Category Archives: manga

More Powerful than Freeza and Aizen Put Together

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Manga and anime can be known for having some plot arcs that seem to go on forever.

Namek? Probably the most notorious long arc ever in anime and manga.

Soul Society? Hueco Mundo? Also pretty long.

But none of them are any match for Akagi‘s “Washizu Mahjong.”

For those of you who’ve never read the manga or watched its anime adaptation, Akagi is the story of a genius/psycho who risks his life in high-stakes games of mahjong, where his superior gambling ability, keen perception of the psychological, and his blatant disregard for his own life make him a legend from as young an age as 14. Eventually, he ends up playing an extremely wealthy and sadistic man named Washizu Iwao, pitting his own blood (literally) against Washizu’s vast fortunes. To top it all off, the game is played with 75% of the tiles transparent. Imagine playing Poker or Yu-Gi-Oh! with 75% of your hand showing at all times.

The anime devotes its entire second half to Washizu. That’s 13 episodes, or 1/4 of a year. When you look at the manga though, the Washizu arc began in 1997, and it still hasn’t concluded even to this day. That’s 15 years on the Same. Exact. Opponent.

While it’s easy to call this filler, it’s probably not so simple. One rumor I’ve heard is that Akagi is so popular that it’s the main reason the magazine it runs in (Kindai Mahjong, home to many, many other mahjong-related titles) is able to stay afloat.  Also, when your long arc is one and a half decades, it goes from being a stalling tactic to probably what the readers actually want.

Now what I find kind of amazing about this is that Akagi actually does quite a good job of keeping the Washizu mahjong interesting. It probably shouldn’t, but like Akagi and the magical sands of hell, it can reverse fortune in an instant. And I think the reason why it’s able to stay readable far longer than any single arc probably has any right to is that the manga can rely on the rules of mahjong (albeit modified with transparent tiles) to keep it grounded in some sense.

Bleach can come up with an ultra final bankai, and Yu-Gi-Oh! can make up cards on the spot with never-before-seen abilities. There’s no such thing as inventing new hands in mahjong. Akagi can play somewhat fast and loose with how the game turns out due to the luck factor (just like when Yugi pulls out the Black Magician at the right moment), but he can’t pull out something which doesn’t exist in the game of mahjong, otherwise it would ruin the integrity of it. Keep in mind though that this is the type of “integrity” where cheating is A-OK, as I think that also explains the appeal. Even in a never-ending game of mahjong, the thrill of Akagi the deceiver is still ripe.

Manga and Women in Refrigerators

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Introduction

If you were to ask an avid and informed fan of superhero comics about controversies surrounding the portrayal of women in the cape-and-mask genre, you might get answers having to do with the male gaze, or the number of female protagonists, or perhaps even whether or not comics need to do more to attract female readers. In every case though, the focus can potentially lead to the phenomenon known as “Women in Refrigerators.”

Coined in 1999 by comics writer Gail Simone (probably most famous for her work on Birds of Prey, a series starring a team of female superheroes), “Women in Refrigerators” refers to a tendency for female characters in superhero comics to be either killed, abused, raped, or depowered in what seems to frequently be a move to anger or inspire a male superhero into action, or to intensify the hatred between the hero and his nemesis. Named after the Green Lantern character Kyle Rayner depicted above (who not only literally finds one of his girlfriends in a fridge but has also lost a number of significant others in his career), WiR has been an on-going discussion among comic fans for the past 12 years. In spite of the age and scope of the topic though, the conversation has not really penetrated the realm of anime and manga.

Given arguments over things like moe and lolicon and how Japanese society treats women, what of “Women in Refrigerators in Manga?” Furthermore, whether they’re informed or ignorant, with the number of people who have spoken or written about WiR in the superhero comics community, what would happen if they all focused their attention more towards manga?

Casca from Berserk, a strong female character horribly traumatized by brutal rape

When initially thinking about the topic, a number of questions came to mind. Would they look at manga and find it to be more sexist than superhero comics? Is the lack of a similar phrase or concept in manga a potential problem for it and any movements towards improving manga? However, I soon realized that WiR and its surrounding discourse are very much shaped by the superhero genre itself; evidence of this includes the whole idea of being “depowered,” something which holds a lot more weight in a setting where super powers are the x-factor in the story.

Of course, comparing one genre to the entirety of manga makes things quite unfair, but even when you narrow it down to, say, shounen fighting and action series, or even a single magazine such as Shounen Jump, the setup of superhero comics has particularly unique consequences.

Conceptual Paradox in the Superhero Genre

The basic superhero (of which Superman is probably the most well-known example) is someone who is somehow stronger, faster, and overall better than the average human, and this allows them to right wrongs. Where the regular authorities falter, the superhero-as-vigilante can come in and thrash the bad guys and make the world a better place. These settings rely on an environment fairly close to our own, one grounded in a similar default reality so that we can compare the ideal of the superhero to the everyday, but it also makes for a world that can start to unravel if the concept is pushed too far.

Adding a superhero to an otherwise normal world can transform it entirely, and when you begin to really question the effects a particular superhero can have on his environment,  you wind up with questions like “If Mr. Fantastic is so smart, why hasn’t he found a cure for cancer?” While there are comics which do explore in detail the influence superheroes can have on society (Watchmen, for instance), and the Mr. Fantastic question isn’t some magic contradiction that destroys the superhero genre, it does point to the idea that a typical superhero story has to set its boundaries if it doesn’t want such questions jumping out at its readers.

The idea of boundaries isn’t limited to superheroes, as just about any story which adds something “superhuman” while wishing to maintain a semblance of normalcy has to draw the line somewhere. The tricky thing with superhero comics, however, is that the manner in which they have developed over the years encourages readers to find those limits through the prominent usage of a shared universe. When a comic is just about Batman, you can see how he fights crime and strikes fear into the seedy underbelly of Gotham City. When you cross him over with Superman though, suddenly Batman is put in contrast with a near-omnipotent alien who can outclass him fifty different ways. The reason to join them together is not to just make Batman look bad but rather to afford both heroes sufficient respect, so it requires Batman to have something extra to make up for it.

Where once he could just be a clever and ingenious individual, Batman is now the smartest man on Earth, armed with the most complex contingency plans ever conceived by man, all to make him Superman’s equal. In manga terms, this would be the equivalent of putting Monkey D. Luffy and Son Goku in the same universe and having to find a way for Luffy to be as powerful and influential as the Dragon Ball protagonist, like saying that Luffy’s rubber body makes him more resistant to ki blasts or something. As Marvel and DC actively promote their shared universes, this type of comparison becomes almost inevitable, and when you’re comparing, then the superhero universe comes under at least a certain degree of scrutiny.

If you then add the on-going saga aspect that is “continuity” to that mix, then the world of the hero can be scrutinized not just in terms of space, but also time. Superhero comics encourage a long-term view of its characters, where the events build on top of each other to create a loose history. And given the longevity that some of these characters possess, an action 30 years ago can continue to be associated with that character. In a comic from 1981, Avengers character Hank Pym hit his wife Janet , and it became a recurring topic all the way up until she died a few years ago. If they were to just ignore it and have the two characters act like nothing had ever happened, then it would have been perhaps silently condoning spousal abuse. However, because they kept it, it wound up defining the characters in certain respects. Although one can argue that this enriched their characters, it also meant that once it was done, neither of them could return to what they were prior to it. And while things are re-written or counteracted on a somewhat regular basis in superhero comics, this shared universe setup means that just one bad decision by one creator can potentially define a character to the point that no amount of reboots or retcons can undo its influence.

One Woman, One Refrigerator, One Universe

Let’s go back to manga for a little bit and pick a title that most definitely has female characters that are WiR candidates: Fist of the North Star. Now I love this series and consider it among my all-time favorites, but its female characters range from essentially cheerleaders to useless. Going in the style of the original Women in Refrigerators post, I’m going to list them with a list of ways they’ve been “fridged.”

Yuria (above) abused, forced to become Shin’s lover, kills herself (not really), contracts a fatal illness from long-term radiation exposure

Mamiya turned into a sex slave, her lover Rei dies, stops fighting entirely

Lin almost forced to have Kaioh’s baby, brainwashed into falling in love with another man

And so on and so forth.

Women are kind of a non-factor in Fist of the North Star no matter what they say about love and no matter how many women nobly sacrifice themselves. But at the same time, the fact that Fist of the North Star ran in Shounen Jump doesn’t mean that its portrayal of women exists in the same environment as One Piece or Toriko or City Hunter. Misogyny can exist, and it can even exist in multiple titles from the same publisher in the same magazine to the extent that you could call the whole thing sexist, but there is less of a risk of the comics congealing into an entrenched, constantly self-reinforcing “super misogyny.”

With superhero comics and their long continuity and shared universes, it can be incredibly easy to permanently “poison the well.” In this environment, a single instance of a WiR does not stand alone in its own conceptual space, but ends up existing in a greater universe, and then stays there in the timeline potentially forever. While this is not inherently a bad thing, it means that more innocent and simplistic stories and concepts have a harder time maintaining that innocence. If someone said The Cat in the Hat and Schindler’s List occupied the same continuity, it would be very hard for Dr. Seuss’s characters to be quite the same when the idea of genocide hangs over them.

This can even apply to the degree to which women are sexualized in comics. Somewhat like how “Hollywood Ugly” requires you to believe that the attractive celebrity in baggy clothes and glasses is meant to be homely, if you take a title where the aesthetic portrayal of women is geared primarily towards the sexual gratification of men and put it in the same world as a comic where the attractiveness of women is depicted in a more neutral fashion, then there is bound to be a conceptual clash, especially if the two were to cross over directly. Either the overt “butt and breasts out” poses would have to be acknowledged directly with respect to how a woman would normally pose herself (accounting of course for stylistic flourish), or the more neutral design would have to be subsumed by the overtly erotic aesthetic. If respect is supposedly afforded to both portrayals, then there winds up being a compromise, much like Superman and Batman’s situation, that generates at least a certain degree of schizophrenia.

It can also be easy to poison the well of a shared universe because once that idea takes root in one corner of the world, it becomes easier for it to spread to other parts as well, and I think this is what ends up really shaping Women in Refrigerators in terms of the superhero genre. While I may be assuming things too much, I think it’s far easier to corrupt an innocent idea than it is to make a corrupted idea turn innocent, and so every time another woman gets killed or raped or depowered, it means less and less of a chance for that whole thing to be turned around entirely, which means the rate at which the universe becomes “darker” winds up being far faster than the rate at which it becomes “lighter,” unless deliberate steps are taken to work against it.

Given everything I’ve said about the danger of a shared universe, does this mean that any sort of shared universe will lead to similar problems? Not necessarily, but I think that regardless of which direction that universe goes, compromise is almost inevitable. When Neon Genesis Evangelion with its emphasis on psychological turmoil enters the crossover environment of the Super Robot Wars games, its story and characters end up less traumatized overall. When Lupin III meets Detective Conan, his role is more of a lovable scamp than a hardened thief. Even taking darker series and making them lighter to fit in another work is a form of compromise. However, neither of those bother to maintain their continuities for prolonged periods. Moreover, while a shared universe does not guarantee Women in Refrigerators, the way that superhero comics have turned out means that it is constantly poised to do so, and as far as I can tell, the discussion surrounding WiR is very much about a concerted effort to turn things around, to deal with what may very well be a case of inertia.

Towards Methods for Manga?

A quote from Gail Simone in 1999 clarifies one of the original purposes of Women in Refrigerators:

My simple point has always been: if you demolish most of the characters girls like, then girls won’t read comics. That’s it!

This is not as much of a problem for manga, even titles and magazines designed for boys, as many publishers in Japan have learned ways to court a female audience. Some titles in Shounen Jump are especially known for their sizable female readerships: Saint Seiya, Katekyou Hitman REBORN!, and The Prince of Tennis, to name a few. Granted, most of these titles have primarily male casts and so the portrayal of female characters is not the primary draw, but that is also getting into another more complex issue of gender-based character identification. I’ll leave this as something of an aside for the sake of not going too off-course, but will say that this might mean that it doesn’t take outstanding portrayals of women to attract a female audience, but at the very least ones that won’t make them feel uncomfortable to be women.

As it is, the “Women in Refrigerators” discourse is especially suited for the superhero genre. Its concerns and the manner in which it can quickly spread to other stories are at least partly predicated on the structure set out by decades of development. If WiR is to be applied to manga, or even a certain genre or magazine/publisher, then it likely needs to be modified to fit a very different history, both in terms of manga itself and the Japanese culture surrounding it. Personally, I’m not entirely sure what changes need to be made. It’s probably an endeavor that is too big for one post, but I can throw out some possible directions.

I think the killing, rape, and abuse aspects probably translate adequately as is, but to go back to the “depowered” aspect of WiR as something very particular to superheroes, perhaps it would be a good idea to find something that is not quite so specific. If we’re dealing with a genre like shounen action, your Dragon Ball‘s and Naruto‘s and such, then maybe it’s not so much a matter of depowering as it is being quickly outclassed or made irrelevant. A lot of characters in these works often get some kind of improvement to their abilities, but that is made obsolete by the fact that every other hero gets stronger at a quicker rate. While this is not exclusive to female characters, it may be something worth tracking among female characters to see how they’re made to be functionally useless.

If we’re looking more at sexually-charged (but not necessarily pornographic) titles, maybe it would be wise to keep an eye out for degradation or humiliation. For example, how often are characters made to do something or wear an outfit that not only embarrasses them, but sexualizes them in the process? What of humiliation as a sexual tool, even when it’s meant to be light-hearted prodding and not something more extreme like torture?

Maybe it would also be a good idea to take a look at one popular title and to note where the female characters are mistreated solely to advance the male characters’ stories. After that is done, the next step would be to look at works that may have come about as the result of its popularity, whether it was because there was a clear influence, there was a blatant attempt at riding the wave, it was the next title readers flocked to, or even if there was some kind of editorial mandate to feature more of those stories. Do some of those WiR-esque ideas and portrayals still exist? Are they getting weaker or stronger? This may be a way to track things across one magazine or one genre without having the shared universe of superhero comics.

Of course, this is all assumes that WiR is not an issue when the female readership has been established and sustained sufficiently, but what about the possibility that the phenomenon not only exists in shoujo and josei, but that such events might occur in greater numbers compared to manga geared towards male readers?

What I’ve provided in the ideas above would not comprise a complete framework, but then again neither did the original list of Women in Refrigerators. There is a distinct possibility that with each genre of manga, even if you were to narrow it to titles somehow similar to superhero comics, that it would require its own adjustments be they subtle or broad. It may even be the case that in the end, we find out that WiR cannot be applied to manga no matter how many modifications are made, but I think it would still be a worthwhile endeavor to figure that out in the first place. I’m sure we’d learn something along the way.

The Fujoshi Files 36: Hina

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Name: Hina (ひな)
Alias: N/A
Relationship Status: Single
Origin: Tonari no 801-chan

Information:
Hina is a junior high school student and younger sister of 801-chan. Relatively inexperienced as an otaku, let alone a fujoshi, Hina often makes rookie mistakes such as shortsightedness when it comes to the history of things. She has even gone so far as to believe that Aslan from The Chronicles of Narnia had his name based on Athrun Zala from Gundam SEED. For this reason, Hina can often get on her older sister’s nerves.

More generally, Hina is at the perfect age to suffer from Chuunibyou, the delusional illness that comes from being a junior high student otaku and thinking that a number of things are fantastically cool and deep. Like her sister, she is fond of the Prince of Tennis, but has differing tastes otherwise.

Fujoshi Level:
Although one might suspect that her older sister’s influence is responsible for Hina becoming a fujoshi, this is not the case. Hina was able to reach that mindset entirely on her own, even while 801-chan was trying to hide that aspect of her own life.

Genshiken II (Nidaime, Second Season, Whatever) Due Out in the US in (Probably) September

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I’m really just referencing Anime News Network referencing me (who in turn found out via Brian Ruh) about Genshiken Second Season, as well as informing anyone who is still not aware of the fact that Kodansha USA has the license for the new Genshiken.

This was all based on this Amazon page by the way. It says it’ll be out by September 4th, but I think we all know how Amazon dates can shift around. At the very least, we know who has it (and it makes sense, seeing as Kodansha USA is reprinting the original Genshiken).

I already buy the volumes in Japanese, but I am not entirely against buying them once more in English. That way I can share them with people!

Lastly, “De Maniax van Ogiue” indeed.

THE COMIPO TRIAL EXPIRES TODAY SO HERE IS ONE LAST HURRAH

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In case this somehow convinces anyone to purchase it: Official Site

If you want to see true mastery of Comipo, head over to Dave‘s Kawaiikochan Gaming no Korner.

The Fujoshi Files 35: Akagi Sena

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Name: Akagi, Sena (赤城瀬菜)
Alias: N/A
Relationship Status: Single
Origin: Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai

Information:
Akagi Sena is a high school student and member of the Computer Research Club. Adept at not only playing computer games but also analyzing and programming them, she seeks to create games of her own, albeit ones involving muscular men having intimate relationships with one another. Akagi is a hardcore fujoshi, and though she at first attempted to hide this fact from others by presenting herself as a regular girl mildly interested in anime, manga and games, was not able to keep the charade up for long. When pushed to the limit, Sena loudly proclaims her love of all things homo.

Sena has a very close relationship with her older brother, bordering on a brother complex (which matches his own sister complex), and is the only one capable of calming her down after one of her fujoshi tirades. She is also friends with fellow otaku Gokou Ruri, though they were at one point quite antagonistic towards each other.

Fujoshi Level:
Akagi proudly boasts of her ability to pair almost anything. In addition to fantasizing about the members of her own club having sexual relations with each other, Sena claims that she is able to find potential in even the relationship between a spoon and a fork.

Walk that Aisle with Style and Profile: Genshiken II, Chapter 72

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In this month’s Genshiken II, Madarame and Hato have an awkward but heartfelt man-to-man talk and Ogiue springs possibly the worst question could ask a room of otaku.

The chapter opens up right where we left off with Madarame and Hato, with Hato asking to come inside Madarame’s apartment so that they can have a talk. Hato’s main goal is to apologize, as he believes his actions have led to Madarame not coming to the clubroom anymore. Situated right on his desk however is a copy of the game Kohsaka’s company was selling at ComiFest, inevitably drawing the discussion towards it. As they discuss its rather unique contents (though all the characters you romance are actually otoko no ko, you can also get them pregnant and marry them), they also begin touching upon the doubts and dilemmas that are currently bothering them. In the end, Madarame’s nonchalant attitude towards Hato being unable to draw anything but BL (his advice is essentially, “do what you want”) actually helps Hato resolve to work on the planned manga with Ogiue for the school festival.

At the club, both Ogiue and Hato independently decide to do something different and decidedly not BL, going with Sue’s proposed plan of Ogiue on script, Hato on art, with no crossover. Ogiue, looking to do a high school shoujo love story, asks the members of Genshiken if they have any stories of romance in their own high school experiences to share (also making the best face ever in the process). The chapter ends with a collection of dumbfounded stares, which shows that when it comes to teenage romance, no one in there can call themselves experienced.

During Madarame and Hato’s conversation, Madarame wonders aloud if it might be time for him to stop being so attached to his old college life. Hato thinks that he’s the cause for Madarame wanting to leave the club for good, but I think it’s clear that he’s probably one of the less significant factors, if really one at all. Madarame’s lingering feelings for Saki bleed through during their discussion of Kohsaka’s game, and it’s evident from his tone that the decision to move on is more tied to a rather more complex set of feelings. On the one hand, moving on means letting go of Kasukabe and deciding that it’s over. On the other hand, it can also mean that it’s time to “grow up” and stop being the otaku he was during college. Too many strong emotions are bundled together to not make this anything less than a growing concern for Madarame.

The fact that Madarame played a game centered around otoko no ko is both surprising and not. We already knew that his tastes could be pretty off-the-wall, and in terms of what’s out there, girl-boys aren’t anything special by comparison. However, this does further emphasize the idea that what one finds attractive in actual people may not be what they enjoy in their fictional characters, like with Madarame and Saki.

What is bizarre though is the whole thing about one of the characters being based on Kohsaka. Madarame mentions in the chapter that, not only is the character also named Kohsaka Makoto (with different kanji), not only does he look like Kohsaka, but his dialogue also closely resembles Kohsaka’s way of speaking. Now imagine you’re playing a visual novel, and you know for a fact that the character in front of you is based on a person you’ve known for years. It’s actually a step beyond finding out a friend of yours does porn now, and it’s one of the stranger kinds of familiarity that I can imagine.

Hato in this chapter is also revealing more about himself, particularly that his fantasies aren’t necessarily restricted to “just” BL. It may be about 95% of what’s going on there, but he begins to entertain the thought of Kasukabe turning to Madarame, though it ends up being aborted part-way through because of something that the old members of Genshiken determined back at the last graduation party in Volume 9: Saki isn’t moe, or more specifically, Saki’s personality and demeanor are such that it’s hard to turn her into a character type (“chara”) without significant changes. As Hato starts to try and think of something, he immediately remembers his first meeting with her, where she instantly saw through his disguise and called him a crossdresser.

Kasukabe’s too sharp, too real, which again emphasizes the contrast between Madarame as otaku and Madarame as a man of unrequited love. Have I ever said that Genshiken‘s really good at characters? Like fifty times? Okay, just so you know.

Going over to the Ogiue side of the chapter (which still involves Hato anyway, so I guess we could more call this a Hato chapter?), let’s talk about that face. Perhaps more than anything else I’ve seen, this expression is a sign that Ogiue’s changed deep inside, because I could not possibly imagine her making that face even up to the point where Hato, Yoshitake, and Yajima join the club. Even with her current problems, it just seems like a great weight has not only been lifted off her shoulders, but it’s also been tossed far away and mined for ore.

It’s also good to see that Ogiue and Hato have resolved to work together for the school festival, and that in doing so they’ve also resolved to work through their respective mental blocks. The fact that they’ve decided to go with a high school shoujo story is an interesting challenge, not only because it means new and unfamiliar territory, but because they’re otaku trying to write what is (probably) going to be a typical teenage romance. This is obviously where Ogiue’s last question in the chapter is coming from; as someone whose only pre-college romance ended in the worst trauma of her life, she can’t use her own experiences to fuel the story.

I think this chapter leaves with us wondering just who among the people in the club actually dated in high school? While Yoshitake might be the most obvious one given her personality, I’m basing my prediction on those last two panels of the clubroom.

Of all the people in there, only one is not shown to be reacting incredulously to Ogiue’s question.

That’s right. I get the feeling that we’re going to find out about the romantic life of Susanna Hopkins.

Whoo!

A Look at Genshiken Volume 11’s Extras

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The latest volume of Genshiken came out towards the end of 2011, and I was fortunate enough to get a copy by intentionally pre-ordering it twice (they say we make our own luck). As with every other Genshiken, there are a bunch of extra little things like 4-koma to give us more insight into the world of the characters. While not as packed with new information as Volume 10, there are still plenty of things to discover.

For reference, Volume 11 covers the following chapters, which I have reviewed before.

Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67

Sue’s Ogiue collection: The first new thing is the inside cover, behind the dust jacket. Here we see Sue surrounded by Ogiue merchandise. While the PVC figure with its changeable clothing is real, I can tell you with the utmost confidence that the vast majority of the stuff in this room are “what-ifs” at best. You’ll note the Ogiue dolls hanging above, one for each of her “eras,” not counting junior high flashbacks or ComiFest disguises. Interestingly, the picture of Ogiue’s Lilith-esque demon cosplay on that wall scroll is the first time we ever get to see why exactly Ogiue was so intent on hiding her chest when Sasahara came into the room. Lilith-esque indeed.

Women and body hair: A 4-koma where Yoshitake talks about the fact that she has rather long arm-hair makes me realize just how much body hair is a thing in Genshiken, and how much this has to do with the mostly female cast. I think it’s no surprise that it wasn’t really an issue when the club was mostly men, but now we have Yajima talking about how she only shaves her pits when she has to, and Hato accidentally showing his “smoothness.” While it’s not like you can see tufts of hair on their arms or mustaches, the fact that Genshiken has bothered to make this into an on-going topic shows that it’s not afraid to go some places. Then again, this is from the man who screen-toned veins onto breasts for Jigopuri.

Speaking of breasts: A good number of the 4-koma in Volume 11 are concerned with bust sizes, owing to the fact that Hato wore a large chest for his Yamada from Kujian cosplay. Of these, the ones that I think are most interesting are the one where Yajima points out that you can’t exactly say she’s “busty” when her figure resembles a sumo wrestler’s (her own self-disparaging words), and the one where Nakajima mentions that she’s smaller than Ogiue (which she begrudges). Upon reading Nakajima’s 4-koma, I realized that I did not notice this at all in any of her appearances, which is to say that Kio has drawn and characterized Nakajima well as someone who knows how to dress.

Hato’s ultimate cosplay: Hato dresses up as Charles from Infinite Stratos. In other words, a man cosplays as a woman disguising herself as a man.

Ogiue’s Sasa x Mada doujin is a big hit: The freshmen like Ogiue’s doujinshi so much that they all end up making copies of it. The fact that there are people in the club with whom she can really share it is a big step from where she was back when she drew it, and again I have to perhaps point to how different the new generation of club members has turned out to be. That said, it’s clear from just this one panel that it’s equal parts comforting and disconcerting for her.

Heroic Spirit Hopkins: I know a certain Hisui of the Reverse Thieves is going to get a kick out of this one. In the end-of-volume extra, the members of Genshiken discuss the endless enigma that is Sue, trying to figure out the source of her power, both physical and mental. In the end, Sue clarifies for everyone when she says, “I ask of you, are you my master?”

Totally off-topic but: There’s an insert in the volume for Kodansha’s line of light novels, and one of them is a continuation of the Ojamajo Doremi series with the characters now 16 years old! Aptly titled Ojamajo Doremi 16, it features artwork by the original character designer, Umakoshi Yoshihiko, who also did the designs for Heartcatch Precure! and whose art book you should purchase, because it’s totally awesome. As I haven’t finished the Doremi series, I won’t check it out just yet.

The Hato figure: While I own it (as well as the version from the latest issue of Afternoon), I don’t have it on me, so I can’t show it to everyone. Give me a few months.

The Fujoshi Files 34: Fujoko

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Name: Fujoko (ふじょこ)
Alias: N/A
Relationship Status: Single
Origin: Fujoshi no Hinkaku

Information:
Fujoko is a 24-year-old recent hire at her office who is experienced as a fujoshi, but significantly less so when it comes to managing her work along with her otaku lifestyle. Luckily for her, she befriends an older fujoshi at her office named Takayo, who takes Fujoko under her wing and guides her on the path to being a fujoshi capable of handling all tasks. Like Takayo, she is fond of the Shacho franchise, even owning a Shacho hug pillow.

Though Fujoko does not know as much as Takayo, she has a tendency to take Takayo’s advice to the next level. For instance, a simple anime character bentou by Takayo inspires Fujoko to make a full-out lunch shaped like two men in a loving embrace.

Fujoshi Level:
Fujoko’s fujoshi capacity is perhaps best expressed by her room, which is decked out in BL-related merchandise (notably Shacho fan items) on the surface but also hides even deeper, more hardcore items underneath, all specifically arranged so as to avoid suspicion from those who are obliviously unaware.

The Fujoshi Files 33: Takayo

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Name: Takayo (貴代)
Alias: N/A
Relationship Status: Dating
Origin: Fujoshi no Hinkaku

Information:
Takayo is a 29-year-old office worker (OL) who is so experienced in the ways of the fujoshi that she is able to perfectly juggle her professional and personal lives, even using the latter to enrich the former. In addition to carrying a daily planner for fujoshi-related events (coded so that normal people are unable to understand it) and being adept at saving money (to be used later on BL goods), she has also managed to memorize her company’s entire inventory by associating their products with personality types in yaoi. As a young girl with a limited budget, she would purposely take many days to read a single work of BL to extend its enjoyment.

With a younger fujoshi named Fujoko joining the company, Takayo gains an apprentice to whom she teaches the art of being an adult fujoshi. Takayo ahas a little fujoshi sister named Takako, as well as a boyfriend who is fully aware of her hobbies and interests. She is also a fan of the Shacho franchise and its BL potential.

Fujoshi Level:
An “elite fujoshi,” Takayo was able to master the English language for international traveling by reading Slash fiction on the internet. Using the English-language term specifically, Takayo shows that her fujocity knows no borders.