GENSHIKEN NIDAIME

DESCRIPTION

CAST

CHAPTERS

MANGA ComedyGenshiken
ANIME ComedyGenshiken Nidaime

REVIEWS

• 

  GoldenPrism15

  80/100
  have I told you how fun the genshiken is? it's in a place beyond our reach.

  Before anything else, a note: I will often be referring to the work subject to this review (Genshiken Nidaime) as just 'Nidaime', while referring to it's previous incarnation (Genshiken) as 'Shodaime' for the sake of avoiding confusing descriptors.

  Genshiken Shodaime might at some point become a work that i dare put in my favorites. It's a really interesting work for me to read, as i feel like it speaks to none of my own experiences as an otaku. I began my consumption of anime and it's sibling mediums roughly around 2016, which is closely reaching the mark of "a decade ago" in terms of descriptors. Yet Genshiken takes place in the 2000s. It takes place in a time when i was nothing more than a little kid, when most of my favorite pieces of media had either not released yet or were considered recent, a time when the internet had yet to become a mainstay of modern visual culture. It also takes place in a country that's as far away from my own as possible, with a culture and language that I am learning but will never truly live in. Genshiken Shodaime exists in complete separation from my own identity as an otaku, and yet I still felt myself reflected in it's pages. So much has changed in the 20-odd years since Genshiken was written and yet I can sit here and read it, feeling like it was made for me. I have never once set foot in a comiket event, and yet i felt a sense of closeness to the characters as if they were living my own experiences.
  Part of what made the characters of Genshiken Shodaime stick with me had to do with the fact that they didn't limit themselves to any single medium. They will sit down to discuss a currently on-going manga they are all reading, then they will talk about a eroge and which heroine they preferred. They will talk about the TV adaptation of a manga while playing fighting games and then they will go out to buy erotic doujinshi. It speaks to me a lot in how I, too, do not limit myself to a single medium, instead opting for enjoying many of them. Later additions to the genshiken include things like cosplay and BL, both subcultures that I do not engage in and yet ones that I do appreciate as a part of the vast landscape that is and should be otaku culture.

  Genshiken Nidaime lacks such landscape.

  It became really underwhelming to me that I went into this work, a direct sequel to Shodaime which featured so many facets of Otaku culture, and found myself in one which featured none of them. Genshiken Nidaime features a cast which is almost exclusively female, and those females are almost exclusively fujoshi with an interest in BL. This is not a flaw of Nidaime, as I do not think that a work about fujoshi is without it's worth, but it was ultimately one of the features that made it stand out less to me. My problem with Nidaime is not the fact that the cast is mostly girls (though i shall admit that the lack of male characters made it harder for me, a male reader, to feel myself at home), instead my problem is that the girls in Genshiken lack variety. Ogiue and Ohno were already a Fujoshi/Otaku hybrid both, but with the arrival of Yoshitake, Yajima and Hato, the club became overwhelmingly fujoshi-centric. The only characters within the story who weren't fujoshi were Kuchiki, Madarame and Sue, all of which often fell to the sidelines when it came to the story.
  But it would also be a lie to call Genshiken Nidaime a story about Fujoshi. Though it explores the topic a bit, and it made me understand their side of otaku culture a lot more than i did prior, Genshiken Nidaime is ultimately not a story about Fujoshi either. At first it's a story about Hato's struggle with cross-dressing, and later it becomes a romantic comedy about Madarame's complicated love life. Both of those story-lines were interesting to read, and both deserve their spot in the light, but it was strange to have that be the continuation of a work like Shodaime, which would be best described as "otaku slice of life".

  This makes Nidaime a hard work to judge. It's not that it fails at maintaining the tone and focus of it's parent series, but instead it does a completely different thing. It explores a completely different focus, with a different type of story and overall different genre than what it's predecessor was aiming for. I do not blame Nidaime for it's choice of topics, I instead blame it for it's choice of being a sequel. This story could have been told on it's own, and it feels like gaining the role of "genshiken sequel" only serves as a detriment to my opinion of it.

  Still, I cannot truly encompass my feelings on Genshiken Nidaime in a way that sticks to the wall of my brain. I cannot truly claim that it is a bad sequel through it's story alone, so instead I will say the best real criticism I can give it;
  I have said in the past, and I will say it in the future, that a work is defined by it's ending. A story that starts great and ends poorly is a story that I can never in good faith recommend. A story that begins poorly and ends in a great way is a story that I will insist you give a try. A bad ending to a story will be a stain that no amount of fanfiction can ever truly undo, and a good ending to a bad story can work as a redemption-through-death for my opinion of it. Some of my most hated pieces of media come as a result of being bad sequels to works i hold dear, and some of my favorites were shitty games that managed to win me over in their final stretch.
  How did Genshiken Nidaime fare when it came to reaching the finish line? it's... mixed to say the least.
  It's final moments when it came to Madarame's romantic comedy were possibly the best I could have ever expected. I don't think I can ever write or read a line better than what Madarame said in that phone call. If you've read it, maybe you agree with me or maybe you think I'm stupid. But I am the stupidest of idiots and I will forever be in love with genshiken's final volume because of it.
  It's true final moments were disappointing. Even if we do not include the final extra chapter (which completely kills the vibe), Nidaime's final chapter feels like it's promising another sequel. I feel like there exists a secret 13th volume of Genshiken Nidaime which i am being deprived of. It feels like I was being promised an epilogue and they didn't give it to me. I would perhaps let this slide, because it is often said (and I agree), that it's better for a story to end leaving you wanting more than making you feel like it should have ended earlier.

  But that's the thing. It did end earlier.

  Five years before the publication of Genshiken Nidaime started, Genshiken Shodaime was having it's final chapter. And Shodaime's final chapter is amazing. All of it's characters, all the ones that were there when the series began, had graduated. With Saki, Kousaka and Sasahara all leaving the club, the story felt like it could truly come to a close. The one open thread of Genshiken Shodaime, the one point that could truly be said to have never been left to end, was Madarame. His love for Saki had gone unresolved by the end of the story, and even then it felt like it was enough of an ending. It would remind many, myself included, of the way one sometimes has to just deal with unrequited love and just walk forward in life. Even in it's lack of a conclusion, Genshiken Shodaime gave Madarame an ending that made sense for him, sad as it were.

  That is the true gripe i hold with Genshiken Nidaime. It's a sequel to a work that didn't need one, and while i adore what it does both with it's new and old characters, I can't help but feel like it re-opened an old wound and forgot to close it. Perhaps in a few years we will get the real Genshiken Sandaime that we deserve, but i fear it might be too late for that now. After all, Genshiken Nidaime ended back in 2016, and that year is closely reaching the mark of "a decade ago" in terms of descriptors.

  Is Genshiken Nidaime good? I would say so. It does many interesting things and it's a work I enjoyed reading.
  But is it a good sequel? that is something I'm not sure i can answer with a yes.

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• 

  WEVODURO

  75/100
  An amazing start and foundation ruined by a very mediocre final arc that even the mangaka got bored of halfway through.

  Okay just to make things easier, I will calling Genshiken Nidaime just Nidaime and the og Genshiken just Genshiken

  Genshiken Nidaime is the continuation of Genshiken, going from talking about talking about random general otaku stuff to a hyperfocus on the yaoi/fujo side of things with an (almost) full renewal of the cast with most of the og cast either graduating, moving on with life, etc. This is completely fine, Genshiken at the end of the day is very down to earth in this aspect, one of the big messages behind the og is how nice everyday things slowly change and eventually come to an end to create a new status quo, friends graduate or get different priorities, and what was a everyday occurance of meeting up every day in one room to talk about otakushit slowly turns into "maybe next month we can meet up with half of the crew and drink for 3 hours I guess". Remember this tidbit for later.

  Anyway, back to Nidaime, it starts introducing us to a bunch of new fujos or just making them part of the main cast, Yoshitake, a fujo obsessed with japan history gay sex, Hato, a crossdresser that can only draw amazing gay porn while dressed as a woman, Sue, an autistic anime loving gremlin that is in love with the best character and Mirei, and there's Kuchiki I guess too but he only shows up for gags and nobody cares about him whatever.

  

  The start of Nidaime is great, as someone who has never delved much into the fujoverse due to my sexual orientation, seeing and reading the whole aspect of it was really engaging and told in a very entertaining and informative manner, and the atmosphere created is very similar to the Genshiken although this time around is about gay sex, a nice comfy otaku atmosphere with some struggles of life here and there, small arcs about reviving the club with various activities, drawing doujinshi for Comiket, all the good stuff.

  The foundation of Genshiken are still there but it all comes down due to the fact that it starts focusing mainly on 2 characters: Haato and Madarame.

  Haato is our new protagonist this time around, to sum him up, he's a man who crossdresses as his high school crush and is into yaoi and his whole arc is about him sorting out his feelings since his situation is just a huge, although very entertaining, mess. He does however feel like kind of a Mary sue, a man who is cuter than all of the girls in the club combined that draws at a professional level with almost no training, and I feel like he gets way too much of a spotlight throughout Nidaime when the other characters had some nice plot points that really aren't explained much.

  So you are probably thinking to yourself and when reading Nidaime, wow there's a lot of yaoi discussion this time around which makes complete sense but in the middle of it there's an outlier, Madarame:

  Madarame is what I would like to call the exception to Genshiken as a whole. as I mentioned before, the series is very direct with it's "all good things slowly deteriorate and come to an end", and Madarame is the antithesis to this, he refuses to change and move on with life by still going to the club after graduating since "he happens to work and live nearby". Sasahara? Moving on with life working as an editor, Tanaka? Working in the fashion/cosplay industry, Kugayama? Doing some sales stuff, Ogiue? Altough she shows up every now and then, she's working as a real mangaka now, no time to do much club stuff. But Madarame? Still there, eating his lunch in a suit in the club not really doing anything, thinking about how much he hates himself and his regrets but not really acting on them.

  

  Now, I have no issue with all of this, we are all familiar with the feeling of not wanting to move on, and the moments in which these topics are touched upon are fantastic (ex. the confession), but the problem outside of that is that he just sort of exists, doesn't really engage with the yaoi side besides him lusting for Hato but more on this later.

  To be succinct, the start of Nidaime is great, Sue is lovely, Ogiue shows up frequently and her backstory is also great, Mirei has her moments and does a really nice job of the situation of being surrounded by extremely talented people but yourself not being very good at it, Yoshitake is a megane braid goddess that is very entertaining despite me not giving a damn about samurais having gay sex, and Hato is a good vessel for the discussion of crossdressing as a whole, and the whole start does an excellent job of recreating Genshiken's lively femotaku atmosphere.

  Okay so now comes the negative part, all the good stuff I just talked about? Replaced with the final arc which is:

  Madarame Harem

  Yeah, you read that right, Madarame, the loser that refuses to move on, be active, change himself, etc etc gets a harem, and most of Nidaime centers this and in my opinion just goes against one of the biggest points that Genshiken tries to make; be somewhat realistic about otaku in society.
  Genshiken pretty much drills this very often, otaku behaviour is seen as weird from the outskirts, most of the cast dates each other or other otaku because of this, the only exception being Saki who even despite most of Genshiken being about this, she still goes from finding it absolutely disgusting to tolerating it for the sake of her boyfriend. But now the series goes from a down to earth view of relationships to the lousy loser getting a harem without doing much of anything and most of his crushes being forced outside of Hato really.

  

  All that yaoi/fujo otaku shit? Out of the window, most of the manga now is about relationship drama, Hato and Madarame having the "Am I gay" confusion over and over again for dozens of chapters without anything getting resolved, Mirei having issues trying to draw and having confidence issues? Out of the window, now she also wants to fuck Hato but oh no she's part of the harem!!! Ohno and Ogiue? Out of the picture, funnily enough one of the best parts of Genshiken with the whole people moving on finally plays as a negative, because now there's basically no way of talking about anything other than haremshit. Sue? She's great and very cute and has some of the best moments but she doesn't really get developed much because he's just used as a mascot and all we get really is the fact that she now wants the MadarameD. The best thing I can say is about Yoshitake whose role in the whole drama at least makes her very entertaining but it doesn't redeem the arc itself.

  

  So after dozens of chapters of nothing because it's haremshit, things come to an end, in the end, nobody wins because Madarame admits that he's a loser that hates himself etc etc and finally decides to move on, closing the cycle of the original Genshiken. But then the mangaka figures out that the best girl should win and if you don't consider her to be the best girl then tough luck buddy that's how harems work babyy

  

  Another random tidbit is that I got really disappointed that they just flatout stopped doing extra pages about Kujibiki Unbalance, even though it was mostly random bullshit about it felt extremely cute to read about, and now the entire segment is completely gone here.

  To sum it up, Nidaime is great, the foundation of it is great, the characters are fun and have a lot of chemistry with one another which works really well as a sequel to Genshiken but with a different vibe and topics covered, but it throws away most of it for the sake of a harem arc that feels directionless most of the time and way overstays it's welcome

  7.5/10, mostly brought down by this final arc, Ogiue Chika is my wife and Sue is my daughter

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