Genshiken: The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture, Volume 9

by Shimoku Kio

Farewell to the Genshiken It's graduation day for Kanji, Kousaka, and Saki-and the whole Genshiken gang is there to cheer them on. Get ready for the biggest celebration of all time Kanpai Final... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345501977
• ISBN13: 9780345501974
• Release Date: November 2007
• Publisher: Del Rey
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.8" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Made for otaku by otaku, and it shows.

Note: This review is for the entire series and not just a single volume. ---------- What is Genshiken about? Put simply, it's about a group of college students who hang around in a college club for the 'study' of manga, anime and video games, the club being called Genshiken (The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture). The group go to Comicfest (a convention held twice a year where fan made manga gets sold) twice a year and hold a school event once a year, but most of the series takes place within the Genshiken club room. Also, there's no real main character -- some characters got more 'page time' then others but there wasn't a character who was focused on a significant amount more than the others. Genshiken is a very odd series. You'd expect a series with a small amount of main characters, not a lot of variation in the backgrounds and lots of repetitive otaku (people with obsessive interests, with manga, anime and/or video games usually being the interest) fun to get boring after reading for awhile. But that wasn't the case with Genshiken -- whenever I opened up one of the volumes, I found myself able to read the book from back to front without issue. Maybe it's because I'm into anime, manga and video games myself and, to certain extent at least, can relate to the cast? I don't know. All I know for sure is that the dialogue was well written, the art was very well drawn and the author just generally put a lot of effort into his work. As a series made for otaku by an otaku, it succeeds. A large amount of the chapters involve the cast simply sitting in the club room and talking about whatever the chapter in question focuses on. This allows Genshiken to be easy to pick-up and read, but it also means that the manga will fail in the eyes of someone who isn't able to like or connect with the characters. So, in a nutshell, what makes Genshiken work is the characters, and that's why I'm going to spend most of this review covering the characters in as much non-spoilerific detail as possible. One of the few negative comments I can throw at Genshiken is that a couple of the characters don't come across as realistic. The majority do, Madarame in particular coming across as very real, but I can't say the same about the best character (in my opinion, of course) in the story, Kasukabe, and her boyfriend Kousaka. It was a smart move by the author to attempt to link the lives of otaku to the the life of a 'normal', clothes loving woman because it allowed people who aren't as crazy as the rest of the cast to connect to at least one character. However, it's hard to believe that, for a period of around four years, a 'normal' woman would hang around with a group of otaku when she doesn't even have much interest in what the rest of the group are into. And as for Kousaka, her boyfriend, have you ever seen or heard of a real otaku that has sex appeal, doesn't wear glasses, spends money on fashionable clothes AND has an incredibly hot/understanding girlfrie

And another chapter of Otaku life comes to a close...

It's been a heck of a long journey with the crew of the Genshiken. We've gone through five presidents, several conventions, quite a few meltdowns, and a Madarame living quite well under the veil of unrequited love. In this, the very last (*sob*) volume of Genshiken, quite a few old faces make a final appearance as Sue and Angela return to the land of the rising sun for the winter comic convention and group trip to the shrine for New Years Eve/Day. It's a visit full of characterization as not only are Chika's tsundere traits given more panel time, but Madarame's feelings for the group's other tsuntsun deredere, the ever so cute Saki, come out in a nicely downplayed manner as well. Later chapters include Sasahara and Oguie's first major fight as a couple, a "silent film" cosplay event (all art, no dialogue bubbles) and the graduation ceremonies for the last of the original freshmen in the club (Sasahara, Saki, Kousaka) who have all long since gotten jobs in their respective specialties. Just be sure that you don't skip over either the 4 koma comics at the end of each chapter or the special bonus chapter at the very end detailing in tongue-in-cheek irony just how each of the girls of Genshiken could be "moe" (the term for endearing cuteness in otaku-ese). The art definitely shows some stylistic changes in character design in comparison from the first few books, but I cannot figure out if that is just Kio Sensei's maturing as an artist or just a visual representation/progression of the characters growing and coming into their own. The best example of this I can see is in Saki Kasukabe's progression from violent pseudo-fashionista in to a confident business person who is, decidely, a woman. It harkens back, perhaps a little ironically, to "moe" (which literally means "budding" in Japanese) in that over the course of the manga, both in terms of character development and PARTICULARLY character DESIGN, she has blossomed into a lovely woman. It makes sense that her "moe" qualities would be discussed heavily in the bonus chapter. In any case, this book warrants my MUST BUY/READ recommend with the standard caveat of reading all that came before. Now here's hoping that both the OVA's (attached to the Kujibiki Unbalance full "Second" series) and the second season (airing now in Japan) will make it over the ocean as soon as possible.