First Date(?): Genshiken 2
- Title: Genshiken 2
- Studio: ARMS
- Genre: Comedy/Slice-of-Life
Ratings (out of 5):
- Story: ♥♥♥♥
- Animation: ♥♥♥
- Characters: ♥♥♥♥
- OP/ED Themes: ♥♥♥ (No OP yet)
- Overall: ♥♥♥♥ (This is a first date how, exactly?)
Thoughts:
Odds are, you already know what you need to know: it’s Genshiken, an anime about a college anime otaku club. There’s a first season (12 episodes IIRC), an OVA (3 episodes), and now season 2– and each picks up where the last left off, and pretty much just follows the manga. It’s a fun show, and occasionally it’s amazingly hilarious. One popular moment in season 1 occurs when member Madarame finds himself alone in the clubroom with Kasukabe, the sometimes violently anti-otaku girlfriend of member Kousaka, a video game wiz. Madarame imagines the scene as a dating sim as he tries to figure out the best way to interact with the caustic female. It’s genius.
But nothing so exciting in this first episode. And honestly, for those of you who HAVEN’T seen season 1 and the OVA: you’ll probably want to. Granted, it’s hard for me to think from the viewpoint of someone who hasn’t seen them, but it doesn’t seem that the directors decided to waste much effort introducing the characters for new viewers, though it probably isn’t all that hard to pick up on, either.
So! The season kicks off with a doozy, plot-wise: new club president Sasahara gets a notice in the mail saying that the club has been accepted to have a booth at “ComiFes” (ComiKet, of course). Now the rag-tag team has to actually make a book! But their main artist has never made a full doujinshi, just sketched, really…and on top of that, he’s working on getting a job. Luckily a new member, Ogiue, turns out to be a good artist…but she also claims to hate otaku.
On top of that, the club gets a visit from the obnoxious Haraguchi, former manga club president (and Genshiken member) who loves to butt in to other people’s projects. He offers to arrange for famous doujinshi creators to contribute to the Genshiken’s book, but the club decides they’d rather do their own thing…only to have Haraguchi admit that he’s actually already arranged everything. Yeesh.
The brilliance of Genshiken is each character has his or her own quirks and strengths, and I guarantee at least one character will make you go “I know someone like that!” It might be the reticent Ogiue, the sometimes wishy-washy Sasahara, the Geek Pride poster boy Madarame, or the over-excited “Kucchi.” And it’ll get even better later in the season– when a few of cosplayer Ohno’s friends from America come to check out ComiFes…
Tags: fall-2007, first-dates, genshiken-2
October 11th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
What impressed me was that DB picked this up as a project. A lot different from their other projects.
October 12th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
I thought the first ep was surprisingly serious. Not soap-opera serious, just serious for the first ep of a comedy series. Where there any jokes? Still, SUPER happy for this second season.
BTW: do you know if your RSS feed is working? I don’t think I’ve seen anything from it since you moved, and it’s my usual method of blog-reading. I came over just now to check on something and found a huge bounty of new items—I don’t know where you find time to write all this! Anyway, I guess I’ll be checking in “manually” until something shows up again. ^_^
October 13th, 2007 at 6:29 am
Kitsune: I have my RSS feed in my reader, and everything shows up just fine for me…if you’re having problems you might try removing the feed and re-adding it.