Genshiken Nidaime

“To a hikikomori, winter is painful because everything feels cold, frozen over, and lonely. To a hikikomori, spring is also painful because everyone is in a good mood and therefore enviable. Summer, of course, is especially painful...” - Welcome to the N.H.K. For most fans of anime or manga, we might all once experienced a moment when we went through a phase where we couldn't stop watching/reading a piece of work from a franchise until we get that feeling of, “ah, now that was a masterpiece....”. I know I have and those moments feels great especially for something we've enjoyed. However, it may also feel abit painful as well. Then again, there's always a better series out there in the future that comes by. (most times anyways) Why am I saying this? Well, that's because I've enjoyed the previous seasons of Genshiken and never thought the day another season would be adapted. Then, a news came in the month of January of 2013. Genshiken gets another adaptation. From there, I thought, “Thank you wishing stone, thank you”. Genshiken Nidaime is a new season adapted from the manga of the same name written by Shimoku Kio. There's a few important points to take notice here though. Even though the series is titled as such, it is imperative to watch the previous seasons and from my perspectives the OVAs as well. The reason being that is because some of the main characters from the previous seasons all make their debuts but plays more of a minor role. Therefore, to get a satisfying experience, I recommend watching the previous seasons in order. For a brief refreshment, the show Genshiken is an abbreviation of a club's name - Gendai Shikaku Bunka Kenkyūkai. As for the club itself, it consists of a group of young college students that embraces the otaku culture and its lifestyle. As such, prepare to experience references from other franchise (anime/manga/video games) thrown at your face every episode. These can include popular anime from both the past and present times such as Madoka, School Days, Squid Girl, Bakemonogatari, and the list goes so on. The show constantly portrays the otaku culture as a fun way of lifestyle presented in a comedy manner. This is especially true involving the characters' cast of this series. This season follows a set of characters that offers a different type of enjoyment for viewers. Chika Ogiue now plays a sort of leader role in her position at the club. In fact, she even manages to recruit new members with her artistical skills. These new characters offer a fun new outlook on the show especially in the comedy department. It's no surprise though that the new characters seems to have some trouble adjusting to the club at first. In fact, one particular character is a cross-dresser that seems to have trouble getting in and out of his clothing. At many variances, it plays on the gender bender trope with humorous results along with compromising situations. However despite this, the clubs' members continues to bring forth entertainment and offers great promise. For returning characters, there are some noticeable ones such as Susanna Hopins and Marunobu Madarame. In particular, Susanna takes the role of the cosplay girl portraying as various characters from other popular series. For fans unfamiliar with her, Susanna is the type of girl who is antisocial but comes with a great fascination in yaoi. The way she blurts out various anime and manga references is also hilariously amusing. Marunobu's return to the show is also quite refreshing as there's not much change to his character. He is still in love with a particular girl from the previous series but at the same time offers to help out a new crossdressing member of the club. Other characters from the show also makes their cameos from here and there to progresses through the slice of life style of Genshiken. The new club members might be a bit difficult to get used to at first. Even for some people, the gender bender theme plays on the new member of the club, Kenjirou Hato. Nicknamed as the “mysterious beauty”, Hato embraces on a feminine side by putting on a wig, speaking in a feminine voice, and attends the club meetings as a 'girl'. This spells out some awkward moments and confusion at first. Even later on, his interactions with Madarabe creates tension. It doesn't also help by the fact that Hato is fan of BL and this brings forth even more complexity in their relationship. Along with our cross-dresser, there's also a fujoshi and a somewhat antisocial girl introduced to the club. All three members brings a new and natural experience to Genshiken as we witness their daily lives and experience the way of an otaku. Because Genshiken plays on the otaku culture, there's plenty of activities related to it beyond just cosplaying and referencing. In this season, the club also work on their own to present to the world their own pieces of work. These comes in the form of BL manga and doujinshi. With the new three members in check, they all offer their talent in building their dreams. These dreams takes them to places such as the Comic Festival, a large anime/manga convention. They each possesses their own skills whether it's background imagery, page cleanup, or getting by deadlines. The comedy of the show is generally tolerable although sometimes feels a bit repetitive. The heavy doses of BL vibes can feel like a loop at times since it's played out a bit more than what I expected it to be. Furthermore, there's the character interactions that offers various forms of entertainment. In one way, most of the character seems to get along well. On the other hand, there are times when we scratch our heads and may ask 'what just happened?' For me though, Genshiken's character interactions focuses more on reality. It portrays it as a slice of life anime and succeeds in presenting the otaku culture. Viewers gets the chance to feel as if themselves are there with the club. The way the members work around the club to perfect their art also shows how dedicated they are. The pieces of comedy connects together even with a touch of supernatural to it with a floating spirit in particular episodes. If comedy is what you're looking for, then Genshiken will not be a painful experience. However, it can be somewhat painful to witness a few of the characters' interactions to sudden situations or scenes in the show. It becomes a bit cliched and predictable along with its awkwardness. Trust me, if you're a guy, then it might even be more awkward. The artwork of this season also remains not only consistent but also realistic. The simple club room is presented exactly as the way it should be with the background anime/manga images. The merchandise that appears here and there also fun to take notice. Along with that, character designs gives a refreshing appeal to how an otaku is dressed such as Madarame's glasses, Susanna's various cosplaying outfits, or Kuchiki's body proportions. Even Susanna's American friends gives off their refreshing feelings of being foreigners accompanied with their English accents. Unfortunately, soundtrack is perhaps one of the lesser focus of Genshiken. There's not much strength in the OST as most of the soundtrack remains generally the same and hardly noticeable. The OP song “Genshi, Joshi wa, Taiyou Datta." by Sumire Uesaka is perhaps the only catchy tone with its J-Pop like rhythms accompanied by its montage plays. However, if we talk about voice acting, then there's definitely some to take notice of. In particular, Kazutomi Yamamoto gets praise for her double portrayal in voice acting because of the gender bender involving her character. Voicing a character with a dual personality is not easy but she pulls it off marvelously. Naomi Ohzora's voice for Susanna can also be noticeable for someone who plays a girl that is not sociable towards others. The accents of the foreign characters seems more out of place though and can be more taken in as comedy although not too impressive on any scale. The Genshiken franchise is the ultimate portrayal of the otaku culture. It's a place where we get to see the lifestyle of otaku in various ways. The cosplaying and references brings forth both an entertaining and refreshing appeal to fans. It might also bring back some nostalgia as well for fans of the original series. There's a lack of highlights though in some of the main characters from the previous seasons so be aware of that. I don't take this as a backlash though because it gives chances for our new characters to shine that offers potential. That potential and execution carried out might give you a different impression. However, it's not just this series that impressed me. It's the way of Genshiken. Otaku isn't just a culture for the kids in this show, it's a way of life.

So I take it that if you are reading this, you have already watched Season 1 & 2 of this show. Which was released about 6 to 7 years prior to Genshiken Nidaime. I have watched every season and every ova and special there is about Genshiken. So I am gonna write how I feel about Genshiken Nidaime specifically. HERE WE GO!! Genshiken Nidaime is full of bullshit. Genshiken actually was supposed to be some slice of life show which revolves around all the adult Otakus' lives. And season 1 & 2 did a pretty good job at it. It was fun and interesting and verygood. But then comes Genshiken Nidaime, which is all about FUDANSHI. Yes you read it right. Nidaime has so much BL, yaoi and fudanshi in it that it makes me wonder why doesn't it has a Josei or Shoujo tag. All the club memebers in this season are girls full of BL crap and as typical fudanshi does, they freaking ship every freaking male character in the show. To make the matters worse, we have Kenjiro Hato as one of the main characters, who is a boy who loves to cross dress as a girl and eventually develop feelings for Maderama. So, a bunch of episodes are from Hato's perspective and are about how he feels for Maderama. There were couple of moments in this show which really made sense and I think I don't need to say that those were definitely with the old characters. Apart from those, this show has nothing going for it. Its a full on Fujoshi fest for Yaoi fangirls. Until you are big on yaoi, I won't recommend you to watch this, specially if you are a male. This show is a nightmare for most of the Male Otaku community. I don't usually write reviews but I made an exception for Nidaime, because after watching it, I feel like I have been robbed of my good memories that I had from the previous 2 seasons. CONCLUSION:- Genshiken Nidaime is not like the Genshiken you know. This is a Yaoi freak fest with a lot of Fujoshi. Please don't watch it if you are a Genshiken fan.

There were too many things done differently with this installation of Genshiken. So much to the point where in the end I was left with mixed feelings. After re-watching Genshiken (the originals) then coming back to Nidaime it's sort of like the new characters make the story a bit.... complicated so to speak. I mean personally, I'm okay with gays and transgender or BL (I have no issues with trans) however this series focused a bit way too much on Boys love, transgender, etc that I just couldn't enjoy it as much. I found it rather difficult to continue watching, however if it wasn't for themost of the original characters I would've just dropped it. A few things I liked was that the new characters, Mirei, Rika, etc they were tolerable. I like how after a few episodes they really blended in as part of the OG cast. Honestly, I would've been happier if the Nidaime focused more on Chika, however and again, to a certain extent the main focus was on Hato, the trap and Harunobu. I did like how towards the middle of the series I got to see Chika get the spotlight and all but still... The parodies. homages, easter eggs whatever you want to call them were great. I loved how they had little parodies of Bakemonogatari, Attack on Titan, Panty and Stocking and so much more. But my favorite of them all is the skit between Sue and Madarame because I like Bakemonogatari and my favorite skit in that show is the "Oops I stuttered" bit between Araragi and Mayoi. So seeing another show do it was like really funny. The soundtrack to the show wasn't really good to me. In fact, as i'm writing this, I can't even say if the music was any good or not. I did however love the voice acting. I really liked Yukana Nogami or Oono's seiyuu. It came as a bit of a surprise that she could speak English pretty well and I don't remember her ever using it in the other series. Madarame and Sue's voice actors were great too because again, the Bakemonogatari skit was so spot on. Lastly, I'd say that I enjoyed Nidaime just a little. Once again the sense of enjoyment I got from this series compared to the rest was a bit of a downgrade. However that didn't stop me from actually liking the show even if it was just a little bit. Overall I gave this show a 7/10 because while it was good in a sense, it just didn't seem like the story went in the right direction.

So i talked in a previous review about the first season of Genshiken so i thought it would be appropriate to say a few words about this,the last installment in the series. I would be lying if i said i thought it was interesting or funny in any way.I only enjoyed 2 or 3 eps and that cannot exactly be called an accomplishment,can it? Now 2 seasons after they sat down and thought it was time to change gears and go all in..Problem is that they bet all their money in black and the ball sat to red.And while this anime in some weird way wasn't atotal borefest it certainly wasn't comedic and as for parody..Can you really call parody something that had very few refs of other anime,by which i mean you can count them in the fingers of 1 hand. But that wasn't the most crippling weakness of the show.For me at least was the turn the show took as a whole. It's the characters..Now the old ones are a mixture of the second season and a bit more maturity.In that regard they did great,it has at least a sense of continuity and doesn't go too far to show how much way they've covered.....As for the new characters...I can only describe them as the PC sjw feminist's dream cast.In fact the whole show now reeks of political correctness and leftist agenda. Now for the sake of coming clean i do see myself as part of the left but not the far left of the ridiculous identity politics proffesional victims and the likes,where people go around with a book 400 pages long about the "correct pronouns" for all 890 sexes they dreamed up.That doesn't mean i lean to the right either cause i clash by nature with too many of their opinions,so i guess you can call me a centrist. And if you sit there thinking why i bring such things into an anime review,it's simple.This anime is all about identity and gender politics,which in turn means that they couldn't just sit there and let men have their way,so they did what they do best..They don't make something of their own,cause who can bother when we can take over something that's already there and ruin it going "oh i know let's have some women that aren't the usual skinny girl cause we hate everything that is beautiful,let's throw a cross dresser in there too for no reason other than a forced diversity....Oh and don't forget to mention gender politics and possible homophobia every 2 sentences"..Now i wouldn't have any problem with any of these subjects IF they were a part of a more serious anime where the characters would benefit more and they could point out issues those groups face in everyday life.And by issues i mean the real issues not the made up ones.. But taking an anime and turning it into a gender identity fanfare?That's ridiculous and the way it was presented was laughable and it showed in every possible way.Every conversation in the anime was like a to do list of quotas.So a PC anime just for the sake of being PC and nothing more. Suffice to say i didn't like it one bit.It's one thing to make an anime about politics,like say corruption or any other political drama and build a story on that and another thing to bring political agendas into the anime world.And it's all the more worse because these people sadly influence the anime industry by being constantly offended by cat girls and whatnot,cause of course the world needs to be after their depressed image. As for the anime itself as an anime?The animation is just as atrocious as ever.The characters look like they sculpted potatoes and used them as reference for the design,apart from the backgrounds which were way better portrayed.. It still doesn't have a story,it's slice of life. Music and VA's were ok-ish nothing to write home about really. All in all if you want an anime that has little to nothing storywise,animation that will make you scream in terror and political agendas cause it's the new thing these days,by all means watch it to your heart's content.If by any chance though you want an anime that has actual story,fun,comedy etc then i suggest you look elsewhere.

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