Umetarou Nozaki (野崎 梅太郎 Nozaki Umetarō) is the titular main protagonist of the series. He is a high school student at Roman Academy and the subject of Chiyo Sakura's affection. He works as a manga artist under the pen name Sakiko Yumeno (夢野 咲子 Yumeno Sakiko), and is currently working on the series Let's Fall in Love, which is published by Monthly Girls' Romance.
He is the older brother of Mayu Nozaki and Yumeko Nozaki.
Appearance[]
Nozaki is a tall high school student with sharp black eyes and short black hair that is swept to the right. He has a broad, muscular figure, due training in the past when he was the captain of the basketball club in his middle school.
His school uniform consists of a gray school-issued blazer, worn over a tucked-in collared white shirt, navy blue pants, a slender red tie, and brown shoes.
Personality[]
As an author, Nozaki is a talented manga artist, although he can only draw with a "shoujo" art style. He has a lot of passion for his two main characters, Saburou Suzuki and Mamiko. He is so passionate about manga that his life seems to revolve solely around creating it or doing research for it. For example, he loves Valentine's Day because the great variety of chocolates, and the pretty packaging make great references for art. He can be easily offended by harsh comments about his work, unless they are fair criticisms said by Chiyo.
Despite making a romance-oriented manga praised for its sensitivity to girls' feelings, Nozaki has no personal experience in love and is rather blunt towards girls. His story ideas are often ridiculous and far-fetched. He himself has even advised to not take all shoujo manga too seriously and discourages misinformation. He is rather unromantic in real life, although he believes that he gives good relationship advice. He appreciates Chiyo's drawing ability, but is apparently oblivious to her crush on him. Despite his obliviousness, he enjoys her presence and is often seen both around and outside of school with her.
Skills[]
As a manga artist, Nozaki has a lot of talent in drawing characters such as Suzuki and Mamiko, but cannot create characters without using real people as models. He once tried creating new characters from scratch, but ended up with several male characters that looked identical to his male lead, Suzuki. Thus, he now gathers ideas for characters by people-watching. Along with Chiyo and Mikoto Mikoshiba, his background skills are lacking. Masayuki Hori helps him with the background, but before Hori arrived, Nozaki tried to avoid the problem by drawing backgrounds as little as possible.
Relationships[]
Chiyo Sakura[]
Nozaki respects and cares for Sakura, despite not noticing her romantic feelings directed towards him. He also admires her artistic skills, as in the past, he had noticed and was impressed by Sakura's art posters around the school.
Nozaki considers Sakura to be a good friend whom he is willing to confide in, sometimes going out of his way to ensure that she is not upset. He often acts like a worrying mother towards her, showing excessive concern whenever he thinks she is in trouble. He likes cooking for her, and safely assumes that Sakura really likes food as that in his imagination, she's always eating some sort of snack.
Later chapters in the manga imply that Nozaki may have romantic feelings for Sakura, but they are subconscious feelings that he is not yet aware of. Though Nozaki may be dense, in Chapter 86, Sakura says that her ideal type is someone she has all to herself, which made Nozaki’s heart skip a beat. He began to question his feelings for her in Chapter 96; however, when he asked Kashima what she thought his feelings were, she responded with "motherly instincts".
Mikoto Mikoshiba[]
Nozaki and Mikoshiba are very close friends. Nozaki met Mikoshiba while studying people for his manga. Mikoshiba wound up becoming the model for Mamiko and his assistant in drawing flowers and effects. Mikoshiba sometimes asks Nozaki for advice about his dating games, and he keeps a part of his otaku collection in Nozaki's apartment. Nozaki sees Mikoshiba as a cute and sensitive person on the inside, hence, calling him "Mikorin" within his head, which Sakura also adopted.
Hirotaka Wakamatsu[]
Nozaki was a starter and the team captain of their middle school's basketball team, and Wakamatsu was his closest underclassman. Wakamatsu eventually went to the same high school as Nozaki, though his occasional requests for a game are always rejected, due to Nozaki's worries about the risk of injuring his hands.
Wakamatsu ended up assisting the others with Nozaki's manga, first with erasing, then eventually screentones. As payment for his work, Nozaki gives him Lorelei's songs to help him sleep, but keeps the singer's true identity a secret for fear that Wakamatsu will be scarred by the knowledge. Occasionally, Nozaki is burdened by the fact that Wakamatsu doesn't know Lorelei's true identity, as Wakamatsu tends to praise Lorelei in front of Seo. When Seo proves herself to be Lorelei in Chapter 124, Nozaki is upset that such a major reveal happened without him being there.
Wakamatsu usually talks about his personal life and problems to Nozaki while working on the manga. They have a good friendship, although Nozaki tends to be strict with Wakamatsu at times.
Masayuki Hori[]
Hori works for Nozaki by drawing backgrounds for him. In exchange, Nozaki writes scripts for Hori, because Kashima frequently plays the character of a prince, and not many plays include princes. Hori requested that Nozaki doesn't tell anybody that he helps with the manga, because he is afraid that Kashima will find out and attract all of her fans to Nozaki's Apartment.
Although Hori and Nozaki get along well, Hori hopes that Nozaki will someday learn to draw backgrounds on his own, but Nozaki is doubtful that will happen. They work together in collecting background references.
Yuzuki Seo[]
Nozaki finds Seo's personality irritating, but he acknowledges that she is oblivious and never expects anything good from her. He is aware of Seo's identity as Lorelei but is dedicated in hiding this from Wakamatsu. Although he initially wants to maintain the secret, when Seo expresses that she wants to tell Wakamatsu the truth, he gets roped in along with Sakura to help her plan it out.
Despite Seo's beautiful singing, Nozaki is unable to appreciate her songs due to the image her rough personality creates. A side character in Let's Fall in Love, Oze, is modeled after her, whom Nozaki reluctantly writes together with Waka out of popular demand.
Yuu Kashima[]
Nozaki, along with Sakura, was introduced to Kashima through Mikoshiba. Unbeknownst to her, Nozaki is the writer of the scripts the Drama Club uses. However, her flirtatious nature causes difficulty for Nozaki to write characters based on her, both in scripts and in manga. Though both Mikoshiba and Hori do not want her to find out about the manga, Nozaki believes they are overreacting and is less cautious with what he says in front of her.
Ken Miyamae[]
Ken is Nozaki's current editor. Nozaki holds Ken in high regard due to his competence, especially in contrast with his former editor, Maeno. Nozaki is very desperate for Ken's attention and some involvement in his personal life, even accepting gifts and hoping for small talk. Despite receiving ridiculous drafts and ideas, Ken responds to them immediately, and Let's Fall in Love remains the shoujo manga it is supposed to be.
Mayu Nozaki[]
Mayu is Nozaki's younger brother. Since Mayu is extremely lazy, he sends very minimalist texts which only Nozaki is able to understand. When Mayu was little, he was teased for being so quiet, so Nozaki protected him from bullies. As he grew older, Mayu continued to be lazy and reliant upon others.
When Nozaki stopped living with his parents, Mayu was opposed to him leaving, but decided it wasn't worth the effort to stop him. Despite Mayu's laziness, the two brothers seem to care for and understand each other very well.
Yumeko Nozaki[]
Yumeko is Nozaki's younger sister. Her favorite manga is Let's Fall in Love, even declaring that Yumeno Sakiko is her god. She doesn't believe Nozaki when he says that he is the manga artist. Nozaki once tried proving it by signing his autograph, but she remained unconvinced. She also didn't take him at his word when he told her how he met Sakura and wondered if it had all happened in his head.
Yumeko appreciates her brother because he buys shoujo manga for her. She often gets discouraged when she realizes that both Mayu and Nozaki are better at drawing than her. Nozaki tried to help her draw and encouraged her to submit her drawing to the monthly magazine, but since her drawing was so terrible, he wrote that she was 3 years old.
Ryousuke Seo[]
Despite Ryousuke's harshness toward him, Nozaki actually doesn't mind, but sees Ryousuke as someone "cool". Nozaki even wanted to use Ryousuke as a manga reference, due to his waiter uniform he wears at work.
Trivia[]
- Nozaki's birthday is on Plum Day, which is most likely a reference to his given name, Umetarou.
- Nozaki's hobbies are working on his manga and browsing the internet.
- Nozaki doesn't hide the fact that he draws manga, but people tend to disbelieve him or dismiss it. Even in Chapter 130, when his friends finally discovered that he was a manga artist, this was overshadowed by their surprise at Chiyo's ability to find Nozaki in any group picture.
- Nozaki's female classmates see him as large and "in the way" due to his broad physique, while he gets along well with his male classmates. He was once described as "Chiyo bait" by Chiyo's classmate Misaki.
- Nozaki is skilled with his hands and good at cooking. He tends to call Chiyo or Mikoshiba over when he makes too much food.
- Nozaki spends his holidays working and shopping.
- Nozaki is a self-proclaimed expert at love consultation.
- Nozaki is not good at dealing with anything related to Mitsuya Maeno.
- Nozaki wears typical high schooler clothing, which tends to be dark-colored.
- Nozaki's best subjects are Modern and Classic Literature, Japanese History, and Home Economics. His worst subjects are World History and English. His elective subject is Art, with his gym elective being Judo.
- Nozaki's favorite food is rice while his least favorite foods are foreign-sounding ones, mainly because he is afraid of their contents rather than how they taste. He is fine with them once he actually eats them.
- Nozaki's type of girl is "a girl who has determination".
- Nozaki's pen name, Sakiko Yumeno (夢野咲子), is an anagram of Yumeko Nozaki (野崎夢子).
- Nozaki is ranked 6th in the character popularity poll, according to the Official Fanbook.
- Nozaki was part of the 18th graduating class in middle school.
- Nozaki doesn't have a blog or Twitter. As of Chapter 128, he has started a blog about the daily life of Sakiko Yumeno.
- According to Nozaki's profile in Chapter 40.5, there may come a time when he will actually pay his assistants, as it will "eventually be covered in the manga". Although his assistants do not have paid wages, it could be said that they are compensated in different ways, such as Chiyo getting to spend time with him, Mikoshiba getting space to store his figurines and manga, Hori getting scripts for the Drama Club, and Wakamatsu getting Lorelei's songs.
Character Navigation | |
---|---|
Main |
Nozaki Umetarou | Sakura Chiyo | Mikoshiba Mikoto | Seo Yuzuki | Kashima Yuu | Hori Masayuki | Wakamatsu | Mayu Nozaki |
Supporting |
Yukari Miyako | Ken Miyamae | Maeno Mitsuya | Ryōsuke Seo | Tomoda | Rei Kashima | Nozaki Yumeko | Hina Hisakawa | Kobayashi | Towa Sakura | Misaki | Yoshino |
Let's Fall in Love! |
Saburou Suzuki | Mamiko | Oze | Waka |