Genshiken Second Season v. 6-7 (75 Books LXII - LXIII)

Kio Shimoku’s Genshiken: Second Season is a tough comic for me to review, because I can’t help comparing it to the original run of Genshiken. Part of what I liked so much about the original, though, was that I could relate to it back in college. Since then, though, not only has the comic changed significantly, but I’ve changed as well.

I first read Genshiken early in college, and loved it right away. The setting, a college anime club, doesn’t sound all that exciting, but it has a few things going for it. At the time, anime was just starting to take over as my primary hobby, and I was also getting very involved in one of the student organisations at my university. Furthermore, I could see a lot of myself in two of the main characters, Sasahara and Madarame, and the whole cast seemed like a group I could see myself hanging out with.

Now, Genshiken is rather open-ended, and doesn’t really have an overarching story, and since it’s basically about the club it could conceivably just go on forever, with new characters being introduced at the beginning of each school year. However, it started with Sasahara at the beginning of his freshman year, and we follow him over the next four years as he grows from a being a socially awkward nerd not quite comfortable with his own hobby to him graduating having become fairly self-confident and getting a job within the comics industry. It sounds simple, but I can’t help but think back on my university years while thinking about it, the people I met, how I changed over those four years, and the Genshiken cast feels like they were a part of it. Beginning and ending with Sasahara lets us see a full “generation” of members, giving it a feeling of closure and mirroring the experience one has with a real university club, where by the time one graduates it’s a mostly different group of people from one’s freshman year.

However, a few years after Genshiken ended, Kio decided to continue the comic, picking up where the original run ended. At this point, he could either basically do the same comic again, or take it in a new direction. The former would probably be enjoyable but a bit pointless, so he changed it. That’s probably for the best since otaku culture has changed, and it makes sense for a comic about that scene to change with it. For me, though, this presents a couple of problems. First, I’m several years out of college by now, and secondly my interest in anime and that whole fandom has severely dwindled. Furthermore, the Genshiken members are now almost all women, which is in keeping with trends in both Japan and the United States, but makes for a completely different dynamic, and one that’s much more difficult for me to relate to.

So already, from a purely subjective standpoint, this is no longer the comic I enjoyed back at college. There are also a few changes in tone, I think. Previously, especially after the first volume or two, the characters were relatively realistic; I could see most of these guys existing in the real world. Now there are two major characters, Sue and Kuchiki, who come across as much more off-the-wall than anyone else. They were introduced late in the original run, but receive much more attention now. The plot has also, as of these two volumes, taken a turn where Madarame, the nerdiest nerd of all of them, has built up a small harem. Now, Genshiken as a harem comedy isn’t totally out of left field, I suppose; Madarame isn’t really more implausible of a chick magnet than a lot of harem protagonists, and Kio is doubtlessly aware of this and knows what he’s doing. It’s just an odd development.

Honestly, Madarame is almost the only reason I’m still following Genshiken. The comic is fine, I suppose, but not a must-read at this point, and I just don’t care about any of the new characters. Besides, I’ve been following this story for so long now that the sunk-cost fallacy has taken hold, so I suppose I’ll just keep tagging along for as long as Kio wants to keep writing it.