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Genshiken Second Season (2013-ongoing)POSTED BY JASON FETTERS, July 18, 2013 Share
One of my favorite anime series of the 21st Century is definitely Genshiken, a story about lonely college students, predominately male, joining together to find a nice place to express fandom. They have a club and a room at college that is filled with doujinshi, amateur created comics, plastic models of mechs and anime character figures, and a small TV for viewing anime and playing video games. Genshiken is a celebration of the otaku, (geek) lifestyle and all its craziness.
It many ways Genshiken is the newer version of Otaku no Video. Otaku no Video is an anime that was first shown at conventions and tells of a happy-go-lucky college student who has a girlfriend. He runs into an old high school buddy and slowly enters the otaku world until he is all consumed. Today Otaku no Video is readily available on DVD and is mostly likely streaming online. It is a hilarious parody of being an otaku.
So I was sad after Genshiken ended in 2007. However a new generation of Genshiken club members and old favorites from the original join together for Genshiken: Second Season, which is currently streaming on Crunchyroll, (to check it out go to http://www.crunchyroll.com.)
It is interesting that the original series started out mostly with just a bunch of guys and now the shift has changed so that the next generation is predominately female who are the so called rotten girls, female fans who are into Yaoi fandom. Yaoi is romantic relationships between males that is geared towards female readers.
The next cast includes three new members. First up is Rika Yoshitake who is impressed by Ogiue’s drawing and is a freshman who decides to joins. She is uber hyper and wears glasses and is an extreme fujoshi, (rotten girl into Yaoi fandom.)
Next is Merei Yajima, another freshman who likes to wear men’s clothing and can be hard headed. She is also a fujoshi but is less outspoken and subtle compared to Rika.
Finally there is the cross dressing Kenjiro Hato who is also a Yaoi fan and dresses up like a girl and has taken voice lessons to sound feminine.
That leaves only one male member who dresses like a male in the highly obnoxious Kuchiki who showed up in the original Genshiken but left after a couple of club visits.
All the original characters make appearances in this first episode and it was good to see Tanaka and Kugayama again. However I was so glad to see my favorite character, Madarame, back. Madarame is a former club president and is the most hardcore otaku of the whole group. He will spend his last money on fandom, buying doujinshi for the club members to read, instead of buying food. Madarame has already graduated and is working. He has an apartment near the university and occasionally stops by the Genshiken room. I hope that Madarame will make more appearances throughout the second season and I am curious about how he feels about the next generation. After I saw the first episode that is a hint that Madarame will be a reoccurring character.
Enough of my yapping, head over to Crunchyroll and check it out for yourself. The first episode just sets up the new characters so it is still too early to form a judgment until the story arch fully develops. I do like what I have seen so far.
Highly Recommended
5 out of 5 Stars
"The Asian Aperture" is ©2013 by Jason Fetters. All contents of Crazed Fanboy are ©2013 by Nolan B. Canova and Terence Nuzum.
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