げんしけん: 二代目
Genshiken Nidaime Manga Chapter 62 Review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

ComiFes is almost here and Angela has come to Japan, met by Ohno at the airport. Meanwhile, Ogiue completed her doujinshi, but the deadline for her second part official manga is almost here. As such, she has Hato, Sue, Yoshitake, and Yajima helping her and earning money in the process. Work comes to a screeching halt when Hato announces that his growing stubble has him embarrassed to be dressed as a female. This sets Yajima off, but Sue has a brilliantly simple solution — a face mask that the Japanese traditionally wear when they have a cold.

Since Ohno left the boxes of cosplay clothing at Ogiue’s home, Yoshitake decides that maybe the answer lies there. However, all of the cosplay clothing Ohno brought for Hato were for crossdressing male characters pretending to be female.  Since Yajima is wearing male clothing, it is decided that Hato will wear her clothing and Yajima will wear a cosplay outfit, much to her chagrin. To try to make Yajima feel better, Yoshitake also cosplays but her character’s outfit is just a sweatsuit rather than something elaborate. Hato changes into Yajima’s male clothing and starts using his male voice again.  When Hato mentions that he’ll change back and wear a mask on the way home and wash Yajima’s clothing, the flaw in the plan rears its head. Yajima demands that Hato get out of her clothing and Hato is wearing a dress again, only it is cosplay of a crossdressing male character.

Yoshitake suggests that Sue cosplay as well so that all the 1st-year club members are the same. Sue rejects this until she hears one of the costumes Ohno brought, so Sue also cosplays. Now that everyone else is cosplaying, Yoshitake tells Ogiue that since everyone else is in cosplay, she should as well. Ogiue reluctantly agrees since she had gotten so far behind.

The doorbell rings and Sue believes that this will be Angela. Ogiue didn’t really want Ohno to see her cosplaying but decides that Angela and Ohno seeing her this way is OK. However, it is Yabusaki and when she sees them all cosplaying, Yabusaki goes off on all of them for an hour since they needed to be working, not cosplaying. However, she too helped get the manga draft completed.

The following day, Ohno weeps upon learning that she missed out seeing the everyone cosplay.

Thoughts/Review:

So, Hato finally shows himself as a guy to his fellow club members (sans Ohno and Kuchiki) for a short time. That was interesting even if done in a comical sense. Since he’s let them see him as a man, I wonder if he’ll do it more often.

While Hato’s stubble problem may have formed the foundation for everyone cosplaying, Sue was the awesome part of this story, plain and simple. *lol*  This started with her solution to Hato’s stubble problem by producing the mouth face mask that the Japanese always use when they are sick. I laughed out loud at Sue’s negative reaction to the suggestion of cosplaying and then her change of heart when she heard what character she would be cosplaying. I can’t help but like Sue a lot and she’s my favorite character of the new Genshiken crew.

Yoshitake is proving to be quite manipulative in how she guided everyone into cosplaying, including Ogiue. I found that pretty amusing and wonder if this trait will come up in the future.

Speaking of cosplaying, Ogiue Maniax has an excellent breakdown of the Genshiken characters and the characters they cosplay, complete with image comparisons.

While this is certainly an enjoyable, fun chapter, there’s not a lot to I have to say about it. With Angela now here, I would guess that the next chapter will be about ComiFest since that was such a big part of the original manga. I’m hoping the old crew (Sasahara, Tanaka, Madarame, etc.) can show up as well.