Manga Review: Genshiken vol. 1
Finally, there is a manga out there that speaks my language. The “slice of life” genre is very common in manga and anime, but just whose lives are we slicing? High school girls? Office ladies? Salary men? Well they might make up much of the manga market in Japan, that’s clearly not the key demographic in the US. After seeing the American anime culture represented at a recent convention, I discovered just where most of the fan base is.
College boys and girls.
We all know that college is the time for everyone to party and get wasted, but that’s just not the kind of lifestyle that nerds like myself tend to follow. Instead, we pursue other hobbies that are socializing but in a safe and creative way. Many turn to video games. It’s not uncommon to see a group of guys gathered around a dorm room playing the latest Madden game. Many others turn to anime and manga, with sharing fansubs with their friends, writing in anime web forums and blogs, or joining anime clubs on campus where they can watch and talk about their favorites. This is the anime culture in the US, but what about in Japan?
Well, it turns out things are similar there too.
Genshike is the story of a group of college-aged nerds. Sure, their school has an anime club and a manga club, but those are for sissies. These guys are the most hard-core otaku, not wishing to be limited to just one medium of choice. They form their own club, Genshiken, or “The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture.” Hmmm… I like calling it “Modern Visual Culture” instead of manga and video games. It sounds so much for sophisticated! 
We start off with two college freshman as they stumble across this crazy crew. The first is Kanji, a very shy boy whose been a secret anime fan for a while. He’s always wanted to learn more about the culture, but is a little taken a back at first with dealing with the other club members.
Then there’s pretty boy Matoko. He’s quite the heartthrob and has an attractive girl, Saki, swooning over him. This is not your typical profile for an otaku, and yet he appears to be the most hard-core of them all. His dorm room is cluttered with figures, plushies, video game systems and accessories, hentai video games, and stacks upon stacks of manga magazines.
We’re also introduced to the older members of Genshiken. The leader is a tall and scrawny nerd with a bowler hair cut and glasses. Then we also have two heavy set fellows under him. Each member specializes in a different aspect of anime fandom, from personal artwork to cosplaying.
The story is great as it deals with the kind of stuff we anime fans enjoy. As Kanji makes learns about otaku behavior, the reader is taken back to when they first started making the same discovers. Hentai video games are the first topic brought up as the naive boy checks out his first one. During a demonstration from his fellow members, he joyously announces, “Wow, their ‘hair down there’ matches their normal hair color!” Unfortunately, they don’t quite share the same enthusiasm for the observation.
But the main focus in this volume is the world of doujinshi, which they appropriately translate to “fan-zines” in this version. Doujinshi is really something that Americans don’t understand the magnitude of it in Japan. And so this manga does a good job at teaching us this particular aspect of anime culture. The group makes several trips to stores and conventions to buy the latest issues of their favorites. Yes, they have huge three=day conventions for JUST doujinshi! There’s also a lot of talk amongst the members about creating their own, which I have a feeling will be explored more in future volumes.
So, as a college-aged hard-core anime fan, I found myself loving this series. I could identify with the characters, and I can laugh at some of the ridicules things that we do because of this. Genshiken is the “slice of life” manga that the US fans can finally identify with.
