げんしけん: 二代目Chapter 95 Manga Review
Genshiken Nidaime chapter 95 Manga Review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Ogiue and Sue return from winter break, but Ogiue has to call the Genshiken club room to make sure Madarame isn’t there for Sue’s sake. After they arrive and join Rika and Yajima, Rikka expresses her concern over Madarame’s harem issue and how it is affecting the club. As such, she decides to spell out on the whiteboard why “Rame-senpai” is a loser. Ogiue is worried about insulting Madarame behind his back, but when asked about Madarame taking Sue from her, Ogiue doesn’t have an issue with that. Sue is bummed by this, causing Rikka some excitement over Sue leaving the harem.

Rikka thinks that Hato needs to see this list of reasons Madarame is no good.  She asks Ogiue for more info, so Ogiue tells the story Sasahara told her about how Madarame didn’t come to Keiko’s defense at the beach that one time, but pretended not to be involved.

Meanwhile, Kenji gets home and decides to put an end to his Hato-chan imaginary character by no longer looking at himself objectively. After that, he dresses in drag and faces his imaginary Kaminaga character and resolves things there too.

Now whole, Kenji goes to the Genshiken club room as Hato-chan, surprising Rikka and causing Yajima to wonder about him dressing as Kaminaga again. After seeing the whiteboard that Rikka made, Kenji laughs, saying that Rikka’s reasons to put down Madarame are what make Madarame desirable.

That night, Sue stops by the convenience store before heading to her apartment, where she sits in front of the computer and thinks back to what Hato had said about moving to a place closer to the school so that he wouldn’t have to use Madarame’s place to change any more. Now that he’s resolved things with himself, he doesn’t feel the need to hide his cross-dressing clothing, so he doesn’t mind a smaller place. After looking at Sue, Hato had said that he was going to come dressed as Hato-chan as often as possible, which seems to annoy Sue.

At Yajima’s place, Rika feels the need to discuss this turn of events, being somewhat disappointed since she’d paired Hato with Yajima. Yajima gets more irritated as Rika drones on about it. Seeing Yajima stare at the ceiling and upset, Rika feels that with Hato basically challenging Sue, and Yajima’s apparent depression over things, Genshiken may be breaking up.

The following day, Ohno comes in to see the whiteboard spelling out why Madarame is a loser and asks Kuchiki about it, though he doesn’t know and doesn’t care.

Thoughts/Review:

Well now, well now. Some interesting stuff in this chapter.

While Rika has often annoyed me as a character, she serves a useful purpose here in terms of the whole Madarame Harem arc. I can’t believe she got Ogiue to tell her about Madarame’s actions at the beach during the original Genshiken, as told to her by Sasahara.

I’m glad that Kenji finally has come to further resolution on who he is. I’m still weary of the whole “Hato-chan” thing, but having him absorb those to imaginary female personas back into himself means less angst and stuff. (I hope.)

Still, for me, Sue was the highlight of this chapter. From her introduction in the original Genshiken, she’s clung to Ogiue.  She adores Ogiue a great deal, but her attraction to Madarame has her out of her element.

Still, I loved that she quoted Ogiue’s “I don’t date guys” line she gave Sasahara in the original Genshiken when the club went on that trip and tried to set things up for Sasahara and Ogiue to become a couple. I laughed at how Kio-sensei daftly avoids revealing how the anime-manga quoting Sue quotes Ogiue, while having Ogiue keep trying to find out how Sue knew about that (since it was a private conversation). It is one of those “we aren’t a manga even though we are a manga” jokes, but as a longtime fan, it works for me. ^_^

I absolutely loved that Kio-sensei finally showed us Sue away from Genshiken and school. It was a nice bit of character development to get a sense of Sue’s life, which is rather a lonely, otaku existence. She grabs something to eat from the convenience store, takes it home, ignores the folks in the common room, then in her very messy room, she eats in front of the computer. In a way, it is kind of sad, but Kio-sensei doesn’t play up that element. Still, I couldn’t help but feel the loneliness of Sue’s life.

The most interesting part to me is how Kenji’s words and looking at Sue were “laying down the gauntlet” as it were. So, even though Kenji doesn’t have a chance at scoring with Madarame, he’s going to try. Sue took that as a challenge, and I found it interesting that she appeared angry about it in her room as she recalled the day’s events.

As to Yajima, well, I feel sorry for her. I doubt Kenji has even given her a look as a girl.  He’s only seen her as a friend who’s into the same things he’s into.

Well, more chapters are out, so time to read and review them as well. ^_^ In the meantime, chapter 95 was a pretty good one for me as we move forward with Madarame’s Harem.