げんしけん: 二代目Chapter 94 Manga Review
Genshiken Nidaime chapter 94 Manga Review

Kaminaga does her formal greeting to the Hato family while Ichirou joins Kenji (Kenjirou) on the roof to help remove snow.

Sometime later, Kenji is in his room reading when Kaminaga drops by with her adult beverage. When he calls her “Kaminaga-senpai”, she teasingly corrects him by saying “neesan” (sister-in-law). She tries to get him to join the gathering below, but he’s reluctant, since he knows his parents would not approve of his activities in Tokyo. So, she closes the door behind her to sit with him in his room, but is disappointed when she learns all of his BL materials are in Tokyo.

Kaminaga promises not to reveal Kenji’s cross-dressing secret, and he ends up revealing that he may have fallen for another guy. Kaminaga is excited about this and asks him what he’s going to do about it. Kenji switches to his female voice to partially blame her for the cross-dressing and the like. She gives him some BL advice, which he’s not thrilled with, so instead, she arranges for Kenji to meet up with his female, high school, BL friends Konno and Fuji.

The trio make small talk and the girls promise to not tell anyone about Kenji’s cross-dressing. Fuji starts getting frustrated with Konno, since she has feelings for Kenji, but is having Fuji to all the talking. So, Konno manages to suggest discussing BL. However, when Kenji agrees to this, Konno suddenly doesn’t want to discuss it with guys. Kenji opens up some on his cross-dressing.

Since it is clear that Kenji is troubled by all of this, Konno suggest him giving up on the BL and cross-dressing, or just leaving Genshiken. After all, one’s hobbies shouldn’t be a source of trouble. Kenji agrees with this, but has one more bombshell – there’s someone he likes, so for now, he’s not quitting. This news shocks Konno.

After they leave the restaurant, Fuji tells Konno that it didn’t sound like Kenji was dating anyone and Kenji understand that in the end, he couldn’t tell them he’d fallen for a guy. When he comes home, he’s planning to return to Tokyo. He discovers a drunk Kaminaga “steaming from BL excitement” over some of Ichirou’s friends doing judo stuff.

Although I’ve long grown weary of Kenji’s storyline with his various “whatevers”, I did think this was a pretty interesting chapter.

I had hoped that Kaminaga’s arrival at the Hato home would be where Kenji (yeah, I know his name is Kenjirou, but since Kaminaga calls him “Kenji” at times, so am I) concedes to having been attracted to her. To me, there were certainly indications of this, culminating in Kenji making himself look like Kaminaga when he went into trap mode.  The closest we came to that was Kenji basically laying the blame for the current mess in his life with BL and cross-dressing at her feet.

Kaminaga’s seeing everything through BL lenses makes me wonder what Ichirou saw in her.  Yeah, I’m sure she’s attractive to him, but based on what little we know, it just seems like such an odd pairing.

Then again, Kaminaga shows that despite her fujoshi mindset, she can still come off in a very traditional sense, as seen by how she respectfully did the traditional greeting & bow on her knees to her future in-laws. She also made her hair black (presumably its original color) in order to become more acceptable.  So she probably keeps her fujoshi side low key around Ichirou.

It is a shame that we got the tired (though I admit, realistic) setup of someone who has a chance to confess their feelings to the person they like, only to chicken out in the end. I had rather hoped that Konno would express her feelings to Kenji as that would have made for an interesting situation on his part. Alas, ’twas not to be.

So, now Kenji will return to Tokyo, whereupon I expect Madarame to be healed and we’ll go from there. Come on, Sue! ^_~