Trivia / Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun

• All-Star Cast: The anime cast is full of big stars and veterans. The main cast contains the voices of Yūichi Nakamura, Nobuhiko Okamoto, Yuki Ono, Miyuki Sawashiro, Ryōhei Kimura and Mai Nakahara (Who is also Playing Against Type here). The supporting cast contains Mamoru Miyano, Daisuke Ono, Ayako Kawasumi and Kenta Miyake.
• Darkhorse Casting: In contrast with the All-Star Cast of nearly every single other character, Ari Ozawa's casting as Sakura was her first notable role, as she was a relative newcomer at the time. This ended up being her Star-Making Role.
• Development Gag:
  • In September 2014, Tsubaki admitted Mayu was at first intended to be a girl, and that a female Mayu would have been paired with Mikoshiba. Chapter 59 revolves around Mikoshiba and Mayu texting one another, each mistakenly believing that the other is a cute girl.
  • The entire existence of Volume 0, aka Monthly Girls' Nozaki-san, is a reference to the original idea of Nozaki's younger sister Yumeko being the protagonist and two guys from her school being the male co-leads.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Kashima sings much worse than her anime's voice actress, Mai Nakahara.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Kashima's Japanese and English voice actors. Mai Nakahara usually voices very feminine and often soft-spoken characters, while Monica Rial is usually cast as the noisy, fun young girl type. Kashima is instead a princely and energetic Bifauxnen.
  • It's not often that you see Daisuke Ono, who usually voices calm or badass characters, playing somebody as goofy as Maeno.
  • The feminine Casanova Wannabe Mikoshiba is a far cry from Nobuhiko Okamoto's usual aggressive and Hot-Blooded characters.
• She Also Did: Sakura's English voice actress, Juliet Simmons, is better known by her internet handle JubyPhonic, well known Vocaloid utaite.
• Star-Making Role:
  • Ari Ozawa, who was relatively new and had only done a few small roles, gained a lot of recognition for voicing Sakura, her first major role.
  • Juliet Simmons previously did some bit roles with the odd supporting role, but Sakura was her first gig as a heroine. Her casting announcement was met with confusion as to who this Juliet person was, until fans recognized her voice, proclaiming many to go, "Wait, JubyPhonic does voice acting?" Her performance nevertheless saw good reception and gave her more voice-acting fame.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Tsubaki stated Mayu was at first intended to be a girl, and she would have been canonically ship-teased with Mikoshiba.
  • The fanbook and Volume 0 (extra material that came with Volume 13 in August 2021) explain how the original premise was very different and included other things that turned out differently in the final version:
    • Nozaki's sister Yumeko (a character who's only made an appearance in an extra chapter in the main series and whose name inspired Nozaki's pen-name) was supposed to be the main character, with her two male classmates (one New Transfer Student and one Pretty Boy) as her co-leads and the three of them attempting shoujo romcom cliches due to her love for the genre. Nozaki was just supposed to be the mangaka older brother that appears every once in a while, and Seo and Kashima were supposed to be Yumeko's friends. Nozaki just gradually took over the manga and Tsubaki didn't want to introduce a new character randomly so the poor sister is stuck in the background. Basically, Nozaki stole his sister's main character role, name, friends, and her entire existence. Volume 0 shows how the series would have originally been like with her as the protagonist.
    • According to Volume 0, while Seo is (from what little we see of her) completely unchanged from her final draft, Tsubaki's comments admit that Kashima's "base changed a lot". The one page we see of her shows her aggressively flirting with Miyoshi rather than any girl, and she's the one who regularly gets mad at her eventual partner (unnamed and un-faced in the short sample we're given), who is a full head taller than her - in other words, the exact opposite of her eventual relationship with Hori.
  • The fanbook reveals some scrapped chapters/alternate endings.
    • Two alternative endings of Chapter 32^note Otome game chapter are given; one has a frightened Hori move closer to Kashima, and the other has him pondering to Kashima that he might be Satan.
    • The first alternate pathway for Chapter 45 still revolves around Wakamatsu's misunderstanding over Kashima's gender and thinking that she's Seo's boyfriend, but it goes unresolved. He asks Seo about Kashima himself, except Seo's answer only worsens his assumptions. He then confronts Kashima about making "Senpai" sad... but she thinks he's referring to Hori instead, which culminates in inadvertently giving Hori the impression that unless he plays the part of princess she'll quit the drama club. Tsubaki stated this was shot down as too many misunderstandings would confuse Tsubaki herself, and Wakamatsu becoming too concerned over Seo's "boyfriend" along with Hori getting too caught up in considering playing the princess role for Kashima's sake would be too troublesome.
    • The second alternate pathway for Chapter 45 also plays with Wakamatsu's (again unresolved) misunderstanding over Kashima as he and Hori spot her with Seo at a cafe. Wakamatsu, who previously told Hori about the 'handsome guy who might be Seo's boyfriend', points Kashima out to Hori as the guy he was talking about, but upon recognizing her Hori just bursts into laughter without explaining why to Wakamatsu, leaving a confused Wakamatsu thinking that since Hori got so lively about the subject, that he must really like handsome guys. Meanwhile, Kashima gets a misunderstanding of her own when she's shocked to see a laughing Hori with Wakamatsu. The end result is her and Wakamatsu fighting (via Seo) over "Senpai" (Hori/Seo), thus evolving the situation further into a complicated love rectangle between Wakamatsu, Seo, Kashima, and Hori - which was exactly the reason for putting this plot in the rejection pile.
    • One scrapped chapter has Sakura secretly trying to sleep over at Nozaki's after their work session, except she finds out too late Hori is also sleeping over. Unsurprisingly none of her romance schemes work, and she's eventually sent home. Reasons for scrapping included subsequent awkwardness between Sakura and Kashima (who catches Hori returning Sakura's ribbons saying "you forgot this last night" and starts to feel pangs of jealousy that she doesn't understand) and Sakura being unusually bold in her attempt to sleep over at Nozaki's.
  • In September 2022, Tsubaki posted a poll to Twitter asking fans to vote on which side character would get a Day in the Limelight episode with their own love story. Rei wound up winning the poll, but Tsubaki settled on the mini-chapter's love interest being a university student, who obviously wouldn't have made a suitable love interest for the middle school aged Rei. To apologize for Mayu's lack of screen time in Volume 15, the entire story was instead replaced with one featuring Mikoshiba, Mayu, and Kobayashi running into Itou from the Text Confession Battle storyline at a burger joint.
• Write Who You Know: Nozaki is an example of Izumi Tsubaki's Creator Career Self-Deprecation and his career reflects her own in certain aspects, such as a self-acknowledged problem with Only Six Faces and a mangaka career that began in high school.

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