manga: Genshiken Vol 1

[meganbmoore]

Kanji Sasaharu is a nervous first year student who has always dreamed of joining an otaku club, and finds "The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture," or "Genshiken," a club devoted to breaking down the barriers between manga, anime, and video game otaku.  Makoto Kosaka is a handsome, agreeable young man who also joins the club.  Saki Kasukabe is Makoto's girlfriend, who thinks all the club members are freaks and wants him to be a normal guy.

In all honesty, I'm not really sure what I think of it.  Kanji and most of the club members, at least in this volume, are pretty much porn obsessed stereotypes.  Makoto is so passive and agreeable that I swear he'd let you use him as a pinata if you asked.  You may not even have to ask nicely.  The only one I can honestly say I like is Saki, and I think a lot of that is because she hits and yells at people.  I admit, though, that I did go in expecting something a little different.  From the reviews I've read and a few recommendations, I had expected the book to focus on Saki being a "normal" girl dealing with an otaku boyfriend and trying to drag him into normal boyfriend/girlfriend stuff, or on that vs Sanji trying to keep him in the club.  Instead, at least with this volume, it seems to be more about how being an otaku is a meaningful experience and anime/manga/games are rich and diverse (I won't argue with anything so far) and how much they love porn, and how wonderful it is that Sanji has people now  share his love for porn with, and oh, by the way, the cute one has a girlfriend who thinks they're all nuts.  (In case you can't tell, I probably would have liked it more if it didn't seem to all boil down to porn for them.)

I do, though, like the Saki angle, so I'll give it another volume or two to see which way it goes, and I probably would have liked it more if I hadn't gone in expecting something else.  (Though currently, I'm thinking she should just find a guy who actually, you know, notices her.)

Comments

[maxineofarc.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the manga, but I thought the anime was really charming. The porn angle was there, but I didn't find it overwhelming, and it sounds like there might have been more of Saki's point of view as well. Though I have no idea why she continues to hang out with Tohsaka; there have to be other good-looking guys at that school who *don't* have life-sized anime posters on the ceiling.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

No! Stick with the manga! It's one of the funniest I've ever read, especially when the female otaku join the club.

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

Stick with Genshiken. The ultimate payoff is a rich slice of life story full of damaged, but well developed characters who learn about themselves and grow over the course of the series. I gave non-spoilery comments about volumes 1-7 as a whole here (http://mscongeniality.vox.com/library/post/reading-2007---march-1-17.html), and if you want specific comments on the last two books, just click on the Genshiken tag.

It really is one of my favorite manga series.

Oh, also, someone mentioned the anime. The original anime is the first 3-3/4 volumes of the manga. I haven't seen the OAV or second series yet, but the series is short enough that I'd suspect it also sticks very closely to the original source material.