げんしけん 2 Episode 06

SPOILER Summary: As Ohno works on building and model and Ogiue doodles on a pad, Madarame speaks of his recent job interview attempts, mainly with Sasahara. Discussion of urban legends with job interviews occurs along with discussions of what Madarame has personally witnessed in group interviews (where he along with other interviewees are interviewed at the same time). Sasahara recommends Madarame read a manga series about an “ota-ryman” — an otaku salary man.

The discussion then turns to the upcoming Winter ComiFes. The three of them discuss when they will attend the festival as a group as well as what they’ll do the other days. The final day is when Genshiken will do its official group outing. Ohno-san will of course cosplay on that day. However, Sasahara decides that the first day of the festival, whomever wants to from Genshiken can meet up and attend. Likely, the entire group will meet up and so Sasahara and Ohno try to encourage Ogiue to join. She says she won’t, even though the “Scram Dunk” event will be held then that she likes.

The first day of ComiFes, Ogiue is there, though in disguise of sorts. Instead of her normal clothing and hair style, she wears the clothing and hair style from her high school days. She’s irritated by the crowds and even making it inside, she seems irritated with every doujinshi purchase she makes. One of the female members of the Manga Club (Yabusaki) spots Ogiue and recognizes her despite her disguise. So when Ogiue ends up buying every doujinshi Yabusaki would have bought, Yabusaki is annoyed.

Ogiue is heading to another section of the ComiFes floor when she happens upon members of Genshiken standing and talking, apparently waiting for Ohno-san to emerge in her cosplay attire. She decides to hang out nearby where she hears them discuss various doujinshi, anime works, and games. Ogiue becomes the topic of conversation, to the point of some of the guys placing her in a dating-sim game with the ultimate end of sex. It is shortly after this that Sasahara notices Ogiue and kind of recognizes her. When she attempts to flee, she runs into Ohno and falls to the ground. It is Sasahara who returns her glasses to her and as Ohno approvingly examines Ogiue’s purchases, Ogiue flees the facility.

Sometime later at the Genshiken room, Saki notes the bags of doujinshi and inquires of them and Ogiue, who’s been missing for several days. Eventually, Ogiue returns, stammering an excuse and holding a form for entry into the Summer ComiFes.

Thoughts: The problem when anime writers try to pad out a single manga chapter into an entire episode is that it can be very difficult to do so, tell the same story, and not make it boring. This episode, while certainly having enjoyable moments, had a lot of boring moments filled with otaku chatting. Now, had I seen all of the different titles (given in parody form for Genshiken) the guys were referencing or had played the dating-sim games, maybe it would have meant more to me and not been so dull.

The other thing I didn’t much care for was Ogiue hearing the guys basically fantasizing aloud about her as a character in a game (or anime I suppose) with the ultimate end of having sex with her. After all that talk, one would think that when Sasahara discovered her standing there and she bumped into Ohno, the guys would have been somewhat embarrassed, thinking, “How long was she here? Oh crap! Did she hear us saying such vulgar things?” Instead, that’s when the writers pick up the manga story, which didn’t have all that bloviating, and proceed on as the manga story did. It didn’t jive with me.

So all in all, a mixed bag of an episode that contained a lot of filler to stretch a chapter into an episode.