OGIUE MANIAX

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America the Moeful: Genshiken Volume 21

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genshiken21-cover

Chapter 127 may have been the end of Genshiken’s serialization, but that doesn’t mean it’s all over yet! As fine patrons of the Society for Modern Visual Culture know, the volume releases always come with extras. So, I’m going to give my thoughts on some highlights.

First and foremost, it is absolutely necessary to talk about the cover, which features Sue in a somewhat bizarre cosplay of Ritsuko from Kujibiki Unbalance. It certainly doesn’t look like any prior incarnation of Ritsuko from Genshiken, and that’s because…it isn’t.

spottedflower-sexycosplay

The cosplay actually comes from the thinly veiled alternate universe Kio Shimoku manga Spotted Flower. For those unfamiliar with it. The premise basically asks, what if a person very similar to Madarame married someone just like Kasukabe? In it, the unnamed wife, pregnant and sexually frustrated, winds up seducing get husband in that very same outfit.

In other words, Sue (who has become Madarame’s girlfriend) is cosplaying a cosplay worn by a parallel universe Madarame’s wife as a way to get some nerd boott, who is in turn a reference to Kasukabe and her Ritsuko cosplay from Genshiken, which is the defining moment when Madarame fell in love with her.

Talk about peak meta. And we haven’t even opened the book!

Inside, you have the standard comic strips between chapters. I won’t go through all of them, but I do want to draw attention to my favorites. genshiken21-ninjaslayer2First is one where Yoshitake mythbusts every idea that Sue has about ninjas. In reaction, Sue makes a Ninja Slayer reference: “Kill all ninjas! Yeeart! Guwah!”

Here we have Sue, an American otaku, referencing a book series that was supposedly created by Americans who love Japanese culture, which was then translated into Japanese, buy is actually a satirical look by Japanese creators at the American obsession with ninjas. Did I say we hit peak meta before? I might have been mistaken.

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The second is after Madarame and Sue start dating. Hato gives some helpful advice, just in case: “Sue lives next to me, and the walls are thin, so keep that in mind.”

This leads to the final post-chapter content, which caps off Genshiken Nidaime. In the last series, it revolved around a discussion of whether Kasukabe is moe. This time, it has to do with how pathetic Madarame and Kuchiki are in different ways.

At his graduation after-party, Kuchiki brags that he has taken Madarame’s first kiss. Ohno exclaims that surely Sue’s more than made up for that deficit, but this is far from the truth. Not a kiss (let alone anything else) has happened, and the members of Genshiken contemplate just how much of a wimp Madarame is. Kuchiki gets upset over the fact that he never got a girlfriend in college, and has the gall to ask Ohno once again if he can touch her boob, just once. Ohno, unfortunately, is very drunk (as tends to be the case with her at parties), and she actually agrees, going so far as to comply when he asks if she can remove her bra partway underneath her sweater. However, Kuchiki makes his attempt, Yajima gut checks Kuchiki. Sadly for Yajima, all this does is awaken a new fetish in Kuchiki. Everyone is happy that he’s graduating and going away.

I kind of wish that the last moments of Genshiken didn’t have Kuchiki at the center, but it isn’t all bad. In particular, I like the notion that Madarame still hasn’t quite gotten over his awkwardness with girls. In fact, the very idea of him having a girlfriend has probably short-circuited his brain. And if anything, it makes me very aware of just how dramatically Sasahara and Ogiue’s relationship escalated once it hit the threshold. The two of them literally starting having sex with each other once they got on the same page, which is probably not the image we ever had of otaku.

The last things I want to talk about are the extras I received with Volume 21.

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I ordered from the Japanese comic store Comic Zin, and with it came a 4-page bonus illustration featuring artists associated with the Genshiken universe. It has Koume Keito (artist of the Kujibiki Unbalance manga), Yagumo Kengou (artist of the Kujibiki Unbalance light novel), as well as Kio himself. It also features a message from Tamaru Hiroshi, creator of Rabuyan, a manga about a Madarame-esque loser.

First editions of Volume 21 also get a version of the “Thank You Messages” compilation that came with the final chapter in Monthly Afternoon. It also features brand new color art for its cover, featuring most of the now-gigantic cast of Genshiken. I love the drawing of Ogiue on here; she honestly looks so cool.

So that’s that. I’ll see you (hopefully) in January, as I start my look back on the first Genshiken. But before that, I still have another post to make, about Kasukabe Saki. Keep an eye out!

genshiken21-thankyoubook

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New York Comic Con 2016 Essay #3: The Artist Alley vs. My Expectations

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For this year’s New York Comic Con (which is now months ago, whoops!), I’m doing something a bit different with my coverage. Instead of doing a standard con report, with overviews and opinions on panels, artist alley, etc., I’m going to be writing a series of essays based on things I saw at NYCC 2016. Think of it like extended thought exercises and musings inspired by the con.

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While manga is closest to my heart, I love comics in general. Even if individual titles aren’t my cup of tea at times, and even if I find myself going back to Japanese comics more often than not (for reasons both rational and irrational), I never want to stop giving different types of comics a chance. This is one of the reasons I’m generally eager to visit the Artist’s Alley at New York Comic Con. Though it’s been years since I looked forward to Wednesdays (the day when new comics in America come out), I still opened myself up to the artists of NYCC 2016 with a simple desire: I wanted to be wowed, to be drawn to them and convinced to read more.

Perhaps I set too unfair a standard for myself and for the artists there.

I want to emphasize that I think the New York Comic Con Artist’s Alley is full of incredible talent. These are hard-working artists, each of whom have their own stories when it comes to how they came to comics. Also, given that NYCC is built on American comics culture, a lot of it would be the things you’d expect: superheroes, graphic novels, and certain approaches to cartooning and anatomy that have grown out of the American tradition. I think all of these things are great and have their own unique strengths worth exploring, but when it came time to find something that, pardon the cliché, spoke to me, I just wasn’t able to.

I feel that the decision-making process I went through as I looked from booth to booth was vague, even to myself. It’s not that I had any specific criteria. For example, I enjoy seeing comics about cool girls doing cool things, but I’d find that the particular arrangements that existed in the Artist’s Alley fell into recurring categories that made them all blend together to a certain extent. If they weren’t female superheroes, they were girls who wanted to show how much they defy gender expectations. These are both very good things, but it’s as if, in the rush to seize these ideas and the momentum they carry (whether for profit, social consciousness, desire to create interesting stories, or something else entirely), they ended up collectively dulling the product in my eyes.

I believe that a lot of the problem lies with me. When you distance yourself from something as I have, you tend to look at it in broader strokes. The opposite is often true if you get too deep into something. For example, when it comes to anime I’m a long-time Gundam fan. I’ve seen nearly every series, and I appreciate the subtle nuances and varying approaches that they bring, for better or worse. To someone outside of Gundam fandom, it just all looks like robots fighting wars and characters giving speeches. Thus, when I looked at Artist’s Alley as this well of potential to bring me back into the fold, I think I was expecting it to have much more of a gravitational pull than it had any right to. After all, if you’re at an Artist’s Alley at New York Comic Con, it’s natural to assume that you should already be into the stuff. It’s not the responsibility of the artists there to “convince me” to give American comics more of a chance, only to convince me to check out their work.

I still plan on taking a similar approach to Artist’s Alley next year with some adjustments. Instead of hoping for something to call out to me and speak directly to my soul, I’ll drift towards anything that catches my fancy. I shouldn’t expect a revolution, but I should at the very least leave the door open for minor reforms.

The Fujoshi Files 164: Sugar

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Name: N/A
Alias: Sugar (シュガー)
Relationship Status: Single
Origin: Girls Saurus DX

Information:
A member of her high school’s Manga Study Club, she assists the club president Maria in creating BL manga, notably one of student Chiryuu Shingo, who has a reputation for avoiding women. When Maria nearly loses her ability to create yaoi due to a kiss from Chiryuu, Sugar actively removes Chiryuu and decides that they can no longer create manga of him, lest it taint Maria further.

Fujoshi Level:
Sugar at one point punches fellow club member Kitty, because Sugar believes in the “Mike x Keith” pairing instead of the “Keith x Mike” one.

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Ichigo x Rukia: The Victim of Soap Opera Tactics?

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Warning: Bleach Ending Spoilers

I’ll be upfront: I shipped Ichigo x Rukia.

From the very start of Bleach I loved their dynamic. The continuously growing friendship, the humorous arguments, and both the establishment and reinforcement that their bond was something special made me feel that, if anything was true about Bleach, it was that they would end up loving each other and being closer than anyone could possibly imagine.

While romantic love is not the only kind out there, it’s clear from the ending of Bleach that creator Kubo Tite had a different idea in mind. As seen in the final chapter, Ichigo ends up with childhood friend Orihime, and Rukia ends up with a childhood friend of her own, Renji. While those two relationship paths were certainly developed throughout the series, it still seemed jarring to me because I still found the connection between Ichigo and Rukia to be so much stronger and more profound. Because I wasn’t deeply invested in Bleach by the end, these canon pairings didn’t jar me into any sort of indignant fervor, but they nevertheless left me a bit puzzled.

In a conversation with Kate from the Reverse Thieves anime blog about when fans and creators disagree in terms of romance in particular fictional titles, she pointed towards the soap opera community. As love triangles and changing relationships are hallmarks of soap operas, they inevitably create strong groups of shippers for any and all combinations. However, when there is a particularly fervent fanbase that the creators disagree with greatly, one common tactic is to separate the two characters so that they are not allowed any on-screen time together. The hope (though often a futile one) is that it will quash the support base for that particular pairing and promote the ones that are being shown.

Upon first hearing about this, I laughed at it as an amusing quirk of soap operas, but the more I thought about it the more it started to sound like exactly what happened with Bleach. If you look at early chapters of the manga, Ichigo and Rukia are around each other often, and their interaction is the core of what what makes the series endearing. When Rukia gets taken to Soul Society and Ichigo follows to rescue her, there’s a sense that something has been kindled between them, even if it might not necessarily be romantic feelings. It’s no wonder so many fans (including myself) latched onto this idea.

However, when looking at later developments in Bleach, Ichigo and Rukia are rarely seen together. I might be mistaken, but I think the last time that they spent any significant time together is after Soul Society when Rukia is supposedly gone but shows up at Ichigo’s high school once more, new and improved. While seeing Ichigo’s reaction to Rukia’s return is another “evidence” moment, what’s more important here is that, in just about every arc after this, Ichigo and Rukia are usually fighting separately. More often than not, Ichigo is with Orihime, and Rukia is with Renji. While Rukia had her own arc of being taken away to another world, Orihime gets the same treatment in Hueco Mundo. Even in the final battle against the ultimate villain of the series, Yhwach, these combinations are perpetuated.

Of course, I don’t actually know what went into Kubo’s thinking, but it just plain stands out to me that Ichigo and Rukia have so little page time together after a certain point in Bleach. Although ultimately how a relationship develops in fiction is the product of how creators write the characters, it’s as if Kubo had ended up smothering any additional opportunities for fans to enjoy and revel in the Ichigo/Rukia dynamic which made the series so strong initially. It feels like the only time we see them together again is in that final chapter when the two are already happily married to others and with kids of their own. The other remnant of their bond is when their respective children meet, but that is only a fragment of a new potential beginning between two similar-yet-different characters.

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‘Tis the Seasoning: Ogiue Maniax Status Update for December 2016

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Is it December already?! It actually feels like I just got done writing the update for November, and now we’re at the end of the year. Much love to all of my sponsors on Patreon for being with me for the entire year!

General:

Johnny Trovato

Ko Ransom

Alex

Diogo Prado

Viga

Yoshitake Rika fans:

Elliot Page

Hato Kenjirou fans:

Elizabeth

Yajima Mirei fans:

Machi-Kurada

November was the 9th anniversary of Ogiue Maniax, so I wrote my thoughts on how the blog’s been going and where I think it’ll head next. I’ve since reflected a bit further on what I said there. While I primarily look at Ogiue Maniax as a place to share thoughts and ideas, I think I’ve been a little sparse in terms of denser, heavier content as of late. I’m looking to write better and with greater insight as I move forward, but also balancing it out with shorter, lighter posts, much like a three-course meal.

It was a long time coming, but I finally posted my feelings on the dismissal of Precure as insignificant because it’s not Sailor Moon. As a fan of both I feel like this is a recurring issue, and I hope that magical girl enthusiasts and just anime watchers in general can come to appreciate Precure better.

I also began my pseudo-series of posts about characters I love, with Inukami Kyouko from the volleyball manga Shoujo Fight. As Ogiue Maniax was built on a foundation of character appreciation, I felt that it was kind of a nice return to my roots, so to speak.

This month’s Patreon-sponsored post sees me tackle the third season of Aikatsu!, which passes the baton from heroine Hoshimiya Ichigo to young upstart Oozora Akari. I mostly talk about the idea of switching protagonists and how the series handles it.

Finally, I want to give attention to something I wrote the day before the US presidential election. Even after all the chaos that has ensued, I want people to read it and perhaps take it to heart. I think it is all too easy to want to silence others if one believes others to simply be hateful and ignorant, but that merely creates greater animosity in my opinion. It’s ostensibly an anime-related post because I talk about Legend of the Galactic Heroes!

Look forward to the rest of December’s posts! I’ve got a new Anime Secret Santa review on the way, my annual “best characters of the year” post, and more!

The Fujoshi Files 163: Angel

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Name: N/A
Alias: Angel (エンジェル)
Relationship Status: Dating?
Origin: Girls Saurus DX

Information:
A member of the Manga Study Club at her high school, Angel works as an assistant for the club president Maria on her BL manga. In particular, she works on a manga based on the student Chiryuu Shingo, who is known for avoiding women. Angel claims she has a boyfriend, though this boyfriend is supposedly in a parallel universe.

Fujoshi Level:
Angel is considered to be a peer to her fellow club members in terms of being a fujoshi.

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The Fujoshi Files 162: Kitty

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Name: N/A
Alias: Kitty (キティ)
Relationship Status: Single
Origin: Girls Saurus DX

Information:
A member of her high school’s Manga Study Club, she acts as an assistant for the club president Maria on their popular BL manga based on one of the students at her school, Chiryuu Shingo. At one point she argues about how many times Chiryuu should orgasm in a specific scene.

Fujoshi Level:
Kitty gets into a fight with one of her fellow club members because she supports a pairing of characters named Keith and Mike, in that order.

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Amae Koromo and Her Weird Japanese Speech Patterns

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Amae Koromo, demon of the high school mahjong world, is the first major opponent in the manga Saki. Able to oppress her opponents using the power of the moon, her physical appearance is deceptive: though she’s a year older than Saki herself, she resembles a small child, which causes her grief to no end. Those of you who’ve seen the anime and read the manga, however, might not be fully aware of just how much Koromo’s strange mix of naivete and maturity also comes across in her speech.

When Koromo speaks, the two main elements to notice are that 1) she often mispronounces words and names like a child would, but that this is contrasted with 2) she uses a heavy, heavy amount of classical Japanese idioms and obscure, old-fashioned vocabulary. So just as often as Koromo will call Nodoka “Nonoka,” and act like a spoiled brat, she’ll throw in phrases like 黄壌 (koujou, afterlife) and 神算鬼謀 (shinsan kibou, ingenious scheme). Her Japanese is so dense and difficult at times that Japanese people themselves have trouble. If you do a search for many of her lines, you’ll find even Japanese speakers asking, “What in the world is she saying?”

The result is that Koromo comes across as a girl who is very well-read and intelligent, but also sheltered and unaware of what the commoners enjoy. This, as readers of Saki know, is exactly what she’s like.

This site collects Koromo’s idioms up to Volume 8 of the manga, while this one has some other examples of her strange vocabulary. And as always, may the Haitei Raoyue be with you.

Ogiue 009: Ogiue Maniax 9th Anniversary

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Today marks nine years of Ogiue Maniax. Normally, this would be a post reflecting back on just the blog itself, but the world is in such a crazy spot at the moment that the times of a small anime blog seem to pale in comparison. Still, while a huge part of me wants to do more to help my fellow human beings, I still plan on keeping up with all the anime and manga out there.

Nine years is not that far from eight, but somehow it feels like so much more. Maybe it’s because the big “10” is on the horizon, and that’s a pretty crazy place to be. Most anime blogs last maybe two to three years, and somehow I’ve been chugging along. I attribute it to stubbornness, perseverance, and a willingness to let half-baked and flawed ideas get posted (sometimes typos and all). A friend recently told me a famous quote: “Perfect is the enemy of good enough.” I think, when it comes to the things I’ve accomplished in my life, especially this blog, that accounts for a good deal of my success.

Perhaps the biggest topic of the entire year for Ogiue Maniax is the end of Genshiken itself. In my final chapter review, I wrote about all the good times I had with the series, and how it impacted the blog, and the takeaway from all of that is simply, Genshiken changed and so did Ogiue Maniax. What it means to be a fan or an otaku, the cultural associations with these ideas, has morphed significantly over the course of nine years. In a recent episode of Anime World Order, they discussed the increase in the number of fashion designers as guests at Anime Weekend Atlanta (and cons in general). Just thinking about how we live in a world where fashion is a big deal to nerds says to me that we’re in a very different place.

Genshiken reflected these changes well, which makes me want to go back and take another look. For that reason, I am making an announcement:

Starting next year (most likely January 2017), I will be re-reviewing the original Genshiken manga. Rather than going chapter by chapter, I am going to be looking at it one volume at a time on an approximately bi-monthly schedule. I already reviewed the series a long time ago (for my first anniversary!), but I expect to get a new perspective on an old friend, especially with knowledge of Nidaime.

Another sign that Ogiue Maniax is nine years old is that the blog itself looks like it comes from nine years ago. I’ve considered changing the design at some point, but I’m just not sure. Blogging itself in this format seems to have left the lands of trendiness long ago as well, and perhaps I’ve stubbornly refused to adapt to changing times in that regard. YouTube will never be my medium, but I wonder if it’d be worth it to really mix things up.

While not exactly a stylistic change, in light of recent events in the world I’m considering something. I might make more posts that veer towards political thought, though not in a way that takes over Ogiue Maniax or makes it any less of an anime blog. One can argue that just about any action can be political (including actively tried to avoid it), but what I’m thinking about is writing more about the goings-on of politics with respect to the US, Japan, and elsewhere, and how they potentially impact fans, production, and the on-going conversations we have about respect, anger, diversity, and so on. However, I am aware of how much the strength of my writing comes from trying to see all sides of a situation and I wish to not get so embroiled in thinking of “sides” that I don’t challenge my own viewpoint on a regular basis, so I don’t wish it to become too much a part of any “cause.” It’s a balancing act that I’m still trying to figure out as a person, and I still fully intend on maintaining my love of anime’s sheer variety.

That was a bit of a ramble, but those are my genuine thoughts and feelings. I hope you’ll hang on with me as we jump into 2017 and reach a decade of Ogiue Maniax.

I Heart Volleyball Captain Inugami Kyouko

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inukamikyouko

I recently found another favorite manga character: Inugami Kyouko from the volleyball manga Shoujo Fight by Nihonbashi Yoko. As captain of the Kokuyodani Girls’ Volleyball Team, she’s a trusted leader whose insight and sense of caring for her teammates are as impressive as her talent for the game itself. However, she’s also a huge troll always eager to set up a practical joke, and having those qualities all wrapped up into a single awesome package is what wins me over as a fan and admirer.

Looks-wise, Inugami has deeply piercing eyes, a limber physique, and almost always sports a grin that belies her fondness for ribbing others. It’s that smile which draws my attention most of the time. This is because it’s either setting up a moment where she’ll do something out of the kindness of her heart for one of her teammates, or is the precursor to one of her pranks. The fact that it’s hard to tell which is which is part of the thrill of her character.

Inugami’s jokes come in two forms. The first is a verbal quip, where she’ll nonchalantly comment about something that embarrasses one of her teammates. For example, when their new coach puts the entire team on a fast, one of the other girls comments that it shouldn’t be necessary because all of them are in good shape and can hardly be called overweight. Inugami then suddenly appears behind them to try and correct them: one of her fellow third-years has trouble keeping off the weight. For her trouble, she gets smacked upside her head. This isn’t to say that I think fat jokes are funny, but rather that Inugami’s delivery is where the humor lies.

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The second joke type is a prop gag. Inugami’s hobby is constructing items and scenarios that will aid her trickster attitude. She’ll paint a basketball to look like a volleyball and then try to deceive the first-year students into playing with it. She’ll make an entire fake souvenir gift box of volleyball mascot manjuu. She constructs round tables in the vein of King Arthur’s. Once, she even tried to get the girls to play a game in a pool just because it’d be funny. In most cases, she again usually gets socked for her efforts.

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If there are any characters I might compare Inugami Kyouko to, it would actually be a mix of Miyako from Hidamari Sketch, who similarly makes weird objects that no one else would think up, and Mai from Nichijou, who is the most supreme troll in existence. The fact that she ends up being the “boke” to other characters’ “tsukkomi” roles is what I think keeps her charming. She isn’t really getting away with her trollish behavior, so she never feels cruel. If anything, Inugami it speaks to a kind of strange innocence in her character, that she’s always interested in having fun.

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