JManga Needs Exposure

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I recently had a conversation online about the industry-backed digital manga site JManga that went something like this:

Guy: Man, Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru has nine volumes out in Japan, but only three are scanlated!
Me: You know, most of those volumes are available on JManga.
Guy: What.

And then he went and bought all 8 volumes.

Sometimes you’ll hear people pushing for the manga industry who also like to draw lines in the sand between “REAL FANS” who do everything by the book and “filthy pirates who call themselves fans,” as if to say that this explains the industry’s woes. Here, on the other hand, is an example of someone who you can’t categorize as a leech, someone who is willing to pay money for the manga he likes, but simply had no idea that JManga (and its offshoot JManga 7) are actually quite up to date with the titles they carry, or that they even carried them at all. This is also a concern because Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru is actually one of JManga’s flagship titles at this point, so it’s even more curious that the guy didn’t know about it.

What this basically reveals is an exposure problem for JManga and other similar sites, one that undoubtedly needs improvement because if the site can’t reach the people who are willing to use its services, what hope does it have for reaching the people who are more hesitant towards it? This is basically why I’m writing this post: I want to make more people aware of JManga as not only a legitimate way to read a lot of manga online and, and not simply as a way to “support the industry,” but as a convenient site which carries titles that readers of manga might very well be looking for.

Did you know that Fujoshi Rumi (aka Otaku-Type Delusion Girl,  a title I recommend by the way) is on Jmanga and only one volume away from finishing? How about the fact that they have yaoi and yuri sections in addition to shounen series both well-known and obscure? What if I told you that there are (for some reason) multiple titles about cougar detectives? And from the looks of their recent translation contest, Coppelion, an interesting and timely work about three girls having to traverse a Tokyo devastated by a nuclear fallout from a natural disaster, is going to be available in the future as well.

The site has its flaws, such as the clunkiness of their reader or the fact that not all titles are available in all regions, but they’ve definitely been working on improving the site. In fact, the site used to be United States-only and worked to change that over time.  One “problem” I need to address in particular is the fact that I’ve heard people say before that the reason they never used JManga was because their old “pay us to give you an allowance” pricing structure was too much of a commitment, because that is no longer an issue with the site. Now you can pay volume by volume a la carte-style without commitment, but if you subscribe then you can get a little extra every month, which means there is likely a pricing structure more attuned to your needs.

My goal isn’t to push the site over other alternatives and to make you feel guilty about not using the site sooner, but mainly to say that a site like JManga is available, and that it offers some things the scanlation sites don’t. While my readership is a small fraction of the total manga readership and thus my influence limited in scope, I hope for those of you reading that you’ll at least give it a shot, whatever your reasons for being a fan of manga.

The 5th Time Around

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Today marks the 5-Year Anniversary of Ogiue Maniax. That’s quite a big milestone I think, especially when I consider that it’s probably the longest I’ve ever actively stuck to something, but because I actually reflect on where I’ve been as a blogger and where I might go every year, I find myself not knowing really what to say that I haven’t said before. So, I’ve decided that maybe rather than just reminiscing on being a blogger, I would kind of talk about my pre-history of blogging, pretty much how I came to be active in communicating on the internet with fans and such, and how I strongly believe those experiences shaped much of how I write and approach anime. I’ve talked about some of these things in part before, so those who’ve been reading a while may see some familiar things, but I hope you’ll be entertained anyway.

My very first experience with online fando came shortly after purchasing my video game ever: NiGHTS into dreams…. I remember saying to myself at the time, “I must be the only NiGHTS fan out there!” based on how none of my friends even mentioned it, so I was pleasantly shocked to find out that there were communities dedicated to the game, even sites where people wrote fanfiction based on the universe. And so I hung on those early messageboards, things that didn’t even have the luxury of sub-boards and convenient categorizations, and it’s where I first learned about what it means to communicate online. I made a lot of friends then, both older and younger than me, and while I don’t really talk to them anymore I do cherish those times. Amidst the webrings and such I learned how big the world is. I was actually amazed that I could communicate with people from the UK!

My next big steps in terms of internet community went hand in hand: anime and Pokemon. With anime, I of course visited the Anime Web Turnpike and tried to read through every single site with the naive notion that if I did I could learn about every anime in existence. I mean, how many could there be? Though that was a fool’s errand, my pursuit of knowledge of anime is still of a similar sort, which I think shows in my writing. With Pokemon too, I can draw a clear line to where I am today as a blogger, firstly because discussions of the anime back when it first came out were filled with everyone’s wild hopes and speculations and theories, but secondly because a lot of my Pokemon community experience was on the competitive side.

There were the war stories,” entertaining recaps of Pokemon battles you’d had both online and off, where you had to take a rather dry text log consisting of “Pokemon used Attack! It’s Super Effective!” and spice it up into something more engaging. And then there were the strategy discussions, where we rated each others’ teams and discussed the pros and cons of various strategies. By engaging in those discussions, I think I laid some of the early groundwork for some of my more argument-oriented posts today. Obviously I was less experienced then in terms of conveying my ideas, but I remember wanting to present my ideas not only intelligently but also in an entertaining and accessible manner.

The amount of forums I interacted on grew and shrunk depending on various circumstances, but that idea of writing for fellow forum readers stuck with me throughout. It’s the reason I cannot truly accept the idea that the internet fosters idiocy in its communities: I know in my heart that my writing style was forged on internet forums, and I strongly believe that I benefited immensely from these interactions, and not only because it influenced the way I write.

So that’s “Early, Early Pre-Ogiue Maniax.” What you see from me in all of my posts on Ogiue Maniax comes from years of getting into spirited but (hopefully) good-natured arguments with people on a variety of nerdish topics. In fact, the reason why I ended up wanting a blog (and started participating less on other sites) was that I would frequently write forum responses which I felt argued really good points about a certain topic, but it would forever be confined to just that small community. I wanted to write about ideas and thoughts I had on my own terms.

Actually, in writing this mainly internet-oriented summary, I realize that I’m leaving out all of the real life development I had at the time as well. Around the same time, I discovered friends in school who had as much if not more interest in games and anime as I did, and I think the combination of both friends who understood me well (and are still friends with me today) as well as enriching internet communication actually worked together to help instill in me some confidence as to who I am and what I love. Still, it wouldn’t be until many years later that I would truly have faith in my abilities, and though they weren’t around all the way back then, I still feel a need to thank those who support me today.

The Fujoshi Files 59: Satou Megumi

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Name: Satou, Megumi (佐藤めぐみ)
Aliases: Satou Gumi (さとうグミ）, Megumi (めぐみ)
Relationship Status: Dating
Origin: Fujoshissu!

Information:
A student at Ryouhoku High, Satou Megumi is a member and eventual president of the school’s manga club. An amateur doujin artist and avid fan of yaoi, she attends conventions under the name “Satou Gumi.” Talented in her craft and possessing a sharp, practical mindset, Megumi has a tendency to overwork herself by juggling too many elements of both her fandom and real life obligations. Her best friends are Aoi Yuki and Yoshizawa Eri, whom she first met in junior high. Though their friendship can get rocky, they all firmly know that they have each others’ best interests in mind. In terms of yaoi preferences, she may have a thing for glasses.

Popular with boys yet initially giving no thought to relationships, Megumi wound up dating her now-boyfriend Yamada Kazuaki when he confessed his long-standing interest in her. Though at first unsure of her exact feelings towards Kazuaki (“Kazu-kun”), Megumi was eventually taken in by his cheerful personality and honest enthusiasm. As Kazuaki has little to no familiarity with anime and manga, let alone the world of fujoshi, Megumi tries to keep him separate from her BL activities, though not without a fair amount of trouble.

Fujoshi Level:
Though the thought of BL do not seem to overwhelm her mentally as much as it does other fujoshi, as an artist Megumi is always keenly aware of situations ripe for “adaptation” both in real life and in anime/manga. As such, she not only drew a (clean) BL doujinshi of her club’s president and vice-president but also gave it to them as a graduation gift.

The Real Meaning of djWHEAT’s “Growing eSports”

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In a recent video interview by Marcus “djWHEAT” Graham about the world of eSports, djWHEAT espouses his beliefs on how eSports can grow, and that in defiance to the doom and gloom that surrounds declining numbers in games such as Starcraft II there is steady growth in both the idea of video games as sport as well as streaming. One of the frequent criticisms I see from people towards djWHEAT’s philosophy is that for most people, eSports as a whole doesn’t matter, and that if their game is the one that’s doing worse, then little else matters because they are not going to jump ship to another game just because. However, I feel that this view is something of a shortsighted misunderstanding on djWHEAT’s viewpoint, and one that limits itself not only to an unfortunate a favored game vs. an evil usurper context, but to an ephemeral present too narrow in scope.

When I hear djWHEAT talk about how the growth of one game can benefit eSports as a whole, and that people leaving Starcraft II for League of Legends or other games is not such a bad thing, I do not interpret it as this idea that the games don’t matter, that they’re just interchangeable within this structure of the competitive gaming scene. Rather, it has more to do with increasing the presence of eSports as a concept to the point that it gets as close to a commonly understood idea as possible, not just among gamers but among non-gamers as well. While one can argue that there will always be economic limitations to how much eSports can grow, this does not mean that there is a limit on growth in terms of exposure and acceptance. The more people know about competitive gaming, whether that’s through friends or family, or seeing matches online, or through playing the games themselves, or even just from a random guy on the street, the greater the opportunity for eSports to never truly fade away.

The scene might wane. It might become a fraction of what it was. However, establishing a cultural foothold by just having enough people positively experience eSports through games—whether it’s Starcraft, Street Fighter, DOTA, Pokemon, or something else—creates a mental and emotional connection more difficult to take away than money and eyeballs. If we look at Japanese anime, for example, there are certain titles (again, such as Pokemon) which, regardless of how you judge their quality, made the idea of anime simply better known and more acceptable to a wider range of people than just an existing hardcore fanbase.

I find that djWHEAT’s vision is one for the future beyond the myopic squabbling we see now, one where the ground is more fertile for the potential growth of new eSports-capable video games in a way which does indeed benefit everyone. Let’s say for the sake of argument that Starcraft II is fated to die out in a year, that it is on a downward and unrecoverable spiral. In light of this scenario, I want to give two alternate realities where this could be happening: one is where Starcraft II is the only game in town, the only game people consider competitive in any way, and the other is where Starcraft II is but a fraction of a complex milieu of a society in which eSports is known and accepted.

In the first, when Starcraft II goes, so too does the notion of competitive gaming, and if ever some game developer wanted to make their own Starcraft, they would have to start from scratch in more ways than one. People would see Starcraft as an anomaly, something which fell with no viable alternatives, and the creators of this new game would have to convince people all over again that this was a worthwhile notion, that people enjoy spectating games just as much as they enjoy playing them, and that there are positives to creating a competitive video game for the benefit of viewers.

In the second, on the other hand, when Starcraft II dies out, the notion that competitive gaming is viable would still be part of the public consciousness. It may not have ended up working for this particular title due to some combination of reasons, but future game developers could look at it and ask, “Where did it go right, and where did it go wrong?” When they go to try and get funding and support, they can point to other games which have been successful, games which companies might even already know about as eSports, and say, “We know what mistakes Starcraft II made and we can adjust accordingly. And, as you well know, there are plenty of examples of this model working.”

In both cases, there is a chance for a new and better spiritual successor to appear and grab all of the fans who once supported that game, but where in the first reality a single company would have to struggle just to introduce the idea of competitive gaming, in the second reality the notion of eSports would be accepted enough that there wouldn’t just be one company trying to create the next Starcraft (or any game of your choice), but five or maybe even ten companies, all eager to re-capture and even improve upon the things that made it so widely viewed and adored in the first place. The potential would not only always be there, but it would be so visible that it would continuously inspire game creators, as well as players, casters, everyone, to seize that opportunity.

Essentially, what djWHEAT is advocating when he says that the growth of one eSport is beneficial to all is not simply the product of a “let’s all get along” mentality. Instead, it is based on the idea that the more “eSports” becomes a solid concept in people’s minds through exposure, the better chance future games and gamers will have of fostering and being fostered by that positive environment, an environment which benefits all competitive games past, present, and future, whether a game’s life span is 50 days or 50 years.

Sagimori Arata and the Pinnacle of Powerful Puns

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I love good (bad) puns. I’m also quite fond of mahjong and its representations in manga and anime. So when the two combine in an interesting way, why it’s just a wonderful day for me.

Saki and its spinoff Saki: Episode of Side A (aka Achiga-hen) both feature a lot of characters with weird mahjong powers based on elements of the game, but Achiga especially has this tendency throughout its run to obscure the abilities of its characters. One such case is the character Sagimori Arata.

Here’s the joke: Arata, it turns out, also has a special affinity for the circle or dot tiles, which are known in Japanese as “pinzu.” In addition, Arata’s family owns a bowling alley, she wears a bowling glove, and she even got a bowling-related winning sequence in the anime that didn’t exist in the manga.  Arata, the bowler, is good with pins.

Did you groan? Did you cheer? Both is the right reaction.

Those who’ve talked to me about Saki know that I totally called this. I just wish I said something on here earlier for proof. What I didn’t predict, though, was how complex the bowling analogy is. Essentially, Arata is not like Kuro or Yuu in that her ability dominates her hand, but rather means that she’s really good at tricky, complex waits using pin tiles, things that increase the probability of her winning with pins.

You can even see it in the screenshot from the anime above. Generally, most hands that you see in mahjong have maybe two possible tiles they can win on, sometimes three. Arata’s pin tiles above are 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, which means she has four winning tiles: 1, 2, 4, 7, twice as many possibilities as normal.

As the character FunaQ explains further, the waits Arata usually goes for have some vague relation to splits in bowling, the most famous of which being the oft-mentioned “7-10 split.” I don’t know enough about bowling to say more than that.

So, seeing as Arata is my favorite character in Episode of Side A, the fact that she has become the delivery system for the ultimate case of punnery means she strikes all the right chords for me.

Pokemon as eSport

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As an avid watcher of professional Starcraft I constantly hear of all the strengths and weaknesses of various video games as spectator sports. Starcraft, for instance, has tons of strategic depth and is also visually clear in many ways, but often times the complexity of a given player’s battle plan requires a commentator to explain it in detail, and differentiations in individual army units can be confusing for someone who’s never had experience with similar games. Compare this with soccer, where “kick ball into goal” is clear as day, or even fighting games, where life bars and graphical depictions of punches and kicks tell the story. So with all eSports, one issue is always, how far removed is the game from reality? If it’s too abstracted then it becomes a game mainly for the devoted or hardcore, which is fine, but spectatorship is the question here.

This got me to thinking, what about Pokemon? While Pokemon is pretty far-removed both in terms of its menu-based gameplay and the sheer number of Pokemon and attacks and the complex rock-paper-scissors chart that makes up the 17 types, I wonder if Pokemon can get around all of this by just being so internationally famous that a possible majority of people under a certain age have had some experience with Pokemon, be it through the video games or the anime or their friends/relatives telling them about how Rock beats Flying. If it’s a common-enough experience, then maybe there’s not as much immediate need for realism or explanation.

On top of that, Pokemon has always been quite robust when it comes to strategy, to the extent that not only have there been multiple tournaments over the years (see the recent Pokemon Video Game Championships for example), but there have been a number of sites dedicated to exploring strategy and tactics in Pokemon, whether that’s Smogon or predecessors such as Azure Heights. These forums manage to bring together the very young up to people well into their adulthoods.

Granted, there are a number of drawbacks and setback that could stifle Pokemon as eSport despite its popularity and penetration. The first is that it’s likely Nintendo would never entirely support a competitive Pokemon scene which fuels people’s salaries, especially because part of the appeal and atmosphere in Pokemon has to do with empowering players to feel strong and special and to bond with the Pokemon they catch and train. Ideally, a competitive version would just allow you to customize your Pokemon (and there have been online simulators over the years which allow this), but I doubt Nintendo would ever approve of such a thing themselves. The second problem is that Pokemon’s strategy and difficulty is purely in the mind, whether that’s coming up with ideas on the fly or memorizing statistics, and while plenty of games have those elements the fact that Pokemon is turn-based means there is no physical rigor involved. No one will mention someone’s fabulous micromanagement. No one will be impressed by 400 APM (actions per minute) when the game really only takes 1 APM.

In any case, while I’m not terribly optimistic of Pokemon Battling becoming a career, I still would like to think that some day there may be a game that is so commonly known that it’s a matter of course for it to enter a competitive realm accepted by many. I mean, more than League of Legends even.

I guess the only thing to leave you is an actual competition video of Pokemon, to see what people think.

The Siesta Society Representative

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I’ve been watching Chu-2-Byo demo Koi ga Shitai!, the latest TV series from Kyoto Animation, and it’s a fun show with a lively cast of characters which feels in some ways very similar to their previous work but which also has its own flair. The anime mainly revolves around the characters Yuuta and Rikka, former and current sufferers of “8th Grader Syndrome” (despite being in high school), that time in your life when you want so desperately to be special that you start to believe stories of destiny and paranormal ability, and in that respect the show does a good job of portraying that awkwardness. However, I find my favorite character to actually be Tsuyuri Kumin, their upperclassman and fellow club member with a penchant for napping.

While Kumin’s nonchalant mannerisms and meticulous planning and executions of the perfect siesta crack me up, what I find particularly appealing about her is the way she seems to look at the environment around her through her own perspective. Despite her being more of a side character in the story, I get the feeling that in, her own world, Tsuyuri Kumin is the main character. During the show, Rikka forms a club known as the “Far Eastern Magic Society,” a place where she can indulge in her fantastic delusions, but because they can’t get enough members they merge with the similarly underrepresented Nap Society headed by Kumin. For everyone else, the club is the place to play around and talk about dark magics, but for her it’s the Nap Society first and foremost, and she is the trailblazer for this fun and refreshing hobby/way of life. It makes me smile thinking that, to Kumin, all of the other members of the club are potential comrades in the art of napping and it’s up to Kumin as the wise counselor to teach them the joys of napping.

The Fujoshi Files 58: Otakko

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Name: Otakko-chan (オタっ子ちゃん)
Alias: N/A
Relationship Status: Dating
Origin: Rinshi!! Ekoda-chang

Information:
Otakko-chan is a co-worker of the writer Ekoda-chan. Despite appearances, Otakko-chan is fairly popular with men (including non-otaku), is very experienced when it comes to sex, and even has a boyfriend. Compared to many of her friends and acquaintances, her love life is much stabler. Otakko-chan believes that one should not believe only what one can see.

Fujoshi Level:
At a company party, Otakko-chan could be found pairing some of the higher-ups who were getting drunk.

Perceptions of Perfection in Say “I Love You”

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I’ve been watching Say “I Love You” (aka Sukitte Ii na yo), and it’s a really good romance series that I would almost describe as a mix of Kimi ni Todoke and Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai in the way it has the unlikely relationship and the awkward personalities. Granted, that description might also apply to the other shoujo romance this season, Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun (My Little Monster), but where Kaibutsu-kun has more of the humor, Say “I Love You” I feel really delves into issues of self-image.

In episodes 3 and 4, we’re introduced to a character named Mutou Aiko, who is thin and beautiful, but what we learn over the course of these two episodes is that such seeming perfection comes with a price. In her case it’s serious scars on her body as a result of extreme crash dieting, prominent streaks along her stomach that you can’t even begin to describe as “stretch marks.” The scars really caught my attention that episode because of how they contrast with her outer image of absolute beauty, especially when you take into account that shoujo characters and even anime characters in general tend to have “ideal” skin. Or, to put it more accurately, because anime and manga tend to consist of simpler colors and shading, even small changes to characters’ appearances come across much more prominently; drawing a single line for a wrinkle pretty much means that wrinkle looks deep no matter what.

By having those dieting scars and having them visible to the viewer, even Aiko’s anime-esque perfection feels different because one can see the amount of effort put into it, that it didn’t just happen by default. By feeling “manufactured” in this sense, it also ends up feeling more realistic, that this is not her natural beauty but something she has to constantly work at. Perhaps more importantly, it also says a lot about her character that she thinks the scars on her naked body were worth the appearance she gives to the rest of the world.

The Ambiguously Vague Gestures: Genshiken II, Chapter 81

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After the intensity and emotion of the last chapter, this month’s winds down with a post-confession Madarame. In order to try and cheer him up, the old Genshiken girls (+ Hato and Kohsaka) cosplay for him, and for a brief moment the old impassioned expository Madarame makes a triumphant return. As Tanaka and Kugayama leave with Madarame for some male bonding, Saki encourages Madarame to not let go entirely of his past with Genshiken. There also seems to be some bad blood between Keiko and Hato, though the reasons are unclear.

As is the case with recent previous chapters, this one also referenced an old anime, in this case the title of Akuma-kun‘s final episode. Appropriate, because whether you want to call it the denouement of dramatic structure or the ketsu of kishoutenketsu, Chapter 81 feels like a wrap-up of the crazy developments that have happened over the past few months with Madarame, at least when it comes to his feelings for Kasukabe. As such, this chapter feels a lot less overt with its significance and its presentation of information compared to last time, but there are still plenty of moments which radiate with potential. As always, this isn’t an end (well obviously because the manga isn’t finished but you know what I mean), but a continuation.

There’s one scene in particular this chapter that I’ve read over and over because I’m not sure how to interpret it. As the girls (and guys) cosplay for Madarame from the gender-bender game that Kohsaka worked on, Kasukabe herself joins in as well. Before we see Saki in un-drag though, we see her having a conversation with Kohsaka about her character, who’s supposed to be “boyish,” to which Saki retorts that it’s actually a boy. Then, we see two characters off-panel speaking to each other (their words are visible but they aren’t), who I’m pretty sure are Kohsaka and Kasukabe. One of them asks if they accidentally “let it slip” and the other says that it’s not about that. I believe we’re supposed to read it as Kohsaka having hid the details of his game from Saki and her response being that the content of his game is besides the point. However, because of the way she says “it’s a boy,” and the follow-up conversation about a secret being out, and the fact that we see Saki go from what others have charitably referred to as “maternity clothes” to an outfit with a corset such that we can never get a clear idea of her figure, and the fact that even with the corset she looks bigger than she used to (notably in the chest area), I feel as if this chapter is lending credence to the theory that Saki is indeed pregnant.

I might just very well be overanalyzing, and things like Saki’s slightly larger figure and larger breasts might just be either a stylistic change by Kio or a sign that she’s growing older, but it just has me wondering. If my speculation turns out to be unfounded, I’m of course fine with that.

This chapter we get to see the “old” Madarame make a return as he muses on the very concept of “trap” characters and how there are different things to consider when translating them to 3D, a rant which Saki quickly reminds everyone is reminiscent of the Madarame she first met and despised. Is this scene a sign of Madarame getting his otaku groove back? Is it the case that the last few years have been a continuous trial and now that it’s over with he can go back to being himself, or is it that Madarame is trying to force it? Is it a regression to a past identity, or is it a progression, a nerd phoenix rising from the ashes of rejection and anxiety? I’d like to believe that the old Madarame is a new Madarame, and I’m definitely looking forward to where his character will go from here.

As a side note, if you’ve ever wondered what I meant by density of information looking unusual in manga, just look at the page above where Madarame is ranting. If you’re used to manga at all, just the whole page seems to stray from how Genshiken usually flows, though that’s what also gives this page its impact.

An interesting thing I’ve noticed about Madarame’s character is that Madarame seems to get paired with more characters than anyone else both inside Genshiken itself and among fans both English-speaking and Japanese. There’s of course the whole ordeal with Kasukabe, but there’s also Ogiue’s Sasa x Mada fantasies, Angela putting the moves on him hard, the ambiguity of Hato’s friendship, Kohsaka feigning (?) interest this very chapter, and then on top of that I’ve seen fanart and such going all the way back to 2005 that put him with Keiko and Sue, well before they interacted with him like they do now. It might just be that, as Hirano Kouta of Hellsing fame puts it, that “Madarame is the most moe character in Genshiken,” but I just find it interesting that so many, fictional or otherwise, seem to want Madarame to be happy (or at least less pathetic). It’s probably a testament to his enduring character and the fact that he is above all others the quintessential nerd/otaku.

In any case, it makes Saki’s comment that Madarame could very well make his own harem feel both tongue-in-cheek, yet somehow serious, though in the end I interpret it more as Saki telling Madarame that he is actually attractive in his own way. That said, I have to wonder how awkward it would be to have a girl who just rejected you also tell you that it’s okay for you to keep the sexy(ish coplay) photos you have of her. That’s the kind of scenario that so many nerds ae desperate to avoid (“What if she knows that I find her sexually attractive?”), but it’s a new world I guess. I wouldn’t be surprised if Madarame ends up throwing them out anyway, though I also wouldn’t be surprised if he keeps them.

I’ve used this comparison to describe multiple characters over the series, but Keiko is something of a Saki-type for Genshiken II. Yajima is a Saki in the sense that she’s a fish out of water and has the dry wit, but Keiko serves the role of being the character with the most “real world” experience, though as Sasahara remarks it’s more the result of making numerous mistakes. Still, it gives Keiko a type of perceptiveness that’s lacking in the current members of Genshiken, and it makes the moment where she just shows Madarame how his secret never really was one quite hilarious. Given how she didn’t even appear in the second TV series (though as far as I know that was just an unfortunate scheduling conflict, and she does make an appearance in one of the drama CDs), it almost feels like the series is making up for that by giving her more presence in the current manga.

As for the dirty look Keiko gives Hato, it’s yet another ambiguous moment in this chapter whose path will lead us who knows where. If we go by the harem view mentioned before, then this could be interpreted as Keiko exhibiting jealousy, but I think it’s something else. If I had to guess, I’d say that Keiko’s impatience towards Madarame dancing around and avoiding his own feelings for fear of confrontation is also showing itself with Hato and where he might stand with Madarame.

Even though she’s clearly not the focus, I do want to talk a bit about Ogiue’s part in this chapter. When Kohsaka grabs Madarame’s arms and tells him that they could’ve had a polygamous relationship with each other and Saki, I like how you can tell who is thinking what in that moment. For most of the guys, it’s just an awkward moment, but clearly Ogiue and Hato think more of it. Ohno seems much less affected, though it might make sense given her preference for significantly older, hairier, and balder guys. Keiko’s blushing on the following page is probably the most surprising, and another moment in this chapter open for interpretation. Could Keiko be a candidate for the Fujoshi Files after all?

The chapter ends with the reappearance of Katou, who we don’t know much about other than that she has Ohno-esque preferences, and that she’s been job-hunting as of late, but I wouldn’t mind seeing more of her at all. At this point Asada has more development than her, and she doesn’t even have a real face! I don’t have confidence we’ll see much of her, but one can always hope.