ノ・ゾ・キ・ア・ナ

NO ZO KI A NA

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
13
RELEASE
February 1, 2013
CHAPTERS
117

DESCRIPTION

Tatsuhiko Kido, a vocational/technical school student who's staying in his school's dorms, one day discovers a hole in the wall of his apartment room. He peeks through the hole, but when he does so, he sees his neighbor, Ikuno Emiru, masturbating and he's caught peeking! However, when he goes over to inform her of the hole in the wall, she shuts the door in his face. Luckily for him, he's able to stop the door from closing and pursues after her, but, in his haste, he trips and lands right on top of her. As luck would have it, she takes a picture of them in a compromising position and tries to blackmail him into getting naked?!

CAST

Emiru Ikuno
Tatsuhiko Kido
Madoka Watari
Yuri Kotobiki
Shouko Honnami
Hana Mochizuki
Nomiya Nanami
Makiko Terakado
Takahata Mitsuru
Shirou Mochitsuki
Sekiya Haruki
Nao Kajiwara
Tamako Naruse
Chisato Komori
Rie Ueda
Horii Makoto

CHAPTERS

RELATED TO NO ZO KI A NA

OVA ComedyNo Zo Ki A Na

REVIEWS

Pockeyramune919
69/100
Peeping on Nozoki Ana proves that a having a plot sometimes isn't enough.
This Review Contains NSFW Images and Spoilers for Nozoki Ana

Welcome to the next installment of the Pockey Reviews Ecchi Show!

I was introduced to Nozoki Ana (or A Peephole) thanks to Anilist’s activity feed feature. I saw that someone was reading the manga and, as I occasionally do, I decided to click onto the page and read the description.

Nozoki Ana follows Tatsuhiko Kido, a first-year art student at a Tokyo University and his tense relationship with his next door neighbor and classmate, Emiru Ikuno. Shortly after moving into his apartment, Kido discovers that there’s a small hole in the wall of the living room, providing him a view of the next apartment over. One night, he looks through and is shocked to find Emiru masturbating on the other side. Kido then goes to warn her of the hole like the paragon of nobleness that he is. When he enters her room, he trips and finds himself in a compromising position. Emiru takes the opportunity to snap a picture of them with her phone. She requests for the two of them to enter into an agreement where they get to peep on one another through the hole on specific days. Kido agrees, because if he doesn’t. Emiru says she’ll use the photo to blackmail him by claiming he had taken advantage of. And thus begins an erotic, dramatic tale of the peeping partners as Kido finds his life spiraling out of control due to the set of eyes that constantly watch it.

In the time it took to read the synopsis, I found myself extremely turned off from the manga. In a status post, I wrote that it “[sounded] so cliche that it hurt”. At the moment, the manga was nothing more than a fleeting source of amusement from its vapid, stupid premise. I had no reason to believe I’d ever encounter the manga again.

So imagine my shock when I watched the newly uploaded Gigguk video on my lunch break and lo-and-behold, he’s talking about Nozoki Ana and how much of an apparent masterpiece it is.

In my reviews, I normally don’t link to other perspectives — at least not this visibly nor this early. This video, however, proved vital in fostering my expectations for this manga. If you’ve read some of my previous reviews, you might recall that finding narrative hentai/ecchi has become somewhat of a preoccupation of mine. Ring x Mama was a longform hentai with a shoestring plot. While the character elements of Maka-Maka were sweet, I found them a bit lacking and I found that, like Ring x Mama, the sex tended to dominate the plot. While I enjoyed Interspecies Reviewers and laud it as a shining example of ecchi, it’s a comedy and not a serious narrative. Metamorphosis was simultaneously what I’d been looking for yet more than what I bargained for, as it’s a thoroughly haunting, unpleasant hentai experience without strong characters to temper the (admittedly well-made) misery. While I had initially written off the manga, how couldn’t I give it a try after hearing it praised so glowingly, after hearing that it was exactly what I had been looking for in a hentai? After all, me and Gigguk both like Interspecies Reviewers, why couldn’t we both like Nozoki Ana?

Four months and 117 chapters later, I’m here to report that we both couldn’t like Nozoki Ana.

While I hesitate to say the manga is out-and-out terrible, I struggle to call it even average. If I do like Nozoki Ana, it's nowhere near the level of adoration Gigguk has for it. The title of the video makes Nozoki Ana's effect on Gigguk quite plain — it made him cry. According to him, this is because he became emotionally invested in the characters. This is the biggest, fundamental difference between our perception and it explains our differing reactions. I never found myself invested in the main characters, thus the door was never open for me to have such a visceral response as crying.

But that will come in due time. I don't want you leaving thinking that Nozoki Ana has nothing to offer, because that's simply not true.

I'd like to start off my praise by addressing the scantily-clad elephant in the room: the pornographic elements. As Gigguk's video addresses, Nozoki Ana is classified as an ecchi. However, similar to Interspecies Reviewers, with how explicit it is, it might as well be a hentai. There is fairly explcit sex galore and bare breasts in every chapter. Perhaps if the phallic censoring was a bit more defined, the Heavenly Bright Light of Modesty™ just a smidge more dim, then this would have been slapped with a hentai label, yet the content would largely be the same. Panty-shot teases this ain't; with Nozoki Ana, Wakou Honna is committed to taking readers all the way. If you're looking to pick up this manga to get your rocks off, then Nozoki Ana will not disappoint. The art is pleasing enough, the sex is as detailed as you could ask for in an ecchi, and a guarantee of eroticism in every chapter is sure to keep you coming back for more. Given my gripes with Maka-Maka and Ring x Mama, you'd think this last point would be a source of annoyance for me, but no, I actually think the eroticism is relatively unobtrusive. I think this because, unlike the aforementioned manga, it doesn't seem to intrude upon the story, because it is the story. If we're strictly talking about how eroticism works with the work as a whole, then Nozoki Ana might be the best hentai/ecchi I've read. Instead of the eroticism being a tool to characterize the world (Metamorphosis), it advances the plot. Seeing as the entire driving force of the plot is the two leads viewing one another in compromising positions, the eroticism and plot work in tandem. And notice how I use the word "eroticism." I don't specify "sex" because a lewd situation isn't necessarily sex. Heck, it isn't even necessarily real as some of the Erotic Quotas are met by simply having Kido fantasize. I commend the manga for not contorting the plot just to justify a sex scene. This also comes with the added bonus of showcasing more varied sexual situations.

From this, you might assume that I find the sexual elements of Nozoki Ana well done, but find the plot lackluster. This isn't quite true, either. In fact, this sex-entwined plot is what kept pulling me back despite my glaring misgivings. One of the most shocking things about Nozoki Ana is that it makes it's absolutely ridiculous premise work in some fashion (and yes, even after finishing the manga, I stand by the premise being absolutely mind-numbing in how cliche it is; while this could largely be the point it still makes me cringe from how dumb it is). While the plot is by no means perfect, its competent, which is absolutely insane to me. It ultimately works by leaning into dramatic elements and, at least partially, showing how someone would logically react in such a weird situation. Based on this being a hentai, we'd expect Kido and Emiru to get into wacky-sexually charged hijinks before they eventually realize they’re into one another — the beginning chapter would essentially serve as an off-color Meet Cute. Instead, Kido's hostility towards Emiru lingers and we see his life essentially fall apart due to his privacy being robbed from him by his twisted neighbor. We see how this situation might realistically play out. In seeing this, we're essentially told that there's nothing enviable about this situation. Nozoki Ana can get genuinely anxiety-inducing at times. It's not to the level of Metamorphois, but this still is a manga you'll end up feeling in your gut.

While Nozoki Ana throws groan-inducing moments out in spades, it almost balances this out with its interesting drama. I quickly found myself invested in Kido's misfortune. His life becomes a train wreck — something you know shouldn't excite you, so you cover your eyes with your hands...but you can't help but wonder what happens next, so you peek through your fingers. You keep thinking that things can't get worse, but they invariably do. In that regard, it's similar to Flowers of Evil.

Nozoki Ana could be downright dumb at times, but could also be very fun. If nothing else, Nozoki Ana is entertaining, which is more than I can say for hentai crème de la crème Metamorphosis. At the end of the day, that's the most important part of any creative work.

But if you don't find being entertained through drama (or "spiciness" as Gigguk calls it) enough, will Nozoki Ana offer something for you? If you're anything like Gigguk, it will. If you're anything like me, however, it won't. That brings us back to our central difference in regards to this manga. Gigguk states that he soon found himself feeling bad for Kido due to Emiru's antics and, miraculously, felt bad for her once her backstory was revealed. He found that he had grown emotionally invested in these characters.

Unfortunately, I didn't feel the same way. This might seem strange, as I professed investment before, but Gigguk states he was emotionally invested in the characters, while I'm solely dramatically invested in the plot. Is Kido's dumpster fire of a college life entertaining to watch? Yes! Do I give a flip about what it means for him as a character? Absolutely not.

This is due to two problems: one, the story is a bit too silly to take completely seriously, and two, the characters are very unlikeable.

The interesting drama only almost balances out the groan-inducing moments that make Nozoki Ana downright dumb at times. With how silly this can get, something had to give, and for me, this was my ability to truly believe in the characters. While this has a drawn-out plot, it's still quite clear that this is an ecchi. While contrivances are par for the course in this genre, given how much care the author took to give this a plot, I expected more. But no, women routinely want to jump Kido's bones upon meeting him because he's a hentai protagonist so of course they do! He has the charisma of drenched cardboard and the sex appeal to match. During the reveal-every-reader-saw-coming-a-hundred-chapters-ago, Emiru reveals she loves Kido because...reasons. Because he's happy, I guess? Besides these examples, dumb contrivances that really only are given passes in ecchi are all over the place and detract from the manga as a whole. I said that we see how Kido and Emiru's peephole arrangement would realistically play out and this is true...to an extent. Kido's life does fall apart due to it, but he does gleam an inexplicable pleasure from it and he realizes he's in love with Emiru because of course he does. I'm wary of saying something that so much as rhymes with "deconstruction" when discussing this series because Nozoki Ana ultimately doesn't really walk-the-walk. Oh sure, I give it credit for walking six miles out of ten, but for every mental breakdown Kido has, there's another time when he's getting erect at the increasingly messed-up events before him. The story is implausible at times and the reactions to characters can be downright baffling. It's hard for me to care about the characters when they seem less like real people and more like hentai archetypes.

More damning than that is the fact that it's hard for me to care about the characters when I actively despise them.

I really needn't explain my disdain for Emiru. Her introduction of threatening Kido with a false rape accusation threw any possible affection towards her out the window. Going forward, her main purpose seems to be making Kido's life a living hell and jilling off while doing it. She's a manipulative, horrible person and while she certainly makes the manga interesting, I had no desire to grow closer to her. Then the manga tried its damndest to endear her towards me("Oh, she only said she'd ruin Kido's life by telling everyone he was a rapist!" "Oh, look, she has a sad past so her actions make sense!"), but I wasn't picking up any of what it was putting down. I was utterly baffled at the fact that Kido fell in love with her.

Until I remembered that Kido's pretty terrible himself.

And that's what'll get you — forgetting. Since he's such a milquetoast, nothingburger of a character, it's easy to assume that he simply doesn't have any traits to get worked up over. The manga will kindly remind you that his archetypicality is exactly why he isn't a great person. He's a wishy-washy wimp that has the "misfortune" of often falling on top of women — in short, he's your typical ecchi fuckboy. The problem is that Nozoki Ana takes itself seriously enough that you realize why this type of protagonist isn't employed as the hero of any other genre. Kido will often hurt the people who care about him. Kido infuriates me because he constantly cheats on his girlfriends and doesn't come clean. Nothing in Emiru's rules prevents him from telling — he's just too much of a disgusting coward to do so. Kido will regularly have sex with Emiru but according to the manga, only penetrative vaginal sex is real sex, thus telling viewers "it's not that bad!" Kido will also become extremely angry on occasion, putting Emiru in compromising positions and beginning to force himself on her.

It's honestly surprising how you can forget how much of a creep Kido is, but it happens a lot mainly due to the fact that nearly every character in this manga is a terrible human being. Almost every character reveals themselves to be self-serving in some fashion. I swear it’s just to drown out Emiru and Kido’s negative qualities. "Is Emiru basically forcing herself on Kido too much? Well don't worry, we'll have another female character who out-and-out-rapes him (butwewontputtoomuchfocusonitbecauseitsnotlikemencanhavetraumaright?)! Does Kido getting very pushy and sexual with Emiru make you uncomfortable? Never fear, we'll toss in a cartoonish, two-faced mustache twirling Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain of an attempted rapist! What's that, you don't like how Kido cheats on his girlfriend? Gotcha, how about we just make it so she was cheating on him the entire time?

The last one particularly irks me because it seems to have worked on many readers. Whenever Kotobiki is brought up, they invariably discuss how much of a "bitch" they consider her. I can't even act like I'm so much better than them. I legitimately did feel bad for Kido at points. But I'd always realize that he really isn't worth feeling bad over.

One of the only unquestionably nice characters is Kido's second girlfriend, Madoka. Really one of the only bouts of emotion I got from this manga was seeing her get caught in the lustful crossfire of Kido and Emiru's antics.

Gigguk says that, at its core, Nozoki Ana is a drama romance. This is a true enough statement, and unfortunately, Nozoki Ana only succeeds in half of its genre. It's a stunning drama but an absolutely awful romance. Nozoki Ana works on a very broad level where drama thrives, but as soon as you start getting closer, the manga falls apart because its characters are hard to connect to, thus harming the romance built around them.

Yet I still can't write off the manga's personal elements entirely. At the end of the day, despite its blunders, Nozoki Ana contains what I want in an ecchi/hentai. Towards the end of the manga, Kido and Emiru profess their love for one another and they go to a hotel to consummate said love. When they arrive at the hotel, it takes them chapter upon chapter to actually begin making love. At first, I found myself annoyed at the long buildup.

Then it hit me like a wave.

The buildup was long because the characters are depicted as being genuinely in love with one another. I couldn’t help but feel touched at getting to see something so beautiful depicted. It was only made possible due to Nozoki Ana’s longform format, since we get to see the relationship develop between the two characters build. Maka-Maka also tried to showcase sex between two people who loved and cared for each other. I hate to say it, but it feels a lot more satisfying here — that development I talked about goes a very long way in making the sex feel magnimonious. While Emiru and Kido have had sex before (even if they wouldn’t classify it as such due to the aforementioned specific definition of sex that they use), this is the first time they’re both embracing their attraction towards one another, so it feels special, unlike Nene and Jun’s publisher-mandated sex every chapter. It goes without saying, but I enjoyed how Nozoki Ana uses its narrative elements to characterize sex more than how Metamorphosis used its own narrative elements. Instead of being a tool for oppression and dehumanization, in Nozoki Ana, sex is characterized as a way to briefly meld two souls together, as a form of mutually pleasurable expression for those who care about one another.

Gigguk said it best:

Hentai can be more than just cheap fap material. This is an art form that can deliver stories that can hit at a real depth at an emotional, spirtiual, and of course, erotic level.

This climatic sex scene truly is something beautiful. But why oh why must it be depicted through such unlikable characters? There’s something to be said about social misfits finding love — it’s largely the appeal of Punch Drunk Love. But Emiru and Kido aren’t just misfits, they’re assholes.

Why oh why must the manga be entertaining but so, so schlocky?

I found what I was looking for — a hentai with a long, character-driven plot. But I suppose it just goes to show having a mind doesn't make you smart. While there are glimmers of something great here, Nozoki Ana is generally pretty average and at times dips into downright annoying territory. There's something to be said about the fact that the manga never bored me, however. Given its relatively high rating, I acknowledge that this manga might not be that bad, but it's unfortunately not quite what I was looking for.

Gigguk says that the manga awoke his desire to find other plot-heavy hentai. He says that Nozoki Ana is one of the best gateways into the narrative hentai world. I have no disagreements there. I do think that, even if it's not perfect, it does a great job of melding porn with narrative, proving to readers that it can be done.

I imagine Gigguk languidly moves through the threshold, taking his sweet time to find another work like Nozoki Ana.

I'm a bit different, I frantically burst through the gate, eyes wide. I'm on the hunt for something better than Nozoki Ana.

6.9/10
D+

Continue on AniList