General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

The Comic Bang (开画！少女漫)

The Comic Bang (开画！少女漫； also known by its earlier title Monthly Girl, 月刊少女) is a 2025 Chinese romantic comedy television series adapted from the Japanese manga Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun (月刊少女野崎君) by Izumi Tsubaki (椿泉). It was directed by Zhong Qing, written by Yu Jin, Huo Beibei, He Siyu, Hang Bingli, and Li Ya, and streamed on iQiyi in 33 episodes from May 22 to early June 2025.¹^•²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Original title	开画！少女漫； alias 月刊少女 (Monthly Girl); English title The Comic Bang³^•⁴
Source material	Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun (月刊少女野崎君) by Japanese manga artist Izumi Tsubaki, previously adapted as a TV anime²^•⁵
Production	iQiyi Zhimajia Studio; director Zhong Qing; lead writers Yu Jin, Huo Beibei, He Siyu²
Cast	Shen Yue as Zuo Qiandai, Wang Jingxuan as Ye Qi; Zhou Yanchen, Zeng Keni, Wu Yuheng, Wang Ruoshan, Zhao Yiqin, Xu Xinchi in supporting roles²
Run	Premiered May 22, 2025 on iQiyi; 33 episodes of about 30 minutes each¹^•⁶
Filming	Shot from September 2021 to May 2022; renamed from 月刊少女 to 开画！少女漫 in June 2022⁷^•³
Ratings	7.6 on iQiyi; 7.7 on IMDb¹^•⁸

Spoilers

Plot and characters

The story follows Zuo Qiandai (左千黛), a university student who confesses to her long-time crush, the reserved top student Ye Qi (叶崎; romanized Lu Yeqi on some databases). The confession fails through a slip of the tongue, and she receives an autograph instead. She then discovers that Ye Qi is secretly a famous shoujo manhua artist who draws the series Go Fall in Love (去恋爱吧) under the pen name Mengye (梦野). Through a series of misunderstandings she becomes his ink-filling assistant and enters his comic world, meeting a group of eccentric collaborators.¹^•⁴

The supporting circle mirrors the original manga's ensemble: Chai Ziyu (周彦辰), the proud but shy effects assistant; the drama club star Ludao (鹿岛), played by Wang Ruoshan; the meticulous club president Gu Zhengxing (赵弈钦); the athletic Zhou Jieyue (曾可妮); and Jiang Ruosong (吴宇恒). Episodes follow the team's material-gathering misadventures, the editor Gong Jian's demands that Ye Qi improve his heroine's emotional depth, and the group's progress toward a comic convention, where the never-seen Mengye's booth draws long lines.¹^•⁹

The series is set at the fictional Dongsheng University, moving the original's high-school setting to a campus, and its tone is described by iQiyi as romance, comedy, and youth, with "anti-trope, anti-Mary Sue" humor as a daily occurrence.¹^•¹⁰

Production and delay

Production was announced in January 2022, and the cast was revealed the same month.¹¹ Filming ran from September 2021 to May 2022, and the series received the distribution license (京）网剧审字（2024）第012号.⁷^•² It then sat unreleased for roughly three to four years; iQiyi included it in its 2023 slate announcement on January 1, 2023, but the premiere came only on May 22, 2025, announced one day in advance.¹²^•¹¹ Commentators linked the long shelf life to platform caution about a Japanese-manga adaptation in a market where such remakes often struggle.¹³

Adaptation approach

The source manga is known for deconstructing the conventions of Japanese shoujo manga, and it had already been adapted into a TV anime with an established audience.⁵ Industry commentary before release identified localization as the central challenge for foreign manga remakes, since characters and plots from Japanese or Korean comics cannot always be transplanted directly; respect for the original is the baseline, but the core work is adapting it to Chinese circumstances.⁵ Analysts also noted that the property's grounded modern campus world made it accessible to viewers who do not follow anime, allowing it to be watched as an ordinary youth romance drama.¹⁴

The finished series follows the original's overall tone but emphasizes an ensemble story of the whole studio chasing its dreams rather than only the central romance, and it adds contemporary themes including the impact of AI-generated art and the pressure of traffic-driven attention.¹² Reviewers comparing the drama with the manga found that it loses some of the drawn medium's visual comedy and exaggerated expressions, but compensates with stronger character development and emotional realism, expanding scenes the fast, gag-driven manga keeps brief.¹⁵

Reception

The series holds a 7.6 score on iQiyi and 7.7 on IMDb.¹^•⁸ Reception was divided: some early commentary criticized the dialogue and the three-year delay between completion and broadcast, while other reviews praised the cast's chemistry and the adaptation's balance of humor and warmth.¹³^•¹⁵ Internationally, the series streams on iQiyi's global site and on Rakuten Viki.¹⁶^•⁸

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › East Asian drama series › East Asian web and streaming serials › Titles symbols to Co

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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