on Monthly Girls' Romance, it also hints at the origin of Mamiko's design. Strangely this is never addressed in the anime itself, as it only briefly adapted that chapter and left out ones related to that certain point.
  • Also in the opening when Hori is first shown you can see his briefs beta marking in the background.
  • In the tanuki-filled Idiosyncratic Wipe of Episode 5, one of the tanuki is actually a costumed Nozaki, which is from a chapter that was adapted into Episode 9.
  • In Episode 4, Nozaki and Mikoshiba were apparently drinking wine. The label was only given a brief shoot, which reads "kodomowine"—i.e. "children's wine," or grape juice.
  • In the latter half of Episode 11 when the boys arm-wrestle, an Idiosyncratic Wipe of Hori arm-wrestling Mikoshiba (with Wakamatsu cheering them on) is used.
• The Friends Who Never Hang:
  • It took 62 chapters for Hori and Seo to actually be seen having a conversation; Seo doesn't even explicitly meet Hori until Chapter 47 when he walks in on her and Kashima's pillow fight, while Hori only first briefly sees her in an omake from Chapter 38's events when Seo calls out to Kashima while she's hanging out with Hori.
  • Similarly, Wakamatsu's first sighting of Kashima was during Chapter 38, and their first true meeting wasn't until Chapter 45.
  • In Chapter 140, Seo invited Sakura and Waka to one of her concerts. Nozaki is hurt and confused why he didn't get an invite... at which point narrative captions pop up and remind the reader that, from Seo's perspective, Nozaki is just some tall guy who isn't in her class.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: Enforced by Nozaki In-Universe. He can't have characters smoke or drink in his manga... so instead, they've got chocolate cigarettes and get drunk on juice.
• Funny Background Event: In Chapter 89, Sakura suggests swapping various items with Nozaki for shoujo manga material, including his tie. For the rest of their study session, the two are in fact seen wearing each other's bow/ tie.
• Gag Series: Nozaki-kun very much puts the humor first. Most of the character interactions and events are about setting up for a joke at the end.
• Geeky Turn-On:
  • A variant occurs when Nozaki raises a "doki"^note the Japanese onomatopoeia for a heartbeat sign when Sakura points out a character inconsistency in his manga.
  • Nozaki tends to fawn over Miyamae for being a competent editor, to the point of making Sakura jealous.
  • Sakura tries to think of ways to appeal to Nozaki more and decides to learn from Miyamae who is Nozaki's "type" because of his work competency. She concludes that she should work hard with her inking (prompting Mikoshiba to comment that she's just back at square one).
• Gender Flip:
  • Being a parody of Shoujo manga, all the main cast except Sakura have personality traits taken from stock characters of the other sex.
  • To emphasize the point, Nozaki does this again when taking inspiration from the rest of them, since the point of his own manga is to illustrate the conventions of the genre.
  • Mayu Nozaki was originally envisioned as a girl◊.
• Girl's Night Out Episode: Chapter 82 has Seo host a sleepover for Kashima (who is at her first girls' night) and Sakura. Ryousuke and the boys at Nozaki's occasionally appear but the focus is mostly on the girls' going through typical sleepover cliches (and defying them).
  • Another one, with the same cast, takes place in Chapter 147. This time, the girls make a deliberate point to invite Ryousuke, since they just found out he got a girlfriend and a girl's night out is the best way to get him to talk about her. Once Seo brings up the plan, she and Sakura briefly reminisce about how un-girl's night out-y their previous one went.
• The Glasses Gotta Go: Discussed in Chapter 42 as one of the common shoujo manga cliches, when both Nozaki notices that both his manga and another manga have girls who become prettier after taking off her glasses.
• Good News, Bad News: In Chapter 102, Seo is trying to figure out how to reveal to Wakamatsu that she's Lorelei. She asked him if he would like a big secret revealed to him, and he said he'd prefer to hear both good and bad news at the same time. In the next panel (talking to Nozaki and Sakura, not Waka), Seo's holding two signs: "Lorelei was me" and "Taguchi-sensei's getting married!!", which has nothing to do with either of them. When Sakura and Nozaki point this out, Seo switches the one about Taguchi for one relevant to Waka: "Your shoelaces are broken". They're shocked that the one about the marriage was supposed to be the bad news, and wonder if Taguchi-sensei is okay.
• Gratuitous Animal Sidekick: In-Universe this is enforced by Maeno to exaggerated degrees — he loves tanuki and will have Miyako insert them into the plot, as sidekicks/animal companions or otherwise.
• Guilt by Association: Maeno would constantly take credit for Nozaki's ideas for his manga, often seconds before Nozaki was about to bring it up. He was so annoying about it that Nozaki would refuse to use those ideas out of spite.
  Maeno (flashback): I just love the new character! Oh man, aren't you glad I came up with that idea?
  Nozaki (present): After that, I made sure the character never appeared again. I just couldn't love her.
• Guilty Pleasure: In Chapter 77, a girl in Sakura's class brought in shoujo manga, so two girls are reading it. Two boys are also shown reading it while clearly thinking it's ridiculous and illogical, and then two panels later have gotten into it to the point that they're crying and sobbing while having gotten up to the 6th volume.

H-N

• Hands in Pockets: In-universe. Nozaki mentions in Chapter 24 that due to his lack of skills at drawing backgrounds and perspective, a lot of his early work (one-shots and contest entries and so on) used as few backgrounds as possible and covered this with close-ups and manga effects. Storylines are also designed to minimize the need to draw backgrounds. He also brags about his various ways of making his characters sit in positions that don't require drawing their shoes, which Miyamae scoffs at.
• Hand Wave: Nozaki, like other authors, uses them In-Universe.
  • In Episode 6, he notices Mamiko and Suzuki don't seem to study at all. So he creates a little skit talking about how Mamiko magically improved her grades by some "magical" reference book.
  • In Episode 8/Chapter 36, he handwaves his messed up perspectives by saying characters are standing on Scully Boxes. When asked why anyone would bring Scully Boxes to school, he further handwaves this by claiming boxes are popular In-Universe.
• Hate Sink: Maeno's entire schtick is being as horrible as a manga editor can be. He's a lazy, incompetent, narcissistic asshole, whose only good point is his looks. In-Universe, he's outright hated by all the mangaka he's ever handled, plus fellow editor Miyamae. Worse, he's totally oblivious to all this and thinks they all like him. His actions are enough to basically bring out "Fuck you Maeno" reactions from all he annoys.
• His Own Worst Enemy:
  • It's not only because of Nozaki's boneheadedness that his prospective romantic relationship with Sakura doesn't take off (as Sakura wants). Sakura's own biggest pitfall lies in how little it takes for her to be satisfied with her interactions with Nozaki. Any contact she has with him turns her into a Smitten Teenage Girl, becoming so giddy that whatever plan she had, if any, goes right into the pit. She's happy enough as it is until she realizes that she's back at the starting line.
  • It's shown that Seo deeply cares about Wakamatsu, but her caustic personality and Loving Bully tendencies keep him at bay enough for neither of them to realize each other's intentions towards one another. Seo thinks that she's a loving girlfriend, while Wakamatsu thinks that he's the lightning rod that keeps Seo from bullying other people. It's so bad that when Seo confesses that she's Lorelei, Wakamatsu just doesn't believe her.
  • And just to complete the relationship trifecta, there's Kashima, whose biggest goal in life is to make herself into Hori-senpai's favorite, most beloved person... a goal she had achieved within days, if not moments, of meeting him, but which she doesn't realize because she keeps insisting on skipping club practice to goof off, thus meaning that most of the time the two of them are together it's because Hori is forcefully dragging her back to the club room or disciplining her, and she doesn't hear the way he constantly praises her when she isn't present and causing problems.
• Homoerotic Subtext
  • While playing a Dating Sim, Nozaki and Mikoshiba begin to wonder if the Bromantic Foil actually has feelings for the protagonist. While the Bromantic Foil is a pretty common character archetype, in real life his one-minded dedication to the protagonist's happiness might seem a little suspect. So Nozaki and Mikoshiba decide to make a Fix Fic where he finally gets a girlfriend of his own so he's not spending all of high school helping out a friend at the cost of himself. They look through the list of girls in the Dating Sim, but once again realize that the only character that makes sense for him as a love interest is the protagonist.
  • Nozaki basically worships the ground Ken walks on because he's so thrilled to have a competent editor. In the process, he's more anxious around him and willing to please than he would be for his girlfriend, if he had one. Sakura is baffled, especially since Ken clearly dislikes him.
• Hopeless with Tech: The reason why Let's Fall In Love is still drawn by hand with stick-on screentones.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Nozaki and Sakura are the tallest and shortest members of the cast, respectively. Specifically, they're one foot and a half apart in height; Nozaki clocks in at 190cm (about 6'3"), nearly impossibly tall for a Japanese person, while Sakura is at 145cm (about 4'9"), at the low end of Japanese normalcy. It's to the point that when Hori tries to take a photo of them together for manga background references, while Nozaki's face is visible, all he can see of Sakura is the top of her head. He then switches places with Nozaki because his height is more Sakura-friendly.
  Hori: Sakura disappeared.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • Seo tells Nozaki that she's sensitive to others, and knows how to read a situation. She says that, while doing things that annoy others, such as stepping in front of a camera as it takes a picture, walking on a sign being painted, and walking in-between a guy handing a love letter to a girl, ruining the moment for them.
  • Sakura is asked by the art club president in Episode 7 to ask Mikoshiba to pose for their club the next day. He absolutely refuses to when she asks. However, when a different girl in the club asks moments later, he does his Bishie Sparkle scene and agrees to it, and then immediately regrets the decision. He asks Sakura for help in turning down the request, but she refuses after the way he treated her when she asked.
  • In Chapter 57, Mikoshiba tells Sakura about his problem with a girl desperate to go out with him. Both come up with the idea that Mikoshiba should just ask someone to pretend to be his girlfriend... but they never say it to each other because they realize that the flow of the conversation is obviously going to lead to Mikoshiba asking Sakura to do it, which neither person wants because Sakura admits that even as a facade she couldn't pretend to like someone else than Nozaki, and Mikoshiba doesn't see Sakura as anything more than a little-sister figure. As a result, both just stay in awkward silence — and then get offended at the other person for not asking.
  • Despite being irritated by how Oblivious to Love Nozaki is, Sakura herself completely misses the implications when Nozaki mentions he would be upset if she started acting cold to him until several hours later.
  • In Chapter 69, Nozaki's comments on the newcomer awards have him panning the author that the main hero's only trait is that he's the most handsome guy in school, and that the story is just an ordinary high school manga without any special twists, both of which apply just as well to Let's Fall in Love! ♡. Ken is dumbfounded.
  • In Chapter 70, Sakura conspires to prevent Nozaki from shining in basketball, to avoid a sudden surge in his popularity. Hori considers this very narrow-minded of her, but when Mikoshiba asks what he thought of Nozaki's playing last year, Hori can't answer because he was too focused on Kashima's playing.
  • Nozaki was once assigned as a judge for rookie mangakas. His comments criticize the entry for the lack of original story and characters, despite the fact that his own work lacks originality or any well-developed characters as well.
  • In Chapter 111, Hori chides Sakura for her lack of "sense of crime prevention" because she recklessly follows Nozaki to his house after failing to confess to him. This comes immediately after he admits that he first came over to Nozaki's house after the latter asked for help in drawing background, before even meeting Nozaki in person (or even knowing his name).
    Sakura: Senpai, you're the only one I don't want to hear that from. At least I knew my partner's name and face...
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Chapter and episode numbers start with "Issue," in the context of magazines.
• Idol Singer:
  • Parodied by Tsubaki as a celebration of the series' 100th chapter and 10th volume; an idol unit comprising the guys from the main cast plus Kashima and Mayu was formed for an upcoming cafe collaboration, with Tsubaki asking readers to vote for the center. Mikoshiba emerged as the winner.
  • Mikoshiba and Kashima sing a typical idol love-song at karaoke for their duet. And by duet we mean Mikoshiba doing all the singing while hiding in the background as Kashima lipsyncs and does the choreography.
• I'm Your Biggest Fan: Sakura fumbling a Love Confession and unintentionally turning it into an "I'm your fan!" confession is how the story begins. She isn't even aware at the time that Nozaki's a mangaka (which is actually something he's fairly open about, but no one believes it).
• Image Song:
  • Songs sung by the main male characters (and Suzuki) were released along with the anime volumes as bonuses. The ending song is also essentially Sakura's image song as it's sung by her voice actress and has her sing her complaints out about the guy she likes.
  • In-Universe, character songs and other anime songs are otaku Mikoshiba's "speciality" in karaoke. Kashima insists on having him join her for a "duet" using one of these songs — which is basically just Mikoshiba singing while Kashima does all the spoken parts by the younger sister, with hilarious lines including "here comes a skirt flip" and "Onii-chan you pervert".
• Imaginary Love Triangle: Seo's brother Ryousuke has a crush on Miyako, but he thinks Nozaki is her boyfriend.
• Imagine Spot: Frequently we see the inner workings of the characters' minds as their imaginations run wild about perceived scenarios. Which are almost always proven wrong.
• Imagine Spotting: Rei Kashima's lively imagination seems to be projected for everyone to see in Chapter 99, to general embarrassment.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction:
  • Wakamatsu aggressively denies to Seo, Nozaki and Sakura that he's a tsundere (specifically for Seo). While doing so, he puts his hand on his hip while pointing with his other hand and afterward he stutters, "So i-it's not as if I like you or anything, Senpai!" The others snark that those are very stock tsundere traits.
  • Chapter 81 has Mikoshiba thinks happily to himself that Wakamatsu's "...eyes full of respect" makes him feel like he can't lie to him. Then in the next panel, Wakamatsu is embarrassed to ask about whose (Mikoshiba's) bunch of games and figurines in a backroom are, and Mikoshiba lies that they're Mayu's stuff without missing a beat.
• Improvised Weapon: Hori will do anything to stop Kashima from being stupid. In Episode 8 alone, he throws his bag and a whiteboard.
• Indirect Kiss:
  • In one chapter Sakura jokingly offers Nozaki a bite from her candied apple, at that point having given up expecting anything romantic from him. Nozaki, being Nozaki, nonchalantly takes a bite. Cue Sakura going redder than the apple. The fanbook and a conversation with Hori later in the manga states that she ended up keeping that apple.
  • Watching Seo try Wakamatsu's ice-cream and offer him hers (even though he states he doesn't like sharing) has Hori think of Wakamatsu's Let's Fall In Love counterpart worrying about an indirect kiss by sharing ice-creams. Then he envisions Seo's counterpart trying to go after other people's ice-creams when she asks to try his, leading him to consult Nozaki because of this topic (to Wakamatsu's confusion).
• Informed Attractiveness: In universe. In Chapter 49, we see an excerpt from one of Miyako's manga where the two most beautiful girls in school have a face-off, while a legion of extras tremble before their impossibly good looks. Unfortunately, said background characters were all drawn by Nozaki, who can only draw girls with Generic Shoujo Heroine Face. Miyako remarks that the nameless background characters look more like heroines than the heroines.
• Innocent Innuendo:
  • Nozaki describes his relationship with Sakura and Mikoshiba as "We spend our time in my apartment, doing this and that". He meant drawing manga.
  • Sakura tries to explain Nozaki and Hori's friendship to Kashima as vaguely as possible (to avoid revealing that Nozaki writes the drama club scripts in exchange for Hori drawing his backgrounds), and describes it to be Nozaki "repaying [Hori] with his body". Kashima is understandably unsettled.
• Internal Reveal:
  • Seo finally decides to reveal to Wakamatsu she is Lorelei in Chapter 102. Unfortunately, Wakamatsu doesn't believe her. It takes until Chapter 124 for him to be convinced of the truth.
  • Chapter 121 has Hori learn that Mikoshiba is the assistant in charge of drawing flowers. An omake set right after the chapter shows Mikoshiba learning Hori is the backgrounds assistant.
  • In Chapter 134, Ryousuke finally learns about Miyako's job as a mangaka and her relationship with Nozaki and Miyamae. And right afterwards, HE confesses something to HER: that he loves her.
• In Vino Veritas: While Hori is buzzed (off of a partly alcoholic cake, it's a long story), he starts praising Kashima and tells her that he'd like to do activities in club with her more often. To everyone's shock, no less.
• Irony: A frequently used tool for setting up gags in this series. There are also a couple of examples that are associated with different character relationships.
  • Sakura is aggressive about anything tangentially related to getting close to Nozaki, like spending time together. Getting actually close to him? Not quite. Whenever she tries, Nozaki has already gone into the deep end of a logical offshoot from what she initially intended. As the saying goes, she misses the water even after falling from the boat.
  • Wakamatsu has a crush on the "Lorelei of the Choir Club"' merely by virtue of her singing, while also feeling terrorized and picked on by Seo, and he has yet to realize they are one and the same.
  • A more subtle example that actually hasn't been directly pointed out yet in-series is the fact that Hori quit acting because after meeting Kashima he saw her as perfect lead material. However, it was seeing his acting that got her to even go to Roman Academy in the first place.
  • For a team that writes about romance/relationship manga, Nozaki and his team, and by extension most of the cast, suck at romance and relationships so much that it provides for the vast majority of gags in the story.
  • Despite how fervently Nozaki works on his manga, Chapter 58 has the staff of the shoujo magazine he's at base a special issue theme after his manga since it's getting the color pages for the upcoming issue... which they decide to be a theme of orthodoxy since they can't point anything else out about his manga. Nozaki is, of course, ironically amused and thinks they probably could have put more thought into the upcoming issue's theme when Ken meets with him and informs him of it.
  • Triple-fold for Sakura. Even though Sakura is by far the Girly Girl of the series, whenever there's a circumstance where Nozaki has to get a girl's opinion, he'll pick himself first, then another character (usually Mikorin), and when that's exhausted he'll then remember that Sakura is a girl. This is also despite the fact that in Nozaki's manga, the main character is partially based on her, and to add insult to injury, she's in the intended demographic for said manga.
• It Runs in the Family: In addition to their good manga-drawing skills, the two Nozaki brothers also appear to have the same poor logic when following manga advice. This is evident when they try to follow Miyako's advice on cutting off the conversation on the bottom corner of the left page^note remember that Japanese books are read right to left to draw readers in, and they both choose to cut off mid-word. Miyako snarks that reading Nozaki's manga do this correctly and then switching to Mayu's failed attempt at this makes it feel like Nozaki's version was her imagination.
• Japanese Delinquents: Nozaki and Mikoshiba decide to research a delinquent character by acting out how they think delinquents act. They end up with an odd mix of exaggeration (skipping classes becoming simple truancy) and sanitising as neither wants to do anything genuinely bad.
• Japanese School Club:
  • Although not the focus of the story, many characters are still members: Sakura is from the art club, Seo the choir club, Wakamatsu the boys' basketball club, and Kashima and Hori the drama club. Mayu is captain of his school's judo club (it's also the only thing he'll put effort towards). Chapters often have A Day in the Limelight on these clubs, for example Nozaki helping the art club and the basketball club trying to find ways to handle Seo.
  • Nozaki used to be captain of the basketball club in middle school, which Wakamatsu was also a part of.
• Karaoke Box: Discussed and invoked in Chapter 98, when Sakura, Hori, and Nozaki go to one for reference since Nozaki wants to incorporate such a plotline in his manga; Nozaki discusses how the trope is used. They run into Mikoshiba and Kashima, and the five of them wind up sharing a room.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!":
  • Miyamae is the only person who Nozaki looks up to, and the only person who makes Nozaki hang on to his every word even for things not related to his manga. Some of it can be attributed to Miyamae actually being a competent editor (unlike Maeno) but Nozaki's respect goes far beyond the level one would normally have for their superior.
  • Despite her teasing of his height, whenever Hori's acting on stage the only thing Kashima wants to do is sit and watch him. In fact, it's the only reason why she chose their high school — she was on a tour through the school and happened to see him rehearsing.
• Last Episode, New Character: In the anime, Mayu Nozaki has a cameo in the last episode.
• Last-Name Basis:
  • The main characters in this series go by their last names almost exclusively to the point that it's sometimes hard to remember what their first names are! Sakura is possibly the only exception, as both Seo and Kashima call her Chiyo. The only characters that are frequently called by their first names are Nozaki's editor Ken Miyamae, as Nozaki calls him Ken-san, and the main characters' siblings (Nozaki's brother Mayu and sister Yumeko, Sakura's brother Towa, Seo's brother Ryousuke, and Kashima's sister Rei) in order to differentiate them from their family members.
  • The English dub of the anime has the majority of the cast called by their last names, much like the original Japanese. Strangely, this includes Yuzuki being called Seo by her close friends, including Sakura. Even more strangely, this is fully averted with Sakura who gets called Chiyo by everyone, guys included.
• Lightning Glare: Its use is conversed in Chapter 2. Japan's anti-duelling laws criminalize the mere issuance or acceptance of duel challenges, and the government is keen to use this clause to combat teen crime. Since Nozaki writes for the Shōjo Demographic, any explicit challenges are, as a result, out of the question. Hence, if scenes involving Japanese Delinquents require a duel challenge, they can only deliver it non-verbally, in this way.
• Like Brother and Sister: Mikoshiba and Sakura are good friends, but Sakura refuses to offer to fake-date him because she only has eyes for Nozaki, while he refuses to ask her because he only sees her as a little sister.
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • The premise of the series is Nozaki's double-life as a high school student and manga author as well as his fellow classmates helping him out, but a couple of characters are unaware of one/both these facts to various degrees and the manga circle have mixed approaches to keeping their jobs a secret (or not).
    • Seo and Kashima don't know that Nozaki is a mangaka and the other characters are his assistants. Chapter 40/Episode 11 explains that Hori specifically doesn't want Kashima to know about it as she might want to help out, and inadvertently attract a huge group of followers into Nozaki's apartment. For his part, Nozaki thinks his friend is overreacting but respects his decision.
    • Mikoshiba and Hori are not aware that the other is Nozaki's assistant. Hori would rather not let Mikoshiba find out as he thinks he would talk about his work with Kashima otherwise, leading to the ridiculous hypothetical scenario Hori has of Kashima and her followers inconveniencing Nozaki. Thanks to One Dialogue, Two Conversations, Hori finally finds out that Mikoshiba is the flowers assistant in Chapter 121.
    • Mikoshiba and Wakamatsu do not know about each other being assistants until Chapter 72 when Mikoshiba walks in on him and Nozaki doing their work. Mikoshiba later confesses in the chapter that he hides the job because he finds it embarrassing, leading Wakamatsu to get paranoid and think the same. Nozaki is horrified when he overhears from Seo about Wakamatsu's secret "embarrassing part-time job".
  • Unlike the other main characters, Wakamatsu and Hori are unaware that Lorelei is actually Seo. It's not an issue with Hori since he hardly interacts with her, however some of the humour behind Wakamatsu and Seo's relationship is based on the fact that the former doesn't have a clue that the troubling senpai he hangs out with so often is his crush (much to Nozaki's horror).
• Long-Runner Tech Marches On: Discussed in Chapter 61. When Nozaki explains why he's considering a change in the protagonists' cell phone model to be Serious Business, he quotes a 20-year-old Long Runner where the heroine started with a pager, switched to a PHS-style cell phone in the middle, and moved on to the smartphone and chats on LINE.
• Longing Look:
  • Subverted; Nozaki tells Sakura that he's always been watching her... because he admires her artistic technique.
  • Wakamatsu's teammates are convinced that he's fallen for Seo when he starts staring at her intently. He was actually just trying to see if she had any good points at all.
  • In Chapter 132 plays it straight with two instances of Nozaki being unexpectedly looking surprised from looking at Sakura while she's happily interacting with him, and parodies it when Kashima tries to provide a similar effect to Hori by turning around to him to hand him papers - it doesn't really work very well and he just says as much. Kashima then teases him about being sleepy since he hasn't taken the papers yet, which then renders him still and silent in surprise at that. Then Kashima starts getting cross at him since she's getting tired holding the papers out and Hori is very clearly into this.
• Loophole Abuse: In Episode 7, while Mikoshiba is posing for Sakura and the art club, Nozaki joins in some time later. Everyone in the club has asked him to do a pose, and Sakura tells Nozaki he can ask for one as well. Nozaki, being Literal-Minded, uses that to have Mikoshiba pose a certain way, then has every other girl in the club pose around him as well, all so the former could do the pose request he wanted. Of course, Sakura didn't specifically mention only having Mikoshiba pose either...
• Lost in Translation: A few language-based jokes in the manga suffer this but the Roselia Scanlations team usually make up for it.
  • According to a translation note, the scanlation of Chapter 55 barely averted this for an important pun, only resolved by using an ambigram. Wakamatsu's girl counterpart in Nozaki's manga notices in the mirror she has スキだ (suki da) written on her forehead - she interprets it as "I love you" which is its usual meaning, but it's implied here that Seo's guy counterpart (the likely culprit) meant "you're open/defenceless" due to his unusual choice of writing style.^note The suki meaning "love" is usually written in hiragana (すき)　or with its kanji (好き); here it's written in　katakana instead which implies Guy!Seo meant the other definition but forgot how to write its kanji. The scanlation team's alternative managed to create a similar effect - the amibigram written on the girl's head says "love u" but can also be read as "idiot" upside down. Played straight by Yen Press' translation, where the words "I like you" is used.
  • In Chapter 59, Nozaki berates Mikoshiba, who's been texting Mayumayu (Mayu, unbeknownst to him) with the username Mamiko, for typing completely in hiragana (the most common and simplest Japanese syllabary) since he thinks it's too cutesy for Mamiko the high school girl. Nozaki says to start texting completely in katakana (less common syllabary) to show their intellect, and Mikoshiba remarks that it's basically a telegram since they used to be written fully in katakana in Japan. The English scanlation gives a decent substitute: Nozaki scolds Mikoshiba for making "cute" misspellings and demands that he starts texting in Shakespearean, and the latter says it's basically a couplet.
  • In Chapter 63 a drunk Miyako attempts to write Ryousuke's name in kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese and the most difficult syllabary to remember/write) but then scribbles it out and writes it simply in hiragana, and Ryousuke lampshades that she doesn't know how to write the kanji. The various syllabary in Japan again is difficult to explain to those who don't know the language so the English scanlation has Miyako misspelling his name altogether, much to Ryousuke's chagrin.
  • In Chapter 148, Seo performs Polnareff's "Your underwear is showing" handsigns, with the same translation issues. Cash Money Chiyo managed to convey the message as "Pan" (onomatopoeia for clapping) "cheese" (peace sign like posing for a picture) "Gimme" (touching hands with someone else) "a look" (looking around).
• Love Chart:
  • Nozaki sometimes draws out relationship charts to plot out his manga. He even does this when Wakamatsu tells him about Seo and her handsome "boyfriend" (aka Kashima), by setting up a Love Triangle between them and a fictional girl, then expanding it to a larger relationship chart where Seo hardly even fits into it as a supporting character (which Wakamatsu calls him out on).
  • Confused by the interactions between Seo, her "boyfriend" Kashima, Sakura and Mikoshiba, Wakamatsu updates Nozaki's drawing of the first two to include a relationship chart between all four of them. From this, Nozaki finally understands that Wakamatsu has been talking about Kashima this whole time.
  • The cover page of Chapter 72 is a chart showing Nozaki's assistants (Sakura, Hori, Wakamatsu, and Mikoshiba) and whether or not they know the other is also a manga assistant. At this point, Sakura knows about everyone, and Hori and Wakamatsu know about each other, but Mikoshiba doesn't know that Hori and Waka are assistants, and they don't know he's one as well. This sets up the premise of Chapter 72, which has Mikoshiba and Wakamatsu finally finding out about each other.
  • The series eventually developed an official relationship chart that includes both the main cast and the supporting cast, which can be seen on the official website and occasionally shows up as manga volume extras.
• Love Dodecahedron:
  • In Chapter 45, Wakamatsu starts to think that Kashima is dating not only Seo but also Sakura. This leads him to draw a love triangle involving the three of them (with Mikoshiba also on the side with "Friend?" written for him and Kashima). The misunderstanding is cleared when Nozaki finally realizes the situation and explains who Kashima actually is.
  • Due to some misunderstandings and misleading conversations from all sides, Ryousuke believes for most of Chapter 91 that there is a love rectangle of sorts between Miyako, Nozaki, Maeno and Miyamae. (He misinterprets their current/former work relationships as anything but professional.) He later becomes worried that he will be thrown into the mix and said rectangle will become a love pentagon. This mess (as well as the original misunderstanding about her and Nozaki) is cleared up when Miyako confirms that everything is purely work-related.
• Love Epiphany: After five years and 87 chapters, Sakura is no longer the only character aware of having romantic feelings. In Chapter 87, after Hori helps Kashima put on a few costume variations and wigs for fun, a nameless classmate voices to Hori his observation that Kashima must be Hori's 'type'. A week later, looking both rather embarrassed and haggard, Hori confides in Nozaki that it's probably true.
• Love Flowers:
  • Mikoshiba's specialty. He hand draws them, but he's terrible at drawing anything else.
  • They also pop up in the anime around Mikoshiba and Kashima during their flirty moments.
• Loves My Alter Ego: Many guys can't stand Seo, but are in love with 'Lorelei' from the music club... who is Seo, or at least her singing voice; the chief victim of this is Nozaki's junior Wakamatsu. In an inversion, Seo doesn't particularly seem to care either way, and if anything enjoys destroying people's fantasies by revealing who she is.
• Lower-Deck Episode: Two special chapters are dedicated to Yumeko Nozaki and Towa Sakura respectively, who are yet to make an appearance in the main story. Both stories have them deal with their older siblings (Yumeko with Nozaki's manga career which she's in denial about, and Towa with Sakura's crush on Nozaki whom he eventually meets).
• Magic Skirt: While the series has its share of underwear related jokes (for both the boys and girls), the audience is never exposed to any panty shots of the girls. The most blatant example of this is when Seo walks down the hallway in a handstand and her skirt rigidly defies gravity. The magic skirt still even applies to Kashima despite the fact her character profile shows she wears Modesty Shorts (and Hori casually lifts her skirt up to confirm this in Chapter 65).
• Manga Effects: Effects used in manga are discussed and several characters work with them, naturally.
  • Wakamatsu's job is to apply screentones. He's very good at cutting and sticking them but needs Nozaki to choose for him which ones to use. One chapter is dedicated to Wakamatsu remembering which screentone is which (leading him to call a whole bunch of violent screentones "Seo-senpai") and finding the right knife.
  • While Wakamatsu's screentone debut chapter shows he's skilled, Hori and Sakura are shown to be rather bad at it (Sakura struggles to stick to the lines, Hori cuts so strongly the paper gets cut too). In the same story, the trio also choose screentones without Nozaki's help. The effects and the scenes end up hilariously mismatched.
  • Mikorin's job is to draw those flowers and other effects with small detail to them. In one example he draws so many flowers in Suzuki's scenes that it unintentionally gives the impression that the aforementioned male protagonist is obnoxious.
  • Trying to demonstrate that his manga is cooler than playing basketball, Nozaki brags to Wakamatsu about being now able to draw beta flashes. Wakamatsu is unconvinced.
  • In an omake, Nozaki attempts to draw an "adult" manga based off Miyamae and a fictional coworker in love with him, and ends up drawing him with sparkly Big Anime Eyes in order to differentiate the character from the model. Miyako is crept out and orders him to change the eyes back.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy:
  • The Wakamatsu/Seo couple have this dynamic, as Wakamatsu is a sensitive guy who believes in Shoujo Genre manga while Seo is a brash lad-ette that regularly throws basketballs in his face while they're playing.
  • Although not a couple, Mikoshiba also has this sort of relationship with his best friend Kashima. Mikoshiba is a Shrinking Violet Tsundere whom Nozaki uses as a model for his manga's heroine, while Kashima is an extremely suave Chick Magnet who is nicknamed the "Prince".
• Method Acting: To help Kashima get into the mindset of a prince who suffering from an unrequited love, Nozaki orders her to stay away from Hori. It naturally works since her and Hori are quickly rendered despondent. invoked
• Misaimed Fandom: In-Universe example from Nozaki with his manga. In Chapter 131, he's annoyed that Seo chickens out when talking to Wakamatsu and potentially deepening their relationship, by singing to him and putting him to sleep. He decides to similarly characterize the character he based on her (Oze) as a coward who is just as humorously evasive around his Love Interest. He does this in hopes of making his audience (especially those who find Oze cool) put off by the character. To his ambivalence, Miyamae tells him that they've come in first in the results on a survey...with lots of people praising Oze as being very cute. invoked
  Nozaki: DAMN IT!...HURRAY!!!
• Mistaken for Gay:
  • Mikoshiba when he introduces the Bifauxnen Kashima as the "School Prince". Sakura naturally assumes the "School Prince" is a boy before she actually sees Kashima and she immediately jumps to the conclusion that Mikoshiba is dating him. A variant since Sakura is much more concerned about his "faithfulness" to Suzuki (who's a fictional character) than him being gay itself.
  • At one point Sakura thinks Wakamatsu is gay because Nozaki told her he's in love with someone resembling a guy character from his manga (said guy character is based on Seo).
  • A flashback of Nozaki using Valentine's Day as research for his manga shows Wakamatsu helping him buy chocolates. Nozaki gives him some as thanks and Wakamatsu shows them to his friends - and said friends wonder if they're expensive ones and filled with Nozaki's "love".
  • Chapter 76 has Mikoshiba, fearful of being mostly alone around girls, drag Mayu to a mixer since his friends won't let him bring Kashima and Sakura won't let him bring Nozaki. In the mixer Mayu ends up hounding girls for their boyfriends' numbers^note When he finds out they're also into judo and wants to challenge them. and "protects" shy Mikoshiba from being pulled away by two girls by declaring that "You can't take him. He's mine."^note Following his older brother's shoujo-based advice, where the cliche has the guy do that to protect a girl from would-be harassers.
  • In Chapter 91 Ryousuke mistakes the work relationships in Miyako's manga circle for a Love Dodecahedron, leading him to believe Nozaki is not only Miyako's boyfriend but also Miyamae's boyfriend and Maeno's ex-boyfriend.
  • Seo being gone on a trip makes Wakamatsu such a bundle of love and energy that he helps everyone he can which quickly leads to many girls getting attracted to him, with one even taking advantage of this to trick him by claiming she literally needs a boyfriend or she'll die. Hori decides to solve this by telling Wakamatsu to stop treating girls nicely. This creates new rumors about some guy who treats all the guys incredibly nicely for reasons that are speculated on...
• Mistaken for Pedophile: When Seo first appears, she mistakes Nozaki as a paedophile due to the latter's recent closeness with the tiny Sakura. Jokes of Nozaki being a lolicon or Sakura looking like a child next to him occasionally pop up afterward.
• Mistaken for Profound: When Wakamatsu asks Mikoshiba for love advice, he thinks Mikoshiba's answer is so high level an inexperienced guy like him couldn't understand. Mikoshiba was talking about Dating Sim games.
• Mistaken for Prostitute: In a bit of Chapter 26 that was animated as a part of Episode 9, Out-of-Context Eavesdropping about Miyako asking Maeno on the phone to "call again at night" made her colleagues wonder if she's living "a degenerate lifestyle" that involves "transactions at night."
• Mistaken for Romance:
  • The girls in the art club think Nozaki is Sakura's boyfriend.
  • Miyako's college friends think Nozaki is her boyfriend (and that he's two-timing her with Sakura).
  • Wakamatsu initially thinks that Kashima is Seo's boyfriend. Hilarity Ensues when he goes on a swimsuit shopping trip with the girls because he believes he's not only guy in the group.
  • Ryousuke is among the crowd that thinks Miyako is dating Nozaki, but also manages to mistake Maeno for another boyfriend and the three to be in a true love triangle (by virtue of mistaking Nozaki's relationship with Maeno as another ex-relationship).
  • Miyako's friend Haru sees her and Mikoshiba together at a restaurant and assumes they're dating or are on the verge of starting a relationship. Hilarity Ensues when the two of them start talking about fetishes (they were discussing ideas for Miyako's manga work).
• Mistaken for Subculture: Kashima believes Hori secretly wants to be a "princess" after finding out he reads shoujo manga and is comfortable reading female lines. Being such a good friend, she tries to make him happy by giving him her skirt to wear home, buying a well-coordinated outfit for him, and trying to first princess-carry, then horse him to the nurse's office. He mostly assumes she's fucking with him.
• Mistaken Identity: Sakura's little brother Towa mistakes both Mikoshiba and Kashima as Nozaki due to his sister going on and on about Nozaki as if he were some kind of handsome celebrity. He also mistakes Nozaki for a male model (same as the other two), which is probably the most flattering accusation Nozaki has received from outside opinion.
• Mock Millionaire: In-Universe example: One of the characters in the "Secret Days" dating sim pretends to be a millionaire, but his father's company actually went bankrupt.
• Moment Killer: An omnipresent trope for this series; whenever there's a romantic or heartwarming moment between the characters, one of them will do or say something to ruin it.
• Mr. Exposition: Tomoda in Chapter 8/Episode 4 is supposed to be this. Due to an In-Universe case of Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading, he is seen by the cast as a Gay Option.
• Multiple Demographic Appeal: A common discussion among viewers of this series is "what exactly is this work's demographic?" It is Slice of Life written by an established Shoujo Genre author that makes fun of shoujo genre conventions, first published in an online magazine for the Seinen/Shōnen Demographic but later also reprinted in Shōjo Demographic anthologies... Obviously it appeals to readers of both sexes.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Ordinary moments are sometimes hyped up for comedic effect, such as whenever Hori beats up Kashima for attempting to skip rehearsals for the theater club.
• Muse Abuse: Played for laughs. Nozaki will occasionally blatantly base his characters on people around him and exploit situations for his manga. He'll also sometimes stage scenarios common in shoujo manga with the intent of basing the characters' reactions off of these scenarios. Of course, this manga being a Gag Series, it almost never plays out the way he intends or he ends up Comically Missing the Point. invoked
• My Eyes Are Up Here: Inverted in Chapter 68. Kashima tries to get Hori to notice her legs, but it doesn't work because Hori only ever looks at her face.
• Necktie Leash: The usual roles are gender-flipped with Hori frequently depicted as dragging Kashima around by her necktie. The fourth volume cover also features Seo doing so with Wakamatsu.
• No Loves Intersect: Misunderstandings aside, very few romantic rivalries occur between the main characters. Outside of their group, Nozaki and Seo have personality traits that are more likely to deter people rather than attract them, Hori, Wakamatsu, and Sakura aren't popular enough to have too many admirers, and while Mikoshiba and Kashima both have their fangirls, they aren't important enough to count as romance candidates. The closest to this happening is Wakamatsu mistaking Kashima as Seo's boyfriend, with the two girls only being friends and Wakamatsu not explicitly fighting Kashima for Seo's love. This is Enforced by Tsubaki herself; the official fanbook includes multiple rejected ideas for chapters, all of which were rejected at least in part because they introduced love polygons the mangaka didn't want to deal with.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: A manga Wakamatsu reads in Episode 10 in Nozaki's apartment has a woman doing a typical rich-lady laugh as he reads it for ideas on sabotaging the date with Seo.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: The school is stated by official materials to be lenient on uniform regulations and also has many acceptable variants. Most of the main cast has at least one thing about their chosen uniform that's different from the norm, but some background characters can be seen doing the same as well.
• Not a Date:
  • Seo has been mentioned to frequently go to family restaurants with Wakamatsu, and has invited him to the movies and an amusement park. Many of their classmates have also begun to suspect that there's something between them. Due to the ... strange dynamic of their relationship, though, neither of them consider these dates.
  • Nozaki and Miyako sometimes help each other brainstorm manga ideas in cafes, leading to Miyako's classmates assuming that they're dating each other.
  • Nozaki and Sakura go on one in Episode 7. At first it seems like a typical date, but Nozaki can't turn his brain off work mode, so when they see a movie, he sees it simply because he wants to see a building in said movie from multiple angles. And later they go clothes shopping, only for Nozaki to want the clothing for references in his work. They later go into a store to look at dolls and figures, only for him to buy a male character for references. Finally he invites her to his apartment, only to feed her, and only because he cooked too much food and didn't want it to go to waste.
• Notice This: Chapter 32 has Nozaki, Hori and Wakamatsu play an otome game. When they decide to play it on the easy difficulty, Nozaki and Hori are underwhelmed to find that the easy difficulty just turns the game into "hit the glowing button".
• Not What It Looks Like:
  • Mikoshiba forcefully volunteering to be Miyako's shirtless model. Nozaki and Sakura come to see them just as he's stripping and shouting, "Take a good look!".
  • Sakura and Hori act out Nozaki's script, and Mikoshiba comes just in time to hear the part where Hori's character shamelessly admits that he's in love with other girls than Sakura's character.
  • Nozaki imagines taking pictures at the beach and being mistaken for a peeping tom.
  • At the Ryokan Inn Nozaki asks Sakura to take reference photos of him in his yukata...including the lining. Cue Mikoshiba walking in just as Sakura is on the floor with the camera, pulling back Nozaki's yukata to see what's underneath.
  • Due to the misleading ways Miyako hides her career as a shoujo manga artist, Miyako's college friends (who are perhaps not the brightest) have many suspicions about her.
    • They assume that Miyako's odd behavior is because she has a boyfriend in highschool, namely Nozaki. The first time it comes up, one of her friends is convinced that they're going through a messy breakup with both of them being incredibly unfaithful while the tiny Sakura sits back watching with highly malicious entertainment at the drama. The reader knows that they're actually just talking about possible costumes for their characters.
    • They think she has an incredibly shady job because whenever they ask her what she actually does she just laughs, leaving them with the assumption that it's some dirty job performed at night.
    • When Ryousuke tries to check out what's going on, he thinks Miyako and Nozaki are talking about cosplay with Nozaki not being satisfied with anything, so at the end of the chapter he helpfully informs her that he would love to see her as a bunny girl.

O-R

• Oblivious to His Own Description: Nozaki asks Sakura if there's anybody she likes and she describes her unsuccessful confession to Nozaki himself without mentioning his name. His response? "What's so good about a guy like that?"
• Oblivious to Love: Virtually every single one of the main characters except maybe Sakura is oblivious to romance to varying degrees, and some of the humor is derived from this. What's more, it tends to only be in regards to their own relationships.
• Odd Friendship:
  • Nozaki and Mikoshiba. Sakura points out the two have very different personalities so it surprises her that they're friends. Nozaki admits he initially only took interest in Mikoshiba for character ideas.
  • Sakura and Seo, who have rather contrasting personalities. Nozaki assumes their friendship was as a result of an event in which they considered each other a Worthy Opponent after a fierce battle. However, they became friends solely because they sat near each other in previous classes.
• Old Shame: In-Universe. In Chapter 34, Nozaki complains about Wakamatsu's crushing over someone he has never seen ("Lorelei"). Wakamatsu then quotes old Shoujo Genre manga for such a setup, and Nozaki immediately points that's a Dead Horse Trope and Wakamatsu should live with the times. So when Wakamatsu points out Nozaki himself made such a set-up in the past...
  Nozaki: Guh, Dammit!
• One Degree of Separation: Nozaki's neighbor and fellow mangaka Miyako is college friends with Seo's brother Ryousuke. Nozaki remains oblivious to the fact that he's related to Seo and also knows her friends Sakura and Kashima (and Sakura in return is unaware that Ryousuke's familiar with Nozaki and Miyako).
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations:
  • A staple of the manga. Whenever onlookers happen to peek into the manga circle's conversations and behaviors, they're utterly unaware that they are discussing the manga and researching about it. However, since they're creating a romance manga, the onlookers usually think that the members of the circle are talking about their own love lives, finding huge logical gaps in what would be considered normal, or even decent, behavior. Out of context, from their conversations, the members of the circle can appear at best as two-timing players, and at worst, crazed sex addicts.
  • The story begins when Sakura tries confessing her love to Nozaki and he thinks she's just a fan of his work. The misunderstanding isn't cleared up until they've been at his house talking for awhile and only on her part. Of course, she makes it obvious that she had no idea he was a mangaka at all let alone knowing his pen name, but Nozaki has clearly stopped thinking about what she was trying to tell him before because all he thinks about is work.
  • Miyako's friends think Nozaki is her boyfriend, so they misconstrue every conversation the two have about manga into one about their relationship.
  • Hori discovers Mikoshiba's erotic manga collection at Nozaki's place and confronts him about it. Due to Hori's ambiguous wording, Mikoshiba thinks Hori's talking about Let's Fall In Love and assumes he's found out about his job as the flowers assistant. Hori realizes at one point that they're talking about different things but keeps the conversation going anyways.
• One Head Taller:
  • Wakamatsu (185cm) is about a head taller than Seo (163cm). Naturally, Wakamatsu is a basketball star.
  • With Nozaki and Sakura it comes to almost two heads — Nozaki is 190 cm (he also was a basketball club captain in junior high), and Sakura is only 145 cm, so she doesn't even reach his shoulder.
  • Reversed with Hori and Kashima — Hori stopped growing while still in junior high, resulting in Kashima being half a head taller than him.
• One-Gender School: Kashima's sister Rei goes to an all-girls' academy, which has both elementary and middle school sections, and has done so for all her school life. This leads her to have little experience with boys and also mistake all boy-girl interactions at her sister's co-ed school for romance.
• Only Six Faces:
  • In-Universe. Absent a model, Nozaki will default to Suzuki's face for his male characters (it's easy for him to draw).
  • Another In-Universe example. In Chapter 77, when Seo reads a shoujo manga, she can't differentiate the boys because they all have similar faces and hairstyles, differ only in hair color (sometimes) and parting bangs styles (sometimes).
• Operation: Jealousy: In order to get Kashima to understand the role of a prince suffering from unrequited love, Nozaki invokes this in Chapter 60 by asking her to imagine that he and Hori are dating. It works on Sakura, much to Nozaki's confusion.
• Ouija Board: Chapter 65 involves a game of Kokkuri-san, a Japanese version of it, between Sakura, Kashima, Hori and later Nozaki.
• Out-of-Context Eavesdropping:
  • Nozaki and Sakura are in a clothes store looking for clothes as references for Mamiko. A couple of shoppers come across them, assuming they're on a date and that Nozaki's looking for clothes as a gift to Sakura... then they overhear Nozaki asking if he can take photos of Sakura in a stereotypical Sailor Fuku, and conclude they're in a cosplay club. Made hilariously worse in the manga, as they conclude that Nozaki and Sakura belong to a fetish club.
  • Miyako's fellow college students are unaware she's a mangaka, so when one of them takes a look at Miyako's notes she thinks she's got a boyfriend. Later, she comes across Miyako, Nozaki and Sakura talking about their manga problems, and assumes it's a conversation about a break-up.
  • In Chapter 53, Miyako and Nozaki's manga discussions are overheard again, this time by Seo's older brother Ryousuke (who had unhelpfully heard about the rumours of Miyako's "high school boyfriend"^note ie. Nozaki), as he misunderstands Miyako's brainstorming ideas as cosplay proposals.
  • In Chapter 44, Ken's asked Nozaki to come up with a mascot for Let's Fall in Love! ♡ merchandise. Sakura, thinking this is along the lines of Maeno and his tanuki, asks what sort of animal Ken likes. Nozaki remembers him saying he likes salmon... which results in Sakura imagining Mamiko carrying a salmon everywhere she goes, and telling Nozaki "I tried thinking about it rationally, and I really don't think sleeping with a fish is a good idea." Sakura's classmates have no clue what the hell she's talking about. The conversation moves on a little, and the next line the classmates overhear from her is "I tried thinking about it rationally, and I really don't think it's right for fish to eat people."
  • Mikoshiba asks Miyako whether she prefers breasts or butts (for manga work). Haru tunes in just in time to hear Miyako telling this younger boy she prefers breasts. Similarly, she misunderstands when she hears Mikoshiba asking Miyako if she's okay with confinement (again for manga work), and is unsettled by how cheerfully Miyako agrees to it.
• Out Sick: In Chapter 20, Sequential Artist Nozaki falls ill on the day of his deadline, which leaves him bedridden. He asks his assistants Hori, Sakura, and Wakamatsu to write the dialogue and apply screentones, which results in so much Mood Dissonance that Nozaki decides on the following day that he should ask for an extension.
• Page-Turn Surprise: Discussed and parodied. After Miyako explains the concept to Sakura, Nozaki, despite having been using the trope correctly his entire career, suddenly becomes obsessed with working one into his next chapter, coming up with such inane ways to "surprise" the readers as having his heroine directly Break the Fourth Wall to tell them that there's a surprise on the next page, "revealing" things that are foundational to the premise of his manga, and arbitrarily cutting off random sentences to finish them on the following page.
• Pandering to the Base: In-Universe. Hori, Wakamatsu, Nozaki and Sakura all decide to do a novel relay for fun and the first two rounds suck thanks to Wakamatsu and Hori playing around. Sakura offers them a reward if they take it seriously and suddenly the story is about a very tall boy who is madly in love with a short little girl with cute ribbons. She isn't amused.
• Piggyback Cute: Ryousuke is once made to piggy-back the drunk Miyako home after accidentally letting her have one too many drinks. As one would expect from the series, potential for this to be romantic ends up getting subverted when the drunk Ryousuke worries about touching her and decides to let go just as Miyako is thinking the same thing and also lets go. As a result, Miyako is dropped to the floor and their friend is dumbfounded by the idiocy.
• Pitbull Dates Puppy: Careless troublemaker Seo is curiously fond of her good-natured underclassman Wakamatsu. Played With in that Wakamatsu wants to make Seo feel bad so she won't bother him anymore, but fails in ways that make him look like he's invested in their relationship.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Mikorin and Kashima are each other's best friend despite being opposite genders (but similar flirty Chick Magnets), and it's made clear the two have no attraction to each other whatsoever.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: In-Universe, in the Fictional Video Game Communications with 12 Girls/Girl Princess, Tomoda is supposed to be the male friend of the protagonist that acts as Mr. Exposition. However, he is being overly helpful for the protagonist, making the cast wonder if such dedication is, in fact, Homoerotic Subtext.
• Playing Hard to Get: In-Universe with the "little devil" fad. Sakura tries to act like one in order to get Nozaki to notice her feelings. Surprisingly, Nozaki does notice that Sakura hasn't been her usual self but as Mikoshiba says, Nozaki's response is more like "concern you'd expect a parent dealing with a child in a rebellious stage" rather than what Sakura wants. Doesn't help that Sakura is basing her behavior on Seo of all people. Speaking of Seo, after she hears of the fad, she deduces that Wakamatsu is also following it.
• Plot-Based Voice Cancellation: One happens at the end of Episode 12, as Sakura and Nozaki are watching the fireworks. Though audiences hear what she says to him (that she loves him), what he says is inaudible, even to Sakura, prompting her to ask him to repeat what he said. He says he feels the same way about her, about loving fireworks, that is, which is probably what Nozaki thought Sakura was talking about.
• Poke the Poodle:
  • Wakamatsu's attempts to express his anger at Seo involve greeting and approaching her every day.
  • Nozaki and Mikoshiba try acting like delinquents as a character creation exercise for the former's manga, and their form of "rebellion" involves "sleeping late, and not bringing homework" for Mikorin, and "not turning on the washing machine" for Nozaki.
  • In Chapter 67, Nozaki wants to conduct a bullying experiment for manga inspiration, and asks Sakura if she wants to join in. He attempts to "bully" her by leaving fake love letters on her desk and putting candies in her shoes (instead of thumb tacks). Seeing that the experiment doesn't work, he has the two roles switch, giving Sakura the role of the bully. Her form of bullying consists of her mooching off his food, which to Nozaki's classmate looks more like a pet asking to be fed.
• Pose of Supplication:
  • Mikoshiba often collapses on the floor in such a manner.
    • In Chapter 8, he does this when he loses a bet with Nozaki on whether Sakura has a case of Weakness Turns Her On.
    • He does this again in Chapter 19. After volunteering to model for the school's art club, he looks to his figures for pose ideas. Unfortunately for him, all of his figures are of girls in feminine poses, causing him to assume this stance.
  • Kashima does this in Episode 3^note in the manga counterpart Chapter 10 she just stands there depressingly instead when she thinks her (self-proclaimed) status as Hori's favourite kohai is being threatened by Nozaki. She boasts that Hori favours her because he always chases her and gives her lead roles but Sakura argues it's only because she skips club activities and her good acting calls for it - this leads to her in this stance.
  • Wakamatsu does this after he fails to get the message across to Seo that she's being a nuisance to the Basketball club (because he tried using shoujo manga tactics), wondering aloud to Nozaki where he went wrong.
  • Nozaki does this when he fails to fit in a girls' sailor uniform and laments how he hates his muscles for stopping him from being a Bishōnen.
• P.O.V. Boy, Poster Girl: Gender-inverted. Nozaki is the titular character and poster boy, Sakura is the point-of-view girl.
• Pretty Boy: Most guys in the series to date, aside from Hori (allegedly), Miyamae and Nozaki, are slim attractive guys. Hori's explicitly not considered to be a bishounen by at least one character, supposedly due to his small height, but thanks to Generic Cuteness kicking in he's hardly less attractive than his fellow taller cast and so can still count; Nozaki is still good-looking (at least to Sakura) but is a bit overly muscled by normal standards, to his despair (he can't use himself to model for his manga because he's not the right body type); and Miyamae is overweight, albeit only when Maeno is in his life — at times he's away from Maeno he can fall into this trope as he becomes skinnier and looks more conventionally handsome.
• Production Throwback:
  • Sakura's shelf in Episode 1 of the anime has a charm of Usa-chan from Ore-sama Teacher.
  • While Sakura is diligently "studying" shoujo manga (after being jealous by how well Rei and Nozaki got along with their shoujo manga conversations), she can be heard muttering various tropes^note "Ore-sama", "age difference", "cat and dog relationship", "childhood friends" that perfectly describes Mafuyu and Takaomi of Ore-sama Teacher.
• Public Bathhouse Scene: Chapter 47 features the main characters (plus the drama club) heading to a bath house, with Nozaki and Sakura expecting a romantic bonding to happen between the guys and girls as they try to communicate to each other through the segregating wall. Of course, given the... odd setting they are in, no such things happens, as the girls are too busy flocking over Kashima, while the guys are too busy trying to strip Mikoshiba of his Modesty Towel.
• Quirky Work: In-Universe Miyako's manga end up as such due to Maeno always pushing for the inclusion of tanuki, no matter how out of place they are given the genre.
• Rainbow Motif: The anime opening aligns the main characters◊ in a ROYGBIV row, with each color (except for Nozaki's green) being prominent in their hair colors and/or outfits. Mikoshiba is red, Sakura is orange, Seo is yellow, Nozaki is green, Hori is blue, Kashima is indigo, and Wakamatsu is violet.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Lampshaded In-Universe in Chapter 104. When Miyako and Ryousuke go clothes shopping, she expects him to act like her characters, and can't understand it when he "goes off script".
• Real Life Writes the Plot: As expected of a series about making manga, this happens a few times In-Universe. In Chapter 119, Hori is too busy to do the usual amount of background work, so Nozaki cancels a planned story involving a party and instead has Mamiko and Suzuki locked in an empty storeroom for a chapter so there won't be any backgrounds TO draw.
• Recurring Extra: A few of the same unnamed members of the drama and art clubs appear frequently whenever their respective clubs are involved.
• Repeat Cut: Episode 8 gives us a triple take of Hori kicking a box out from under Kashima's feet.
• Riding into the Sunset: Parodied in Episode 2, when Seo and Nozaki are tasked with taking stacks of notebooks to a classroom. When a teacher looking to punish Seo comes around, the scene is suddenly bathed in a sunset-glow as Seo dramatically tells Nozaki that she knows she can trust him to take care of her share. The scene ends with Nozaki getting drawn into the mood and agreeing to take them, with Seo running slow-mo into the distance.
• Roadside Wave: In Chapter 17/Episode 9, Nozaki and Sakura are walking home under an Umbrella of Togetherness, when a car driving by splashes them.
  Nozaki: I don't think there was anything I could have done to prevent that...
• Romantic Rain: Played for Laughs in Chapter 17, and by extension the first half of Episode 9, where typical romantic rain cliches are explored.
• Romantic Ride Sharing: Played With.
  • Sakura suggests the classic romance trope of having the male and female leads of his manga bike home together, with the female lead behind the male one. Nozaki bluntly replies that such a scenario is now against traffic rules.
  • The next day, Nozaki invites Sakura to go home together. Sakura, who is in love with him, agrees; upon seeing Nozaki walk to where the students' bikes are kept, she dreams up romantic biking scenarios such as wrapping her hands around his waist. However, Nozaki unveils a tandem bike because of the aforementioned rule. What follows is a decidedly unromantic bike ride between the two of them; when asked if it felt romantic, Sakura responds that at best, it develops mutual trust. Nozaki even asks her to wrap her arms around his waist, but the seats are too far apart.
  • Nozaki then attempts to write the situation into his shoujo manga, where the romantic lead Suzuki unveils his own tandem bike. Sakura says it's not appealing. Nozaki then gives him a four-person bike, has girls fight over who gets to sit behind him, and all four seats get stolen. Eventually, it gets pared down to the leads walking home together instead of sharing Suzuki's bike.
  • Upon seeing her classmates comment that the manga's final bike scene was very swoon-worthy, Sakura apparently changes her mind about the tandem bike and invites Nozaki on a ride with her, though the result ride is still unromantic.
• Running Gag: When the group have to get a girl's perspective, Nozaki will first pretend to be a girl himself, then Mikorin, and then Sakura. Sakura is never picked first for girly stuff, only third or fourth.
• Ryokan Inn: The main characters stay at a traditional Japanese inn in Chapter 47 during their Beach Episode trip.

S-T

• Satellite Character: There's an In-Universe example when Nozaki and Mikoshiba play a dating sim together. The character they get invested in is Tomoda, the friend of the protagonist, but he never really interacts with anyone but the protagonist so they decide he must be gay and trying to put the protagonist's feelings ahead of his own.
• Scenery Porn: Loads of nicely-drawn backgrounds pop up in the anime.
• Scully Box: Invoked and Played for Laughs in Chapter 36/Episode 8. Nozaki uses these to cheat perspectives or to handwave how he screws up the perspective in his manga—in the latter case, by claiming everyone has them In-Universe.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: An omake that takes place during the drama club trip shows Kashima and Hori of all people having a very long and detailed talk, during a bath... about nothing other than ways of cooking octopus, much to Mikoshiba and Nozaki's shock.
• Serial Escalation:
  • The idea is parodied in Chapter 31. Nozaki laments that a Declaration of Protection between Suzuki and Mamiko is boring when he just says it to her. His idea of spicing things up is to have Suzuki make his declaration on a cliffside, while hanging to a rope with one hand, and gripping on to Mamiko with the other.
  • In Mayu's case, his educational pictures for the judo club start from being simple drawings showcasing judo techniques to being flagged for indecency by the school board due to the Ecchi-style pictures.
• Serious Business: Mikorin and Nozaki playing the dating sim game in Episode 4. Nozaki at first can't detach from his professional life, so he coldly rejects every girl in the game, causing Mikorin to berate him for Comically Missing the Point about the game. Then he ends up asking the male friend in the game for advice on the girls, and both of them seem more interested in the friend than the other girls in the game. They end up creating a Boys' Love fanfic about the male friend and the protagonist as a result.
  • Mikoshiba reiterates his belief about dating sims being this trope in Chapter 81, where Waka and Mayu not caring about the actual love interests in his favorite game drives him into a rage.
• Sequential Artist: The manga is about shoujo mangaka Nozaki, who has Sakura, Hori, Mikoshiba, and Wakamatsu as his assistants.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story:
  • In Chapter 2 (animated in Episode 1), Nozaki actually rents a four-wheeled tandem bike to ride with Sakura to test out potential romantic scenarios, as the traditional romantic scene of "two people riding on a bike" is against traffic laws, and the usual substitute of "two people walking the bike" is a bit overused. Miyamae, however, Executive Vetos Nozaki's approach to the tandem bike (probably because it made Suzuki too much of a casanova), so Nozaki still goes on with the "two people walking the bike" scene. invoked
  • In an omake to Chapter 8, Nozaki tells Sakura the Yaoi Genre doujinshi he and Mikoshiba attempted between the Dating Sim's protagonist and Tomoda failed because Happily Married is an Enforced Trope for Shoujo Genre, and since same-sex marriage isn't allowed in Japan, there's no way they could write it.
  • Chapter 97 has Nozaki try to think of ideas for the manga author corner. He initially suggests souvenirs from Kyoto, but Miyamae tells him it has to be specific to manga. After realizing he has no manga tips nor stories to share whatsoever, the two decide to go back to talking about souvenirs.
• Shout-Out: In Chapter 148, Seo performs Polnareff's "Your underwear is showing" hand signs. Like in that series, the gag's punchline comes in the form of a usually straitlaced character (in this case Waka) getting it instantly.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: In-Universe example, when Wakamatsu and Mayu play Mikoshiba's favorite gal game, they entirely miss the point of the game to instead focus on leveling up their strength to win a sports tournament (which they do succeed in...) because they both avidly play a sport.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: A variant occurs when Nozaki makes the other guys do a "love-talk" during a sleepover so he can mine it for manga ideas. Mikoshiba asks Hori how he and Kashima are doing, and Hori wonders out loud why he'd bring her up when asking about his love life.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Played with in Chapter 48 with one of Sakura's exasperated classmates, who only wishes Sakura would just get together with Nozaki so that she could finally move on from her obsessive behavior towards him.
  • In Chapter 65, Sakura is extremely disappointed when her fantasy of Hori getting embarrassed, realizing his feelings for Kashima and them dating is ruined when Hori doesn't bat an eye over the possibility of Kashima not wearing any panties.
  • Upon finding out Wakamatsu has a crush on Lorelei, Sakura tries to nudge the relationship along by attempting to tell Wakamatsu that Seo is actually Lorelei. She's stopped at every turn by Nozaki. This is turned on its head when Wakamatsu learns of Sakura's crush on Nozaki, and he attempts to help that move forward. Sakura is put out by this and promises to stop sticking her nose in other people's relationships.
• Shipping: In-Universe, Sakura finds the Oze/Waka pairing in Nozaki's manga adorable. Nozaki himself is weirded out by the idea despite writing it himself because he knows that the real basis for the characters don't get along that well. Unfortunately, Hori and Wakamatsu himself seem intrigued by the idea, with the latter being particularly fond of the Oze character.
• Ship Sinking: Chapter 57 officially kills off any Mikoshiba/Sakura potential, with Sakura once again claiming that Nozaki is the only one for her and Mikoshiba stating he sees Sakura as a little sister figure.
• Ship Tease: Expertly played with by the Mangaka for Nozaki/Sakura, Seo/Wakamatsu, and Kashima/Hori. With the exception of Sakura, all the characters involved are not actually looking for love, and none of the relationship tropes done by them are actually done with love in mind. Remarkably most of these are written in a way that the audience (and often, many of the peripheral characters) can plainly see the sexual tension between them, but the players themselves are blissfully and blindly ignorant regarding what their actions imply. This series being what it is, however, most of it ends up getting Played for Laughs or having the mood skewered. Some examples include:
  • Kashima taking Hori to the nurse's office and Hori getting inspired for a play because of it.
  • Nozaki walking home with Sakura and when asked, tells her it was because he simply wanted to (which causes Sakura to fret about what it might mean).
  • Wakamatsu picking out a bra for Seo to wear and despite (or perhaps because) the fact she thinks it's lame, her keeping it and wearing it.
  • Mikoshiba attempting to ask Hori what he thinks of Kashima in Episode 11, though the latter (brusquely) brushes it aside.
  • Mikoshiba then trying to ask Nozaki how he feels about Sakura immediately afterwards. Unfortunately Nozaki falls asleep sometime before this, and doesn't hear it.
  • The main characters end up hanging out with their respective partners in Episode 12 at a summer festival with each pairing getting some moments in.
  • In Chapter 66, Wakamatsu starts saying he likes Seo when he discovers it embarasses Seo and causes her to avoid him. He intends it as payback for all the times she harassed him but then gets upset that her avoiding him means they won't be able to use the movie tickets he has.
  • Chapter 86 has Sakura in full Clingy Jealous Girl mode, saying to the rest of the Art Club that she should be the only one to see Nozaki shirtless. Nozaki comments afterward that the comment made him a little excited.
• Shout-Out:
  • Kashima's character is basically a typical otokoyaku from the Takarazuka Revue, due to her masculine appearance and always playing male roles in the Drama Club's plays.
  • Chapter 8's title is High School Boys are All Idiots. ©Daily Lives of High School Boys
  • In Chapter 19, one of the figurines that Mikoshiba uses as an example of how he should pose bears more than a passing resemblance to Natsu Dragneel.
  • In Episode 10, one of the eyecatches has Kashima wearing a suit and holding an umbrella while in a pose that's an obvious reference to Singin' in the Rain.
• Show Within a Show: Nozaki's main manga series, "Let's Fall in Love." The production of this fictional manga is basically the entire premise of the series. Not only does it often mirror the events of the real manga, but many of the characters are directly inspired by Nozaki's friends and acquaintances (though often gender-bent). Some examples are:
  • Mamiko, the heroine, is based on Mikoshiba.
  • Oze, a blunt and oblivious guy, is based on Seo.
  • Waka, a ditzy girl, is based on Wakamatsu.

One clear example of the show within a show mirroring the real series is the relationship between Oze and Waka, which develops in parallel with that between Seo and Wakamatsu.

• Sick Episode: Chapter 20 (animated as the latter half of Episode 6) has Nozaki bedridden, so Sakura, Hori, and Wakamatsu help him to finish his manga before the deadline.
• Significant Birth Date: Each of the main 7 characters has a birthdate that is associated with a holiday that in some way pertains to their character.
  • Nozaki was born on Plum day (his first name basically means "plum boy").
  • Sakura was born on Sakura day (this should be self-explanatory).
  • Mikoshiba was born on Valentine's day (it reflects his flirty, romantic playboy image).
  • Seo was born on Tanabata (since it's a holiday celebrating two deities that are star-crossed lovers, it's appropriate given her relationship with the boys who are infatuated with her voice but don't know it's her).
  • Kashima was born on Halloween (she's always going in-and-out of costumes due to performing in the drama club).
  • Hori was born on Nice-Knee-High's (socks) day (indicative of the fact he pays most attention to legs when checking out girls).
  • Wakamatsu was born on Sleep Science day (he usually has insomnia, but falls immediately asleep regardless of where he is if he hears "Lorelei"'s singing).
• Slippery Swimsuit: Happens to Nozaki, Mikoshiba, and Wakamatsu, after Seo took off the strings from their swimming trunks.
• Slumber Party: In Chapter 82, Kashima has her first sleepover at Seo's along with Sakura. Unfortunately, none of them really know what to do at a slumber party, so Sakura calls Nozaki for advice. He then proceeds to dole out common things that happen in shoujo manga slumber parties, which the girls hilariously misinterpret.
• Spoiler Opening: The clip of Nozaki lifting Sakura into the air doesn't happen until the final episode. It's a Flashback of their first meeting.
• Spoiler Title: An In-Universe gag. When reading Miyako's murder mystery manga, both Nozaki and Sakura wind up finding it compelling enough to get invested in it despite the ridiculousness, but then they read the next chapter blurb. "Stay tuned for the next chapter 'The killer is revealed to be Yamamoto!'". Nozaki promptly throws the manga onto the ground in frustration.
• Springtime for Hitler: In trying to get Maeno to stop inserting tanuki in all of Miyako's works, Miyako, Nozaki, and Sakura design a protagonist who wears a tanuki suit just to make him realize how ridiculous it is. However, Maeno loves the pitch, and declares the guy the best protagonist Miyako had ever come up with so far. invoked
• Status Quo Is God: Despite all the Ship Tease that goes on in the series, very little changes between relationships the various characters have with each other thus far. The anime, despite having finished, manages to preserve this — Sakura gives him a quiet love confession, but Nozaki thinks she said she loves fireworks. Status quo however gradually starts to decline later in the series:
  • Characters actually do (very) slowly unfold misunderstandings and mysteries. Seo finally catches on that Wakamatsu falls asleep when he hears Lorelei's singing in Chapter 84, and Ryousuke finds out in Chapter 91 that Miyako and Nozaki were never in a relationship.
  • Chapter 87 features Hori finally recognizing that he legitimately finds Kashima attractive on a personal level, and not only as a prospective acting talent.
  • Chapter 96, thanks to the events of the story, Nozaki finally recognises that he feels different when around Sakura (he worries when she's gone, wants to hold her hand and keep watch of her). Kashima unfortunately concludes that these feelings are maternal.
  • Chapter 102 has Seo actually going out of her way to confess about her Lorelei identity to Wakamatsu. Unfortunately he doesn't believe her. She attempts this again a few times later on, to no success, but she finally succeeds in Chapter 124.
  • Chapter 134, Ryosuke finally finds out that Miyako is a mangaka and Nozaki and Miyamae are her work friends. He confesses to her immediately afterwards, making them the series's first ever fully Official Couple.
• The Stinger: The anime has post-credits scenes, which either cap the episode's events or act as a segue into the next one.
• Stock Shoujo Bullying Tactics: Discussed and invoked in Chapter 67, as Nozaki stages various attempts to "bully" Mikoshiba and Sakura for a bullying subplot in his manga. These tactics include pestering upperclassmen, leaving fake love letters, leaving tacks in Sakura's shoes (except Nozaki worries that she'll get hurt, so he leaves candy instead), having a friend betray them, and stealing clothes. This manga being what it is, though, all the attempts backfire.
• Story Arc: While the series is a slice-of-life, a few 2+ chapter stories of the same event pop up now and then:
  • Chapters 46-7 = drama club trip arc, with Chapter 45 acting as a precursor.
  • Chapters 73-74 = Ryousuke and Wakamatsu's first meeting and finding out how they're related to Seo.
  • Chapters 93-96 = school trip arc (for the second years), with Chapter 92 acting as the precursor. While most chapters involve the second years during their trip, Chapter 95 focuses on Hori and Wakamatsu back at school without their usual second-year friends.
  • Chapters 99-100 = Kashima's sister seeing a co-ed school for the first time and meeting Kashima's drama club.
• Straight Man: Among the main characters, Sakura, Mikoshiba, and Hori tend to take up this role, with their deadpan and self-awareness contrasting with Nozaki, Kashima, Seo, and Wakamatsu. They all have their eccentricities, though, so one of the other two will step up when Sakura's gushing about Nozaki, Hori's gushing about Kashima, and Mikoshiba's gushing about gal games.
• Strange Minds Think Alike
  • While Nozaki, Sakura and Mikoshiba exhibit varying skill in their drawing abilities, when it comes to drawing buildings, all three of them draw the exact same crude figure of a house. It is later shown in Chapter 36 that even Wakamatsu has the same idea when it comes to drawing a house!
  • Later, Nozaki sends Sakura an SOS text message after school. He was absent that day, so she runs to his apartment thinking about how it's going to be a Sick Episode event, but then realizes there's no way that could be when it comes to Nozaki, so she brings ink instead of medicine, assuming he's at a deadline and ran out of ink. Turns out he really was sick, but Wakamatsu and Hori also show up with ink, having assumed the very same thing.
  • Chapter 68 has Nozaki, Sakura and Mikoshiba tell Kashima their realization that Hori likes her legs after an anonymous picture of her legs came up in converation with Mikoshiba. Her reaction is strangely stating her shock that he likes them more than Mikoshiba's (for some reason), and then to Mikoshiba's annoyance for being graded lower, that he likes them even more than Nozaki's. Later in the chapter, other drama club members notice Kashima oddly trying to show off her legs and after Hori mentions his legs converation with Mikoshiba, the club members reason that she must have felt pressuring hearing about the legs as a new rival to her...along with considering Mikoshiba and Nozaki as her normal rivals, for some reason.
• Stranger Safety: This is how Hori ends up becoming Nozaki's assistant: after anonymously doing a relay novel with each other (on a random book they found lying on the school grounds), Hori, impressed by Nozaki's writing skills, asks him to help write scripts for the drama club. Nozaki responds by asking Hori to help him out with his backgrounds, and gives him his apartment address. Hori hurries over to Nozaki's place, despite neither knowing of the other party's names or faces. Sakura is appalled by their total lack of sense of danger.
• Suckiness Is Painful: Kashima's tone-deaf singing is so terrible that character reactions are over the top. Chapter 25 has Sakura and Nozaki crawling on the ground in agony, the two plus Mikoshiba react in a similar manner at karaoke, and Wakamatsu is horrified when he hears this bad singing from "Seo". The two characters who don't react badly are Seo, who first wears ear plugs the whole time but is otherwise unfazed, and Hori, who encourages Kashima to sing more at karaoke and cheers her on (turns out he just enjoyed watching her be flustered, but he also comments he "got used to [her singing]" after a couple of times).
• Take a Third Option: Ryousuke demands that Miyako choose between him, Nozaki and Maeno as an effort to break up her love triangle. Miyako fails to grasp the situation and asks if she can include her dog, leaving Ryousuke baffled as to how lowly she thinks of the three of them.
• Talking with Signs:
  • When Kashima has to rest her voice thanks to a cold, she writes out signs for other people to read.
  • When meeting Mikoshiba and Sakura for the first time, The Quiet One Mayu briefly communicates by writing in a notepad upon Sakura's suggestion. He quickly abandons it when he becomes too lazy to write.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: The two Nozaki brothers are tall, have black hair and dark eyes, and have been considered attractive (Sakura (unsurprisingly) finds Nozaki handsome and Miyako is quite keen to get Mayu shirtless for drawing purposes).
• Tandem Parasite: Tested when Nozaki and Sakura are trying to find ways to make tandem-bike rides more romantic as shoujo manga material (because Nozaki's not allowed to show the protagonist giving the heroine a ride on his one-seat bike as it's illegal, and he wants to avoid the "walking with your bike to accompany your beloved home" cliche). Thinking having both of them pedalling isn't romantic enough, Nozaki suggests being the only one to pedal while Sakura just sits in her seat. After a few seconds of trying this out, Sakura demands she pedals again, as she feels guilty for not doing anything.
• Tanuki: Maeno loves these critters, and he constantly pushes the manga authors working under him to include them in all their works. As a result, everyone else hates them.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Nozaki asks if it's okay for Hori to carry around his manga in his bag since he could ruin his image by accidentally dropping it, but Hori assures him he never lets go of his bag. Cue Gilligan Cut to Hori angrily throwing his bag at Kashima, and sure enough the manga falls out of his bag and Kashima becomes disturbed.
  • When Kashima first dresses up in a long wig and princess dress, Mikoshiba snarks to himself that Hori would arrive at that moment if it were a shoujo manga. Hori arrives exactly two panels after he thinks that.
  • Nozaki decides to reveal himself to who he thinks is a Kashima fangirl, and also a fan of his manga. Despite Sakura's worries, he doubts anything will happen because he doesn't think Kashima will talk to a mere fan about him. That point becomes moot when the girl introduces herself as Rei Kashima two panels later aka a lot more than a fan; the narration lampshades Nozaki's profile ended up being leaked to her thanks to Kashima.
  • Sakura's brother Towa has another encounter with Nozaki in an omake, while thinking to himself that he still doesn't trust his sister's crush just yet. In the very next panel Nozaki offers scones that he baked, and Towa immediately runs to him with excitement.
• Terrible Artist: Among the cast of competent manga artists/assistants are also characters with questionable drawing skills - Miyamae (he can't do anything beyond stick figures), Maeno (he only fares a little better), Mikoshiba (he's incapable of drawing anything other than flowers and manga effects), and Yumeko (she's so bad that Nozaki changes her age to 3 years old when helping her submit fanart to the shoujo magazine).
• Test of Courage: Nozaki sets a test of courage at school in Chapter 54 in order to research ideas for a scary chapter for his manga. Unfortunately, he and the people he had accompany him aren't the types to be scared... for the most part.
• The Tetris Effect:
  • Wakamatsu has apparently started seeing the world in terms of screentones.
  • After playing a Dating Sim where all the men have dark secrets, Nozaki, Hori, and Wakamatsu conclude that every man has something to hide. This translates in Nozaki wondering what skeletons Mikoshiba has in his closet, Wakamatsu being startled by his basketball teammates, and Hori wondering what it would be like to sprout wings.
• Theme Naming: "Romance". While Monthly Girls' Romance is an acceptable title for a shoujo magazine, there's no other reason to name the school "Romance Academy"^note Roman Gakuin other than this trope.
• Those Two Guys: Two classmates Nozaki hang out with occasionally appear (with their most prominent appearances being the school trip arc and their visit to Nozaki's home) to serve as a reminder that Nozaki does in fact have friends outside of his manga assistant group. The two guys eventually get their names — Tayama and Totsuka — in Chapter 89.
• Throwing Down the Gauntlet: Wakamatsu attempts to invoke this towards Seo in Chapter 14/Episode 6. However, instead of throwing a pair of mittens in front of Seo, he gives them as if they were a gift, so Seo thinks Wakamatsu is just too shy to give them properly.
• Throwing Out the Script: When Kashima temporarily loses her voice thanks to a cold, she has other people read her lines for her. She even starts flirting with girls like normal while Hori calmly reads out the lines... only for Kashima to double back and forth between him and the girl because he actually just starts making it up as he goes along.
• Tin-Can Telephone:
  • Chapter 61 has Nozaki and Sakura communicating via paper-cup phones for ideas for Nozaki's manga. Sakura becomes so attached to hers that her friends comment on how neglected her actual phone has become. Suzuki and Mamiko keep their flip-phones in the end, however the experience affects Nozaki enough that he accidentally draws the two holding and talking into their phones as if they're paper-cups.
  • In Chapter 114, Nozaki and Mikoshiba run into Mayu and Rei playing with paper-cup phones. Mikoshiba snarks at Mayu's skills at this when the latter just casually holds his end like a normal cup and does an "okay" sign with his fingers near the cup instead of talking into it.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: In contrast to Nozaki and Sakura, Kashima (1.76m) is half a head taller than Hori (1.64m).
• Token Mini-Moe: Sakura is the smallest character at only 145 cm (4'9") tall. This short height leads to many jokes, including her being similar to a child.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Nozaki and Mikoshiba discuss how the trope of tomboys secretly wanting to be girly is one common cliche in shoujo manga. Mikoshiba later thinks Bifauxnen Kashima might be one when she seems to be lamenting over her lack of feminine features and her usual feminine voice being deeper due to the cold - only to be proven wrong immediately when she proudly declares she can now wear the school pants.
• Tsundere:
  • Parodied in a strip, when Nozaki sketches Suzuki who switches between cold and endearing between each panel on the same page. Everyone else remarks that the character needs to get help with emotional stability.
  • As far as characters go, Mikoshiba, Hori, and Wakamatsu have all either shown tendencies for or been associated with the term. Mikoshiba gets easily embarrassed and sometimes will try to cover it up by slinging insults. Hori will fly off the handle with Kashima on a near-daily basis but deep down will do anything to make her shine like a star. Wakamatsu has been called a "new type of Tsundere" by Mikoshiba because he's got an antagonistic relationship with Seo, but goes all deredere for the school's 'Lorelei', who he doesn't know is actually Seo.
  • This trope is discussed in Chapter 110 when Seo tries to read shoujo manga and doesn't understand what a tsundere is. Sakura drags in Mikoshiba to (unwillingly) help explain the concept to her. This leads to Seo recognising that Wakamatsu is also a tsundere due to the way his reacts to her, which an irritated Wakamatsu denies (while acting very much like a stereotypical tsundere).
• Two Gamers on a Couch: Despite most of the cast not being gamers, multiple chapters focus on characters playing video games. In many cases they play a Dating Sim, and converse its conventions. Chapter 82 has the girls play a fighting game at a sleepover and subverting Ryousuke's girly expectations of them.
• Two-Person Love Triangle: Wakamatsu loves Lorelei but has mixed feelings towards Seo... who is Lorelei.
• Tyop on the Cover: Nozaki and Miyako discuss two instances of typos showing up in their manga in Episode 9, both of it caused by Maeno's incompetence. invoked
  • Nozaki wanted his old oneshot to be called Wavering Heartbeat (Furueru Kodou). Maeno changed Furueru to the more cutesy Furu-furu, but didn't get the "Kodou." Eventually, as published, the title became Shakey-shake Kondou^note as a surname (Yuru-yuru Kondou).
  • Miyako wanted the title to be Otsuka-kun no Jijou (Otsuka-kun's Circumstances), but Maeno transposed the last two kanji, making it Otsuka-kun no Jouji (Otsuka-kun's Love Affairs).

U-Y

• Umbrella of Togetherness: Sakura thought this would happen in Chapter 17 (animated as the first half of Episode 9), but of course Nozaki is Oblivious to Love, and his attempts to replicate romantic moments as a manga reference just end up with both of them getting wet. On the other hand, Kashima flirts with the girls this way in the same chapter—and ends up completely surrounded by a 360 degree shell of umbrellas.
• Unknowingly in Love: Nozaki doesn't realize that he's starting to hold Sakura in special regard. He finds the prospect of her ignoring him devastating, and in Chapter 71 the gag outright points out that he unconsciously started drinking milk ^note a folk remedy to make children grow taller after Sakura hinted that she likes taller guys (which he also fails to realize specifically meant him).
• Unmanly Secret:
  • Kashima thinks Hori has secret girly hobbies and interests, due to her being Locked Out of the Loop of him being Nozaki's assistant and misunderstanding his actions around Nozaki.
  • In Chapter 105, Nozaki has Mayu give Sakura and Mikoshiba each a gift from him, but Mayu doesn't know which is for whom. Sakura realizes the huge cheesecake is for her, but doesn't want to admit it. Mikoshiba says they'll know which is whose when they see the other gift... which turns out to be an Otome Game called Hot Men Syndrome, subtitled "A Game For Young Maidens".
• Unmoving Plaid: The polka-dot pattern of Sakura's ribbons remain static in the anime.
• Unnecessary Roughness: Invoked by various sport coaches in Romance Academy by calling Seo up to trainings so that the team members know how to deal with this trope in actual games.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal:
  • Wakamatsu is subject to this in Chapter 45. Wakamatsu ends up following the girls to a swimsuit and lingerie store, thinking that it's perfectly okay and not suspicious for a teenage boy to be browsing in that sort of place because he's under the impression that Kashima is also a boy. It isn't until the very end that he's informed otherwise, leaving him red-faced and mortified.
  • A manga omake, animated as the stinger of Episode 8 of the anime, reveals that this also happened to Hori with regards to Kashima. When they first met, Hori assumed that Kashima was a boy, despite the obvious signs indicating otherwise, like that she wears a skirt with her uniform. It wasn't until he saw her head to use the girl's bathroom that he realized she was indeed a girl.
• Unwanted Assistance: Nozaki did not at all appreciate Maeno as his editor, since his advice was never good. Maeno's terrible attempts at helping are still evident by how badly he treats his current mangaka (including Miyako).invoked
• Vanilla Protagonist: In-Universe, both protagonists of Let's Fall In Love, Suzuki and Mamiko, have no glaring personality flaws and are bland enough to be broadly considered attractive and relatable respectively. This has lead to others criticizing or making fun of them for not being very interesting. They even come in fourth and third place after two minor characters when Nozaki checks the results of the character popularity poll that's in progress, much to his dismay; Suzuki manages to improve to third place in the end, but only after Nozaki sabotages one of the minor characters that was leading the poll.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Invoked in Chapter 8, where the Dating Sim they're playing gives options to be cruel to others, like insulting them or attacking them. Nozaki, who was role-playing as his manga's Suzuki, picks the cruel option every time, his reason being that Suzuki already has eyes for Mamiko.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Hori constantly gets pissed off at Kashima for one reason or the other and Kashima often teases Hori or tries to do him favors that end up looking like harassment on his end, but when all's said and done they clearly respect and admire each other, and otherwise get along very well. Sometimes Kashima actually provokes Hori on purpose because she enjoys the attention.
• Voice for the Voiceless:
  • Nozaki does this as a joke when Mikoshiba and Sakura first meet the quiet Mayu. Nozaki says Mayu will respond if one talks to him, so Sakura tries talking to him - and Nozaki is the one who answers her, and adds, "Through me."
  • When Kashima catches the cold and is made to rest her voice, she talks by writing in her notepad and having other people read in her stead. Mikoshiba first talks for her but is too embarrassed half the time, and then Hori gives it a shot but ends up Throwing Out the Script and adlibs.
• What Does She See in Him?:
  • Both Mikoshiba and Nozaki are baffled by Sakura's feelings for Nozaki, though of course the latter is oblivious to the fact that she likes him specifically. Mikoshiba thinks Sakura's mental image of Nozaki sounds really obnoxious and Nozaki is puzzled about what Sakura likes about someone who is emotionally dense and takes her help for granted.
  • Misunderstood with Wakamatsu's friends. Upon noticing that Wakamatsu's been paying more attention to and spying on Seo, they are horrified and question what is it that he sees is so appealing about her. He's actually wondering the same thing: surely she must have some kind of good point, but all his investigating shows her constantly being annoying.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In-Universe, Seo starts recalling a time where she played with a boy called Okada, and how one day she put him in a back of a truck and said truck suddenly started moving... Seo offhandly ends the story there, realizing she's telling the wrong one, and she never reveals poor Okada's fate.^note The answer was only revealed in the official fanbook, where it reassures readers that the truck went to a strawberry farm and Okada safely returned, and even gave Seo strawberries as a souvenir.
  Sakura: Wait, what happened to Okada-kun?!
• Whole Episode Flashback: Chapter 48 is set just before the series begins, and has Sakura recalling her first meeting with Nozaki a year before. Some of it is shown at the end of Episode 12.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Tsubaki has an overall positive/light-hearted approach to characters wearing clothes typically worn by the opposite sex, as part of her gender-role-defying ways.
  • There's often official manga art of the male characters wearing dresses/skirts which are all done for fun rather than mockery: for example, the Nozaki brothers and Mikoshiba are in frilly dresses as a tarot card (with only Mikoshiba looking confused), and Nozaki happily wears a similarly frilly dress on the Chapter 87 cover.
  • Nozaki willingly tries on the sailor uniform for manga purposes when Sakura refuses to model it for him, and even gets upset because his muscles stop it from fitting him properly. He also considers wearing a custom-made sailor uniform for a fansign to portray his image as a female shoujo manga author.
  • Kashima encourages Hori to pursue his (nonexistent) "princess" dreams by giving him girls clothes to wear. He doesn't quite appreciate her "kindness" (but is still impressed by the outfit coordination). Tsubaki implies in the fanbook Hori would eagerly play the princess opposite Kashima in order to keep her and would go as far as to wear a corset to look the part. And when Rei asks him if he looks good in ladies' clothing (to see if he complements her Bifauxnen sister), he seriously considers the idea before stopping himself.
  • Bifauxnen Kashima herself, of course, happily wears her "bookish male student" fashion when she's not in her prince costume or waiter uniform (or the two times she got away with wearing the school pants).
  • Sakura's brother Towa seems to think Kashima in her normal girls' school uniform itself is her crossdressing. He mistakes her for the "model" Nozaki and concludes "he" wears the skirt because it's the trend, which Towa finds cool. He finds out she isn't Nozaki but not that she's a girl.
• World of Technicolor Hair: The characters are supposedly regular Japanese high school students, but Sakura has orange hair, Mikoshiba has red hair, Seo has yellow-green hair, Kashima has blue hair, and Wakamatsu has purple hair. Among the protagonists, the more "serious" Nozaki and Hori have black and brown hair respectively. More or less, their hair colors line up with the Rainbow Motif in the show's opening (with Nozaki filling in for green).
• Write Who You Know:
  • In-Universe, Nozaki has a fair amount of imaginative flair, but he tends to draw inspiration from the people and situations that surround him. For example, Mamiko has Mikoshiba's personality and Sakura's freshman ribbon look, a minor male character with a horribly oblivious and brash personality named Oze is based on Seo^note The syllables are turned around, and the sibilant becoming voiced following Japanese phonology and a minor female character who hates him but loves his alter ego is based on Wakamatsu, hence her name, Waka.
  • Played with in Chapter 20/Episode 6 where Nozaki is sick and Hori, Sakura and Wakamatsu have to make up the story themselves.
    • When Hori asks Sakura and Wakamatsu to think of a girl they know as a model for Mamiko, they both think of Seo... who is anything but shoujo heroine material, which is evident when they think of dialogue based on what she would say and said dialogue doesn't at all match the scenes. Hori flat-out remarks, "You guys have no decent women around you, do you?"
    • When Hori has to think of someone to match Suzuki's good-looking popular guy traits, he thinks of Kashima and insists on using a sparkly screentone for all his scenes because "if it were Kashima she would shine in every scene".
  • Nozaki writes drama club scripts for Hori, but after meeting Kashima he finds it incredibly difficult not to write the prince characters she plays as sleazy flirts.
• Wrong Genre Savvy:
  • The main characters are shoujo manga readers and often compare the hijinks around them to shoujo manga tropes. However, they're instead in a shoujo manga parody, so things never turn out the way they think they will.
  • This trope is the main point of Chapter 8, with both Nozaki and Mikoshiba guilty of it. Mikoshiba asks Nozaki to help him with a male-oriented Dating Sim, because Nozaki, as a romance author, is supposed to understand girls better. Nozaki then plays the Dating Sim applying his usual Shoujo Genre mindset, and fails. Mikoshiba calls him on "using a girl's viewpoint to play a galge". Funnier is that Nozaki's view seems to be closer to reality.
  • As the series progresses, the cast start to get acclimated to each others' eccentricities... which occasionally results in them misreading actual, serious scenes as gag setups. For example, when Nozaki sends the rest of the Let's Fall In Love creative team a struggling text saying he needs help, all three of them assume they're being set up for a "we thought Nozaki was sick, but he was actually just struggling with a deadline" joke and bring him manga supplies... only to find him actually bedridden. Sakura also expects Nozaki to be as out of touch with reality as usual when Kashima asks him for love advice, and is stunned when he actually gives a sensible response.
• Yandere:
  • In a flashback in Episode 4 Mikoshiba met a yandere character while playing his Dating Sim game. A girl in the game held up a knife while asking if they can go home together, and Mikoshiba remarked that he thought all along she was a tsundere.
  • Evoked in Episode 7, though it's just entirely Nozaki's imagination doing it. While drawing Mikoshiba posing for the girls in the art club, Nozaki's version of said pose shows several girls around Mikoshiba, with various weapons instead of easels and paintbrushes, surrounding him. He says it's the result of Mikoshiba two-timing all of the girls. Sakura tells him to stick to the pose without adding extra stuff, especially when Nozaki shows her some extra notes he took for said drawing.
• Yonkoma: The manga uses the 4-panel-per-page format, as one may expect from a Gag Series.

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