Category Archives: review

The Time of Retribution, Battle 2: Genshiken II, Chapter 63

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Chapter 63 of Genshiken II is day 1 of Comic Festival, and some of the very best Genshiken chapters have been in that venue. This time around is no exception, and in fact it’s one of the most densely packed chapters ever in the manga. There’s a lot to go through, so let’s do a quick run-down first.

After finishing the second half of her debut professional work, Ogiue pulls an all-nighter to crank out an additional cheaper-quality doujinshi to complement her collaborative effort with Yabusaki. Unable to make it to Comic Festival before the afternoon, she sends Sue in her place, who naturally torments Yabusaki and gets along well with Asada the cat-faced girl, whose first name we discover is “Naoko” (We also get verification on pronunciation of at least the first half of Ogiue’s pen name: Ogino). As Comic Festival begins, a line begins to form at their table due to the popularity of Ogiue’s published manga, which leaves Yabusaki flustered.

I’m not sure if this is Yabusaki’s ComiFest debut or not, but it is Hato’s first time attending. This being Day 1 (the girl-oriented day), he crossplays as Yamada from Kujibiki Unbalance in order to make it less awkward for him to purchase his desired yaoi doujinshi, and in doing so continues the club tradition of Kujian cosplay. Managing to fool men and women alike, Hato ends up facing a dilemma when he’s confronted with having to hold up a large sign for the men’s bathroom, a situation he tries to avoid but is naturally inevitable. While Sue attacks from a fortified position through her signature obscure references (Kyuukyoku Choujin R), Angela brings the gaijin assault head on; when she’s not teaming up for a startlingly apt Panty & Stocking cosplay with Ohno, she’s grabbing Hato’s chest to verify his gender.

Ogiue meanwhile finally leaves her apartment, but at the same time over at Tokyo Big Sight, Nakajima, Ogiue’s old “friend” from her traumatic junior high days, visits Yabusaki’s table expecting Ogiue to be there, wherein the chapter ends on this cliffhanger.

Phew! And again, there’s still two more days of ComiFest left.

The last time Nakajima visited, it conjured up bad memories for Ogiue, who was already dealing with the inner turmoil of shame over her attraction to Sasahara and her fear of hurting him as she did her old boyfriend Makita back in junior high. Since then, Ogiue has learned to accept herself, start dating again, and has even turned her passion for drawing into a career, but when you think about it, she has still never directly confronted Nakajima. Prior to Genshiken II, we could only speculate as to whether or not this would ever happen. Now, short of meeting Makita again, this might very well be the true bookend to Ogiue’s growth over the course of the series, a way to decide her destiny, if you will. All of this has me giddy with anticipation, because while Genshiken II has been delivering so far, all of the fun and games make it easy to forget that this series also handles the dramatic incredibly well.

That’s not to say that the comedy of Genshiken needs to take a hike, as the chapter was hilarious and informative all-around. Hato’s plight is not one I can say I’ve experienced, but I can really feel for the poor guy. It’s interesting to remember that Hato drew a distinction in his mind between cosplay and crossdressing, and also to kind of compare it with Ohno’s own views on cosplaying, particularly that it’s wholly different from dressing sexily. There’s quite a bit of commonality between the two in this respect. And speaking of cosplay, I can’t help but to compare Ohno’s taste in older men to Stocking’s overall poor taste in men, as some would argue that the former is a case of the latter. I’ve also always seen Angela as being more sexually active than the other characters in Genshiken, though obviously not to the extent that Panty does. And if that weren’t enough, Ohno once remarked that her chest is bigger than Angela’s, a situation mirrored somewhat with the Anarchy sisters they’re cosplaying.

The chapter also reveals quite a bit about Sue’s development, specifically in regards to her growing language skills. When Sue first appears, she speaks purely in anime and manga quotes. When she makes her second visit to Japan, she shows that her listening comprehension has grown dramatically. By the time she began studying abroad at Shiiou University, her vocabulary had expanded to the point that she could communicate without the use of otaku references. Now, Sue takes the next step.

It’s not evident in English versions of the Genshiken manga (or at all in any of the anime), but one of the features of Sue’s Japanese is that it’s written primarily in katakana to represent her foreign accent. In this chapter though, some of that katakana has begun turning into hiragana, the script used primarily for non-loan words, indicating that her Japanese is reaching an even greater point of fluency. Personally speaking, I made my greatest strides in my Japanese language skills while studying in Japan, and to see the same happening with Sue brings a smile to my face.

And you wouldn’t believe how glad I am that Kio’s finally told us how to pronounce at least some of Ogiue’s pen name. I’ve even made the appropriate correction to her Fujoshi File.

In any case, I’m probably more stoked for the next chapter of Genshiken II than I’ve ever been. Comic Festival, it always delivers.

Madoka Magica and…Sacrifice?

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Puella Magi Madoka Magica has come and gone, and it’s going to be a subject of much discussion. Part of it may simply be that the delay caused by the earthquake in tsunami Japan magnified the anticipation for the finale even more than the already huge expectations for the show, but I think this anime is going to stick in people’s minds for at least the near future. Though the show has its flaws, overly expository dialogue and some contrived twists to name a couple, I found it to be an overall strong show and indeed an interesting twist on the magical girl genre that understands what magical girls are about.

I’m going to be discussing the show and its ending in depth, so take this as the Spoiler Warning.

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A Tale of Two Harems: Kore Wa Zombie Desuka? vs. Infinite Stratos

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WARNING: Spoilers.

When the Winter 2011 season of anime began I saw two harem anime on the schedule. One was Kore wa Zombie Desuka?, which apparently being zombie-themed I wrote off as something to skip. The other was Infinite Stratos, which, while likely not to set my world on fire, had mecha and SF elements that I wanted to check out.  But thanks to a tip from Sub, I decided to check out Zombie after all, and now that I’ve finished these dual harem series, I find that my relative opinion has flipped. Kore wa Zombie Desuka? is a pleasant surprise, while Infinite Stratos‘s faults far outweigh its strengths.

First, let’s actually list the highlights of Infinite Stratos.

  • Good character designs, better than Zombie
  • Charlotte Dunois
  • The fact that it did not turn into a tournament fighting series

In contrast, I feel that the strengths of Kore wa Zombie Desuka? are substantial enough that they shouldn’t be listed in bullet form, but to sum them up, Zombie does a good job of playing with the conventions of the harem genre and bolstering many of the areas where harem shows tend to be weak. The main character in a harem series tends to take a lot of physical damage, so the series incorporates that into the basics of the setup. The hero Aikawa Ayumu is made undead, so that he can take abuse far beyond what is normal and regenerate. Whereas most harem protagonists tend to waffle and lack motivation, we see that from the very start of the series he has an initial goal to spur him on: to find the person who killed him. He’s still your Average Japanese Guy with Extraordinary Circumstances, but just by having drive and personality, you can see why more than one girl might take an interest in him.

Harem anime are really all about the girls. It is something I gladly accept when watching harem shows, but I prefer to see that the girls have fallen in love with the main character for something resembling a good reason. It helps that Ayumu has something called a personality, as well as traits that are actually admirable instead of vague “nice guy” characteristics, but Kore wa Zombie Desuka? also shows the girls actually developing feelings for him. Seeing the female necromancer Eucliwood’s first meeting with Ayumu, we can see how he charms her with a goofy and well-meaning attitude. Haruna, a chainsaw-wielding magical girl, is witness to Ayumu’s continuous noble actions and sense of self-worth. We can even see where feelings don’t develop with Mael Strom, who does not have feelings for Ayumu but actually works to go from indifference to affection-after-the-fact in some kind of twisted parody of an arranged marriage.

The girls of Zombie are not particularly well-developed in terms of personality, but they have a manic edge to them where their simple traits are pushed to the extreme without having them become tiresomely one-dimensional. This is probably most evident with Seraphim, a deadly vampire ninja not unlike a couple of Axe Cop characters, whose hobby, talent, and favorite word are all the same thing: Tsubamegaeshi, a sword technique, and whose catch phrase, calling Ayumu a “piece of shit,” feels delivered with sincere malice instead of being there to compensate for any sort of weak, fragile interior.

Infinite Stratos fails to convince me that most of the girls have legitimate reasons to be interested in the main character, Orimura Ichika. Looking at four out of the five girls in IS, two of them are childhood friends and two of them fall in love with him after a single fight. With neither situation are these explanations given time to develop. They just are, as if their purpose is to get Ichika in the harem situation as quickly and efficiently as possible. Instead of further flattening the characters as Zombie did, IS sees fit to give them contrived flashbacks where a girl will literally narrate to the viewer as to why her life is tragic. Ichika does this as well, and it doesn’t happen until half-way through, so when we first see him, he’s just a bland fellow who draws all the ladies for Some Reason.

This is actually why I emphasized Charlotte Dunois as one of the highlights of Infinite Stratos, because she is the only girl among the five whose eventual attraction towards Ichika was given room to develop. Charlotte Dunois starts off disguised as a boy, and as the only other guy in the school, Ichika finds a comrade in “Charles.” Their friendship grows through this “male” bonding, and with Ichika talking to her closely and comfortably, it makes sense that she would develop intimate feelings. If more of the girls in Infinite Stratos had this sort of portrayal, instead of having their affections develop out of un-reasons, then my opinion might have very well been more even between the two shows.

The essential strength and flaw respectively of each show is that Kore wa Zombie Desuka? creatively manipulates the harem genre conventions while Infinite Stratos feels beholden to them. This is evident even in each show’s approach to the dramatic. While neither series excels in this regard, in Kore wa Zombie Desuka? the dramatic elements are continuously built upon and reach a fairly satisfying conclusion, while with Infinite Stratos, much like the flimsy bases for affection, the drama just seems to appear instantly and recede just as quickly.

Overall, while I would say that the girls in Infinite Stratos are more attractive, it does not feel as complete a product as Kore wa Zombie Desuka?, which is able to show that a lot can be done with the harem genre without completely subverting it School Days-style. In doing so, Zombie winds up being the better anime.

In Celebration of a Life, Short-lived: Sym-Bionic Titan

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This past weekend was the final episode of Sym-Bionic Titan. I wish I didn’t have to say that.

When I first started watching anime, one of the most enticing aspects of it over many of the American cartoons I watched at the time was that, not only did they have on-going stories, but that those stories actually finished. They had conclusions. They weren’t always good conclusions (or good shows), and many times they were so open-ended you weren’t sure what exactly had happened, but you knew that if you started something, chances are you’d get something final out of it by the end.

American cartoons had managed to get some decisive finishes through, such as in Gargoyles or Conan the Adventurer, and I’ll even count the end of the Saturday morning version of Sonic the Hedgehog as a decisive finish despite it setting the stage for another season that never came to be. But for every one of those, you got a Pirates of Darkwater, where the show was set up from the start to reach a certain conclusion, but the show just stops in the middle and all you’re left with is your own imaginative speculation and/or fanfiction. I thought we were past this era, but I was wrong.

Sym-Bionic Titan was the brainchild of Genndy Tartakovsky, the man behind Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack, and it was his most ambitious and best-looking work to date. Following a trio of aliens (Lance the soldier, Ilana the Princess, Octus the robot) who escaped to Earth as the last hope to save their world of Galaluna from a traitorous general, the show took cues from Japanese super robot cartoons, American action cartoons, teen films, and various other areas and channeled them through some of the most deft usage of flash animation I’d ever seen. Much like Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt (and I have drawn comparisons between them before), it poked fun at genre conventions from multiple genres, and did so with style and grace-disguised-as-clumsiness.  It was a sign that Genndy had learned a lot since working on Samurai Jack, where the animation was often nice but felt very flat, and he married it with excellent characters and an intriguing plot. There were many mysteries in the show. What was Modula’s true motive? What really happened to Lance’s dad? Who was the mysterious person behind the Galactic Guardian Group? While the show could have easily gone on forever, it was not in its best interest to do so, as there was a real sense of urgency throughout the show, especially when you learned more and more about the characters and where they came from and why, on a personal level, they fight.

But Sym-Bionic Titan ran its initial 20 episodes, and was not renewed for more. Genndy Tartakovsky has moved on from Cartoon Network, possibly frustrated that they never let him finish his works. Samurai Jack never fought his decisive battle with Aku, and it’s unlikely that Lance, Ilana, and Octus will ever be able to return to Galaluna for a showdown with Modula. Was the show not doing well? Was it just not getting the money behind it to continue on?

It turns out that the reason given is that the show was actually doing quite well, but it did not have enough toys connected to it. I can see this being a problem, but I have to point out the fact that the show is ABOUT PEOPLE WHO TRANSFORM INTO ROBOT SUITS WHO COMBINE INTO A GIANT ROBOT THAT FIGHTS GIANT MONSTERS. That they couldn’t figure out how to convert this concept into toys is nothing short of ridiculous, and so the reasoning behind the show’s cancellation feels flimsy at best, an act of malice at worst.

Now there’s a possibility that Genndy pulled a Bill Watterson and specifically forbade merchandise from being made, but I highly doubt that. For one thing, he had hoped for a continuation of the series. This much is obvious based merely on the way the show is set up and how its final episode leaves room for so much more, let alone him actually saying as such. For another, the show’s explicit homage to Japanese giant robot cartoons makes it very likely that Genndy was not ignorant of the genre’s toy-centric origins or the fact that giant robot anime practically grew that merchandise industry in Japan to enormous proportions.

So even with the lack of an ending, is Sym-Bionic Titan worth watching? Yes, very much so. Do it.

Cross Fight, Cross Fight: Genshiken II, Chapter 62

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What was once fated to shine brightly for a few moments in the grand scheme of the universe now has been given new life, as Genshiken II has shed its limited-time status and has revived itself as a fully serialized title. That’s right, Genshiken is back in full force and I can only be pleased by the news. Almost as if to symbolize this new beginning for Genshiken, Chapter 62 feels almost like another introduction to the series and the madness contained therein. Let’s take a look.

As Angela returns for her third trip to Japan and Yabusaki puts the finishing touches on her Fullmetal Alchemist doujinshi, Ogiue is working frantically to complete the second half of her debut as a legit manga artist. Luckily she has the help of the current Genshiken freshman as well as Sue, but the whole situation begins to derail when Hato becomes self-conscious of the fact that his facial hair is growing in. Yajima suggests that Hato wouldn’t have this problem if he dressed like a guy, given that guys aren’t embarrassed by facial hair, but Hato has no men’s clothing with him. Fortunately(?), Ohno left everyone some cosplay outfits, but things get quickly out of hand and everyone ends up working on Ogiue’s manga while cosplaying.  Even Ogiue decides to join the “party” in an effort to take responsibility. The chapter ends with Yabusaki coming in to help Ogiue, only to lecture them for goofing off. Naturally, Ohno deeply regrets not being around for this rare occasion of cosplay goodwill.

So, this heavy chapter obviously has a ton of references, and it’s not exactly big on character development, so I think it’s a good idea to find out just who they all are. Some of them I got, some of them I needed to do some internet detective work. Here’s a list of the costumes worn by each Genshiken member.

Yajima: Yagyuu Juubee Mitsuyoshi, the rather large and voluptuous heroine of Sekiganjuu Mitsuyoshi.

Hato: Ashikaga Yuuki, the cross-dressing main character of the School Days sequel, Cross Days.

Yoshitake: Kurashita Tsukimi, the Jellyfish-obsessed protagonist of Kuragehime.

Sue: The titular character of Comic Master J, a super manga assistant.

Ogiue: Nakano Azusa, underclassman guitarist from K-ON!

The entirety of Ohno’s selection for Hato consists of crossdressing characters. Though I can’t recognize all of them, at least one of them is Maria from Mariaholic. Yajima’s outfit is arguably the most embarrassing, coming from a manga series by the character designer of badonkadonk resource Real Drive, but given Yajima’s personality that must have been the most conservative outfit of the bunch. It’s interesting that Ohno would see “overweight girl” and interpret that as “cosplay as thick ladies,” though it makes sense in retrospect. Yajima’s outfit this chapter shows that she’s actually quite busty, and much like when Ogiue first cosplayed way back when though, it kind of makes you aware of the fact that Yajima’s baggy clothes are partially the result of shame. How appropriate it is then that Yoshitake is dressed as a character with a similar dilemma.

Ogiue as Azusa of course makes it own kind of sense, especially when you factor in the fact that the girls of the light music club pushed Azusa towards the Azunyan cat motif somewhat resembles Ohno’s own constant persuasion of Ogiue into cosplay. In fact, Ohno can draw a number of parallels to K-ON!‘s Yamanaka Sawako.

Interestingly, everyone except Ogiue is dressed as a main character, despite the fact that Ogiue was pretty much the central focus of the second half of the original Genshiken. If I were to be somewhat liberal with my interpretation, I’d say that this is symbolic of the direction of Genshiken II, where the new girls are starting to establish themselves as the main stars of the new series. As I’ve said before though, I’m quite okay with this, despite my fondness for Ogiue, as it feeds into one of the themes of Genshiken, that of the continuous renewal of the club.

Looking forward, with Angela around, the chances of a Sue-centric chapter rise greatly. And in the spirit of Sue, we’ll end with a fourth-wall-breaking image.

Distance to Travel: The Borrower Arrietty

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Thanks to a twitter tip by the fine folks at Tsunacon, I found out that there was a showing last week of the latest Ghibli movie, The Borrower Arrietty, at the Melkweg theater in Amsterdam. Luck would also have it that I’d come down with a cold during the same period, but I managed to power through and experience my first theatrical anime in the Netherlands, and second time in a Dutch theater overall.

The first time, I had gone to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1, and it carried the unique challenge of having the audio in a language I understand (English) with subtitles in a language I don’t know but is fairly close (Dutch). Perhaps due to my experience as an anime fan, I found my eyes gravitating towards the Dutch subtitles, and because written Dutch is so closely related to English it would occasionally interfere with my ability to understand what characters were saying, almost as if the subtitles were in English but accidentally taken from the script of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. For The Borrower Arrietty, the movie was presented with Japanese audio and Dutch subtitles, and I found it a lot easier this time to ignore the Dutch. I think it had to do with both the fact that Japanese and Dutch are quite far apart as languages, and that I had gained the experience of Deathly Hallows. Which is to say, I was able to avoid one potential distraction, and even my cold seemed to play nice. Either that, or the movie drew me in enough that I could comfortably ignore it.

The Borrower Arrietty follows a small family of Borrowers, a race of small people no taller than a ballpoint pen. Living underneath a house inhabited by normal humans, they “borrow” the tiniest amount of materials from the human world in order to fulfill their own needs. The humans meanwhile are oblivious to their existence, and the Borrowers in turn avoid all contact with humans. Arrietty is the family’s only child, a 14-year-old girl who is set to go on her very first “borrowing” with her father, but who is already quite adventurous and often wanders outside to explore. Living above them is a new resident named Sho, a young boy with a heart condition.

The world of the Borrowers is a patch-work world of human products appropriated for use by tiny people, and it is in the portrayal of this world that the movie really shines. Whereas a lesser film would constantly make obvious references to scale, Arrietty does this through a mixture of subtle visual effects and through the characters’ natural interaction with their environment, and it is the first thing that really pulled me into the movie. A hand cloth becomes a blanket, a clothespin becomes a hair clip, staples become the rungs of a ladder. When the family of Borrowers is gathering at the dinner table, they have tea which they pour out of a tiny teapot, but while the teapot is scaled down for their usage, the tea comes out not as a steady flow but as droplets which swell at the tip of the spout due to the small opening and the natural cohesiveness of water. Backpacks are held together by velcro; when viewed from the perspective of a Borrower, the fastening and unfastening feels quite alien. The world is a whimsical and dangerous frontier.

Without giving away too much, The Borrower Arrietty is about physical, social, and conceptual divides. There is the sheer size difference between human and Borrower, the purposeful separation of the two species, and even the way a length of distance for a person can seem mercilessly long to a creature 1/20 our size, or for that matter, for a boy with a weak heart. The film is also about working to bridge those divides, and the degree to which it succeeds actually depends on your own outlook on life. Arietty is as optimistic as you make it out to be.

The Borrower Arrietty is not directed by Takahata or Miyazaki or even Miyazaki’s son Goro, but by Yonebayashi Hiromasa, who has worked on Ghibli films before but is in the director’s chair for the first time. When the movie began, I wondered as to what extent Miyazaki would influence future Ghibli films of which he is no longer apart. Granted, Miyazaki still has a big hand in Arrietty, being responsible for planning and screenplay, but I still had to ask myself how much “Miyazaki-style” and “Ghibli-style” would go hand in hand as time passes. Fortunately (or not), The Borrower Arrietty made me quickly forget my own inquiry with its engrossing visuals and storytelling, and by the time it was finished I felt myself not worrying about it so much.

Vistas: Final Fantasy Advent Children & Character Camera

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I’ve written a post concerning Final Fantasy: Advent Children as part of our “multi-vistas” category at the Vistas blog, where everyone on the blog takes a look at the same work and writes a response. Mine is about the character-centric visuals of Advent Children as well as some personal elements, while my colleagues have written about Advent Children as Fantasy vs. Science Fiction and the lack of discrete visibility in its action scenes and its possibilities.

Creamy Mami, All Alone

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I’m a little less than halfway through 80s magical girl anime Mahou no Tenshi Creamy Mami, and though it’s fairly entertaining I haven’t really been feeling it. I’ll watch a couple episodes and then have no motivation to keep watching, unlike when I watch, say, Ojamajo Doremi where I almost have to stop myself from watching more. It’s not particularly boring or offensive or anything like that, so for a while I just wasn’t sure why Creamy Mami wasn’t quite gelling for me, but I’ve finally figured it out.

Morisawa Yuu, the girl who transforms into Creamy Mami, has no female friends around her own age.

Instead, you mostly see her interact with adults (some of whom she primarily talks to as Creamy Mami), a couple of male friends, and only rarely do you get a one-off female character the same age as Yuu. This isn’t a problem in and of itself, especially given that it is very possible for a girl to be friends with guys her own age, but in the show Yuu likes one of them, the other one likes her, and that one is the comic-relief fat kid. We never get to see Yuu interact with someone who can truly be considered her peer and equal, and I think it can be a problem, even if the show was intentionally designed that way. (Cardcaptor) Sakura has Tomoyo, Nagisa (Cure Black) has Honoka (Cure White) and her lacrosse team, and even Mitsuki (Full Moon o Sagashite), who also transforms into an older girl, can be seen interacting with her female classmates. All of them are better characters for it.

Without a female friend of the same age, Yuu kind of feels that she’s only there to transform into Creamy Mami, which she very well might be, but I think that she would have been fleshed out much better in a way that doesn’t run contrary to the overall feel of the anime if she had such a friend. I could possibly say that the show works as a somewhat minimalist anime, where only the bare essentials are needed to drive it forward, but even that could have benefited from a female friend for Yuu.

I’m a Dreamer, Moeru Power: Genshiken II, Chapter 61

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The newest chapter of Genshiken II hints at the most glorious team-up in otaku manga history. However, the antics of Battlehopkins and Double Asada are only for a few panels, and the real focus is split this time around between Ogiue’s precarious deadline juggling and Hato engaging in a Hato x Mada-themed thought exercise. This month’s theme is friendship!

Before we jump into the chapter though, I want to point out the next-chapter anime references that are at the end of each chapter. We’ve seen Occult Academy, K-ON!, and Heartcatch Precure, among others. This time it’s Jewelpet Tinkle. I didn’t even know that series had an otaku following.

Ogiue discusses her professional debut with Yabusaki, who is equal parts jealous and proud of her former enemy and current doujinshi collaborator. Ogiue’s challenge, as established a few chapters back, is to finish both the manuscript for her first published manga and the doujinshi she’s planning for Comic Festival (which we now know is Fullmetal Alchemist-themed), and though she has an insanely prolific work-rate (see her previous 80-page draft which she drew in about one night), it can be a double-edged sword; as we can see at the very end of the chapter, Ogiue can get so engrossed in her imagination that it can be difficult to put her professional responsibilities above her passions. I get the feeling Sasahara knows this better than anyone, which is why their unofficial editor-artist relationship can be so volatile.

During their discussion, Ogiue and Yabusaki speak in their respective Tohoku and Kansai dialects, which is nothing short of amazing. While Yabusaki does this all of the time, it is an incredibly rare case that we get to see Ogiue use Tohoku-ben out loud instead of just thinking in it, and I believe that this is the very first instance of Ogiue speaking in her native dialect for an extended conversation outside of flashbacks. I think this is a very important indication of not only how much more comfortable Ogiue has become with herself, but the extent to which Ogiue and Yabusaki get along now, even if their faces don’t show it. Ogiue doesn’t even use her Tohoku dialect in private with Sasahara! Her Tohoku talk, combined with her newer hairstyle, in a way reminds me of Heartcatch Precure, where we get to see girls change while discovering their true selves.

At the same time as Ogiue, Sue, Yabusaki, and Asada are talking art, Hato is taking respite from the heat in Madarame’s empty and air-conditioned apartment. Here, we get to see Hato’s gender-divided fantasy in action, as Hato the guy’s thoughts run practically parallel with Hato’s thoughts as a “fujoshi,” represented by an imaginary(?), naked, and decidedly feminine Hato floating nearby. Alternately called a Stand and an 801-chan among other things, Hato’s mind inhabits this unusual territory where he scrutinizes his own natural actions and provides a field day for psychologists of fictional characters. Hato turns out to be so tired that he ends up dozing off, and by the time he wakes up Madarame is already home. A potentially awkward situation to say the least, especially given Hato’s out-of-body musings.

Just as we were able to see a current Ogiue talking in her own dialect for an extended period for the first time in Genshiken, this is also the first time that Madarame gets to see Hato sans drag, but rather than making things more uncomfortable, Madarame just treats him as one of the guys. While sharing dinner, Hato brings up the fact that he does not consider himself to be homosexual, even though he likes BL as much as he does. Anticipating Madarame to react somehow, Madarame still doesn’t seem particularly fazed by this “revelation.”

Speculating as to why Madarame is able to take such a declaration in stride, I can only think that it’s because Madarame, as an otaku, knows the significant disparity that can exist between 2-D and 3-D. Ogiue is into yaoi, but she doesn’t expect Sasahara to be into other guys even when she uses him as “inspiration” for her own doujinshi. An even better example might be Madarame himself, whose taste in the erotic can skew a little young, and yet he finds himself in love with the very mature Kasukabe Saki. For that matter, Sasahara and Ogiue sometimes skew young in their preferences as well (young Ritsuko Kubel Kettengrad and Edward Elric, respectively), so I think the whole of Genshiken understands the divide well. Still, gender and sexuality is not the easiest of topics to talk about, and you might be surprised at how the complex lines of tolerance and understanding can fall within people’s own values.

Seeing how relaxed Madarame is being around Hato despite the possibility that an outsider observer (i.e. “herself”) could interpret all of this as fertile soil for romance, Hato can’t help but see Madarame as a weak bottom because of how open he leaves himself to “attack.” For some reason though, I feel like Hato’s logic behind the “hetare uke” Madarame “character” is different from Ogiue’s. I think Ogiue’s variant has more to do with how passive he is despite his passionate otaku outbursts and the like.

Speaking of Saki, Hato accidentally becomes aware of Madarame’s unrequited love, though Madarame himself is unaware that Hato knows. Maybe Hellsing creator Hirano Kouta is right after all and Madarame really is the most moe character in the series.

Wig Party: Genshiken II, Chapter 60

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In my last chapter review, I predicted an Ogiue-centric chapter while also pointing out how Hato hasn’t gotten a chapter focused on himself yet but rather seemed to get a bit of focus and characterization every chapter.  Contrary to my expectations however, this latest chapter, despite taking place mainly in Ogiue’s apartment, is actually centered around Hato. Specifically, it reveals the truth as to why he cross-dresses, peeling away some of the enigma that is Hato Kenjirou.

Ogiue has a professional manga debut coming up and in order to meet her deadline she’s recruited Yajima, Yoshitake, and Hato. Yajima, who we know likes to draw, finds herself paling in comparison to Hato not just in looks but also in artistic talent. It also turns out that Hato has been gaining a reputation outside of the club as a mysterious brown-haired knockout who only seems to show up in the afternoon, and given the potential trouble that would-be suitors of Hato could bring, Yajima has to ask Hato once more: why the dresses?

Hato explains that he had kept his fondness for yaoi a secret all through high school, because if and when he revealed his status as a fudanshi, the “rotten boy” opposite the “fujoshi,” he surely would’ve been was persecuted by his peers. So upon entering college, he began cross-dressing mainly so that he could enter a club much like Genshiken and finally be able to talk with people who share his interests.

“Persecution.” The word lingers in Yajima’s head, and it makes her feel absolutely terrible for confronting Hato. While she can’t relate to Hato in terms of choice of attire, as an otaku it’s very likely that she knows the pain of being ridiculed or tormented by one’s peers all too well. Yajima decides to not press the issue at first, but then realizes that Hato’s response was only half an answer. Everyone there now knows why Hato started to cross-dress, but given that everyone in Genshiken knows his secret and his okay with the fact that he’s a fudanshi, it’s no longer necessary. So why does Hato continue to cross-dress?

He enjoys it.

He knows he looks good in it, and it helps to fuel his own fantasies, not necessarily in the sense that the cross-dressing itself is the kink, but that donning women’s clothing can give him the right frame of mind. Through it, Hato can see the possibilities, including pairing himself with Madarame, which also puts the last scene of the previous chapter in a whole new light: were Hato’s signals real or imagined by Madarame?

One significant reveal for me in this chapter is the fact that Hato self-identifies as a man. In planning future entries for the Fujoshi Files, Hato presented a bit of a problem, namely, how much of gender is biological and how much of it is social? Gender studies is not my specialty, and even among the Genshiken characters, you could see that different characters take different approaches: Yajima talks of Hato as if he were a man, while Ohno mainly refers to Hato in the feminine. As you can see as well, I’ve mainly gone with male pronouns when referring to Hato, but I ultimately decided that it would be based on his own personal preference.

So Hato’s crossdressing isn’t entirely the product of a tormented gender identity conflict, but it’s important to avoid thinking that Hato’s crossdressing is somehow less legitimate or even wrong just because it’s a little self-indulgent. Hato has a perfectly good reason to crossdress, and the way in which Genshiken presents his situation, with both serious and more lighthearted aspects, does not and should not lessen either side. Nor should Hato and Genshiken in turn make gender portrayals that are focused more in one direction (such as Wandering Son) necessarily less poignant or entertaining.

We also learn a little bit more about another character whose life rarely gets explored, as we discover that Kuchiki is that guy in more ways than one. He’s not only the guy so lacking in social skills that they became actively antagonistic, but that he’s also able to coast by in life because of nepotism. I wonder what his parents think of him?

I think that Genshiken II has been getting better and better at establishing the New Class as characters in their own right, and I don’t really mind seeing the club veterans step aside so that they can take center stage. It takes a theme already present in the original manga, that of people entering the club and leaving when they graduate to make room for new blood, and realizes it in a much bigger way. It makes me wonder how they would fare if this was the first Genshiken series ever, and we only knew the previous characters somewhat in passing.

Next chapter looks to be again about Hato, but I’ve been deceived in the past, so I’ll hold off making any big predictions until then. Sue didn’t talk too much in this chapter, so I wonder if Kio’s saving her up for something big. The last thing I want to talk about though is Ogiue (of course), and the way that Kio Shimoku has been inserting some some nostalgic references to Ogiue past. Ogiue’s inner thoughts entertain the proposal of Hato x Mada in Ogiue’s native Tohoku dialect, and when Ohno tries to start a cosplay party at Ogiue’s place we’re greeted with a familiar sight. Perhaps we could call this “Ogiue Abridged?”