Genshiken

I've been a fan of all sorts of things all my life, and I don't mind looking silly or getting overexcited - and so many people look down on people like me thinking that they are somewhat better because... well, I don't really understand why as fandom is the spice of life. I (still) quite openly call myself a Trekkie (instead of Trekker... whoever came up with the distinction...), and lately I've also become a total self-confessed Narutard. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words I can just take and own - more the power to me.

But once and a while one comes across people who truly appreciate fandom: Kio Shimoku, the author of Japanese manga and anime Genshiken is truly one of these people. Genshiken is a story about a bunch of university otakus (someone obsessed with anime and manga... in Japan the word has negative connotations while in America it's more of an affectionate term) and their daily lives. Different clubs and circles are be-all-end-all in Japanese school and university cultures and Genshiken (short for The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture) is the name of a club who specializes in manga, anime and games - and in the start of the year the competition for new members is fierce... Except for the Genshiken guys who would rather just sit around in their club room talking about the latest episode of Kujibiki Unbalanced, which is the incredibly cliched anime about a high school and magic mushrooms they are obsessed with. They do gain two new members though, the shy Sasahara who is yet to totally embrace his otaku-dom and sweet gaming geek Kousaka with his otaku-hating girlfriend Kasukabe in tow.

I would like to describe Genshiken's plot to you but there really isn't one. It's just a warm and light-hearted story about fellow geeks and their geeky lives, and it's a coming of age of various young people growing up. For Sasahara it's about finding his sexuality and courage to be himself, and for Kasukabe - who really is the central character of the story - it's about accepting people as they are and looking deeper than the surface... something that every geek has at times come across with.

While otaku is not a term I would apply to myself (others might disagree) and this series requires a certain amount of otakudom to fully appreciate it, pretty much all the aspects of Japanese fandom will open up to a hard-core geeks like me and Dragon. So let's look at it:

Manga = comics and books, obviously. While I've been reading increasing amounts of manga lately, I can relate to this from western point of view too. Talking about the art, the characters, the storylines... and yes, I did just start a book club too.

Cosplay = LARPing. Making costumes and researching the characters to get it the mood. Less posing in LARPing but only because that's considered "out of character", not that people wouldn't want to show off their costumes and be admired... in a way there's much more honesty in cosplay as that's all it is. To quote Ohno talking to Kasukabe: "I was hoping to really coach you about how to portray the true essence of your cosplay character. To really get into character, I'd need at least three weeks... one week just isn't enough."

Model kits (especially mechas) = miniature wargaming. I've had tons of friends camp out in our living room building and painting miniatures before grand tournaments back in England. All the phases of building and painting the kits, plus who gets to touch them and how is painfully familiar. To quote Tanaka explaining model building to Kasukabe: "Plastic models and toys are totally different. When you build it piece by piece, you put your soul into it. It creates a bond that can't exist in a mere toy. You might think that these kits will end up looking the same no matter who builds them... but the kit actually accentuates the differences in skill and personality of the builder."

Games = games. Well, games are always games. Dragon, who also has worked in the gaming industry for the past 10 years, is a total Kousaka and at times I can relate to his girlfriend Kasukabe so much it hurts. I found especially the scene where she wants to try games and plays a game with Kousaka and ends up totally losing so realistic – I too had to give up hopes of ever playing anything against Dragon because he's light-years ahead of me and always will be... I just don't have the love of games that he does to spend the time to get even close to his level. Or try having a discussion with him when he's playing ("When Kousaka gets really into a game his eyes stop moving.")... And like Kasukabe with Kousaka, I also came to accept him as he is early on, the only way to date a geek (and marry him).

Anime = TV shows. This is where my fandom background is, in TV sci-fi – it's basically 1-on-1 mapping. The amount of time I've spend analyzing sci-fi with my like-minded friends, and just recently I've had tons of deep and interesting discussions about differences between certain manga to the anime, just like Genshiken gang does. Yep, been there and done that indeed.

There is one big difference between these Japanese otakus and us western geeks, and that's porn. Not that my friends are not users, some of them super-users, but porn in Japanese otaku-culture is something completely different. Big part of otaku culture are erotic computer games and doujinshi, the fan-generated manga and fanfic which is usually erotic in nature. It typically takes the much loved characters from manga, anime and games and puts them into explicit sexual situations, and it's absolutely huge in the otaku circles. Let me just put this into perspective so that you understand how huge doujinshi is... Comiket, the biggest of doujinshi conventions that's held twice a year near Tokyo, has 35,000 sellers and over 350,000 attendees over three days. No fan convention in the west comes anywhere near this... So porn is a big part of the Genshiken guys' life, and they discuss it much more openly than any western geeks I've met (Henri you don't count), although they do tone it down when girls are present.

Genshiken is available both as manga and anime. There are 12 episodes of anime and 6 volumes of manga (with couple of more still to be translated and published), manga being the most extensive and deeper one of the two. Both come with excellent references and side notes to the numerous otaku references the series contains, but I think Genshiken works very well as a geek comedy too with it's wonderfully ironic and funny characters.

But if you want some real world irony, here's something for you. There was a promise of a second season of Genshiken from Media Factory earlier this year, but they recently changed the announcement and said that what they actually will be doing is a whole series of Kujibiki Unbalanced. Now Kujibiki Unbalanced is the lame-ass fictional anime series that Genshiken is so obsessed about that was intentionally made as silly and cliched as possible by Shimoku - the fact that has apparently completely escaped Media Factory. Hey - as a fan I always say live and let live, and someone else's fandom is not taking anything away from me, but in this case I can't but to despise Media Factory as they literally are denying me the second season of Genshiken because of Kuji-un. The DVDs contain as extras three episodes of Kuji-un as it was made for the TV series, and it's just as horribly bad as it's supposed to be.

I could go on for another two pages but I doubt many people even read it this far as it is... So I'll just say that if you're a geek at all interested in anime (and even if not), Genshiken should be mandatory viewing. It's available in a sweet box set published by Media Blasters, and the first 6 volumes of the manga are published by Del Rey.

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