げんしけん: 二代目
Genshiken Nidaime Manga Chapter 78

Saki enters the Genshiken clubroom with Madarame and reports on how she caught Sue kissing Madarame, proving he’s a lolicon. Madarame attempts to explain this was Sue trying to force him to butt in on Kenji’s (Hato) conversation. Ogiue and the others return, so Ohno sends the 1st-years off to escort their friends around campus while she targets Saki to cosplay. Saki catches up with Tanaka and Kugayama, then teases Ohno about marrying Tanaka.

Kenji comes in and sees Saki. He notices how much livelier the place is now that she’s there and wonders if it was like this when Saki was a member.  Kenji notices Madarame take a peek at Saki, but his train of thought is interrupted when Keiko arrives, giving Saki a hard time about Kousaka, then she hands out her business cards to the other guys there to visit her at the hostess club. Seeing Madarame, she tells the others that even though she gave him her card ages ago, he’s never stopped by. Saki dismisses this since she knows that’s not Madarame’s thing, then teases him again about being a lolicon.

Saki then talks to Madarame about Angela coming onto him at ComiFes. She chastises him for not taking the chance she presented him, even if Angela wasn’t his type, feeling the experience would have been good for Madarame. She teases him again about being a lolicon, which annoys Kenji enough to defend Madarame, citing the fact that Madarame doesn’t have that much lolicon porn at his apartment. Upon hearing that Kenji cleans Madarame’s place, Saki is about to chastise Madarame for that, but Kenji assures her that he did it on his own. He explains that he’s over there to change, leading Keiko to finally discover that Kenji is a guy. She then understands why Madarame had no interest in “Hato-chan.”

Saki considers how Madarame has Angela, Sue, Kenji, and even Keiko interested in him, and figures it is his time to shine. Saki then gets the group to recall how the Genshiken meeting at Madarame’s house revealed that he had a collection of S&M videos, which confuses Kenji.

Bwah!ha!ha!ha!ha!  Oh Saki-chan. It really is great having her back because this chapter was really quite good.

I’m wondering on how much stock to put into Saki’s observations on things.  On one hand, Saki is very good about uncovering hidden truths.  On the other hand, she mistook Ogiue’s drawing of Sasahara and Madarame as meaning that Ogiue liked both guys (one could argue that she was right about Ogiue liking Sasahara). However, I do think she’s right about Angela, Sue, Keiko, and Kenji all liking Madarame to one extent or another.  Keiko has shown some level of interest in Madarame, not on a romantic level, but I suspect that were Madarame pay her a visit at the hostess club, she could decide to sex him.

Saki’s observation on this being Madarame’s time reminded me of a saying where all guys have a period of time in their life where they find girls are interested and/or attracted to them.  That’s not to say that said girls will be hot babes or even girls that are the guy’s type, but it happens, usually between the high school and college years.  She might be oblivious to Madarame’s feelings for her, but she seemed almost jealous that three girls and one trap are interested in Madarame. I’m not saying she has feelings for Madarame, but this may be a case where she liked viewing Madarame a certain negative way (nice but creepy otaku) just as Madarame had liked viewing Saki a certain negative way (outsider bitch, if you’ll pardon the use of that term).

Frankly, I think that her bringing up Madarame’s S&M collection (which was simply a tactical ploy on his part to keep Saki from learning that he had a collection of 8×10 photo’s of her cosplaying) is her way of keeping Madarame in the same box she’d always kept him in.  It is my experience that a girl gives a “pass” guy a second look whenever other girls, especially attractive ones, show interest in said guy.  The girl thinks, “So, what do all these other girls see in this guy that I didn’t find attractive? Maybe I missed something and should take a closer look to see what I missed.”  So, when Saki started considering other girls liking Madarame, I think she subconsciously realized she was starting to give him another look, thus brought out something negative to keep him in the box. At the same time, she could kill off Kenji’s and Keiko’s interest, helping return Madarame to the special box in her mind.

Sue didn’t get much air time, but again, I was struck by the last panel of the chapter, where she quotes Lupin from Castle of Cagliostro. For those unaware (and trying to keep the spoilers to a minimum), Lupin fails in an attempt to rescue a young lady, and is injured as a result. When he comes to three days later, he wants food brought to him so he can scarf, recover, and then make yet another attempt to rescue the girl.  While Sue does seem to randomly spout anime and manga lines, she’s actually shown purpose behind the lines, such as the previous time she quoted from Castle of Cagliostro, where she showed Ogiue that she understood that Sasahara had stolen her heart, and she also revealed via another Cagliostro quote that she did in fact know a lot more Japanese than anyone realized.

Assuming Sue is again using Cagliostro to reveal something, what does it mean?  Considering how Sue did not seem pleased that Saki showed up, much less that Saki saw Sue kiss Madarame, plus the fact that Sue refused to go with Saki and Madarame to meet up with the other Genshiken members, I tend to think that Sue is trying to recover from things before making another attempt at Madarame, or at least to set Madarame free from his unrequited love of Saki.  We’ll see.

Keiko’s learning that “Hato-chan” was in fact a dude was pretty funny.  I also got a laugh when Saki thought Madarame was making a first-year trap clean his place. *lol* I think the funniest moment came from Saki stating that she was OK with gay guys, leading Ogiue and Ohno to mistakenly assume that she’d gotten into being a fujoshi. *lol*

It was great seeing the old Genshiken members back, save for Sasahara and Kousaka (and technically, the first president too).