げんしけん: 二代目Chapter 115 Manga Review
Genshiken Nidaime chapter 115 Manga Review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Keiko gets paired up with Madarame, so they go off a little way on their own while Rika tells the story if Ieyasu and what happened with him after he died. Keiko reveals that she informed Hato about Madarame’s trip to the cabaret (hostess) club and what subsequently nearly happened at Keiko’s place that night. She then reveals that Hato told her how he pushed Hato onto a bed. Madarame tries to explain how he tripped and it was an accident, but she’s not buying it.

Rika, who’s paired with Hato, observes Keiko and Madarame apparently having a spat, so she inquires of Hato why he and Keiko have been acting so strange of late. Hato tells what happened between him and Madarame and what happened between Keiko and Madarame. The yaoi stuff has Rika streaming with excitement, but she’s forced to acknowledge that heterosexual males would want to feel up breasts if given a chance. That being said, the trump for Rika is that Madarame made a move of Hato when Hato was in male form.

Meanwhile, Keiko lays out the argument on why she thinks she’s the best choice for Madarame. Angela lives too far away, which is what Keiko thinks Angela has come to understand. Sue communicates weirdly and Keiko feels badly for her, but can’t see Madarame dating someone like Sue. As for Hato, he’s a guy which eliminates him. As such, Keiko is the logical choice. With Madarame being unemployed, she says he’d become the house husband and she’d support them with her job. With all of Madarame’s faults, Keiko feels she’s the only one who’d look past them all.

Madarame is surprised at how much sense Keiko is making, so Keiko tells him to choose her so that she can bring an end to all of this pairing stuff. Madarame doesn’t think it is fair to stop all of the drawing for pairs now. Hearing Madarame’s excuses, Keiko is very frustrated and can’t believe that Madarame wouldn’t say yes to her proposal. Wiping a tear from her eye, she angrily tells him that girls like her turn down the otaku all the time. She cites Saki as a case where the beautiful girl turns down the otaku (Madarame).

Keiko angrily removes tears from her eyes, recalling how she chased Kousaka around and lost, and now she’s losing again thanks to Madarame turning her down. Madarame denies turning her down, stating that there’s more drawing of pairs to happen before he makes a decision. Hearing this, Keiko storms off and goes to Hato and Rika. There, she tells Hato that Yajima like him. Hato refuses to believe this, but when Keiko states how Yajima is always watching him, including now, Hato discovers that Yajima is indeed watching him.

Thoughts/Review:

Well, this chapter certainly was quite interesting and thus quite good.

Outside of Kousaka, who was already involved with Saki by the time Keiko met him, Keiko is not used to guys being hard to get. She works at a place where guys hit on her all the time. She even started dating one of her customers, though it didn’t seem it was for love, but just for convenience.

For whatever reason, she became interested in Madarame, and once that happened, her pride made it so that she didn’t want to lose Madarame to other girls, and most especially some guy in drag. As we saw in chapter 103, Keiko was willing to do whatever to win, including seducing him. She would have succeeded, but they were interrupted and that was that. However, I do think that Keiko would have slept with Madarame and claimed his first time.

Since the seduction route is out for Keiko, she goes for reality and does a good job laying out her case. She basically proposes marriage to Madarame, even offering to support them financially. He doesn’t agree and she’s for a loss. After all, no man turns her down, especially not some otaku. They lust for her and she turns them down.

I’ve never been quite sure how deep Keiko’s feelings for Madarame are. I’ve no doubt she’s interested in him at some level. I’ve no doubt she would like to take Madarame’s firsts. I’ve no doubt she didn’t want the others taking him. She was happy when Madarame came to visit her at the cabaret club. I believe what ultimately prompted her to invite Madarame over was the fact that he preferred the real her to her hostess persona. But did she truly love Madarame?

There’s a part of me that wants to not believe that Keiko was deeply in love with Madarame, but there’s another part of me that does believe she may well have been in love with him. Her marriage proposal and reminder that she’s the one person who can get past all his faults could just be part of the new seduction for her to win the competition. Once she’d won, she might quickly lose interest in Madarame and dump him.

However, after Madarame failed to go for her offer, she wiped away tears twice from her eyes. She was angry at losing, but I think the tears (not full out crying), combined with her remembering not being able to lure Kousaka away from Saki, suggests that she had developed real feelings for Madarame. I think she might have really been serious with her offer of marriage.

What’s interesting is that once Madarame made it clear he wasn’t outright rejecting her, Keiko went to Plan B and decided to torpedo Hato by letting him know that Yajima has feelings for him. That forces Hato to suddenly become aware of Yajima and thus is no longer solely focused on Madarame. So Keiko seems determined to win this no matter what.

Anyway, based on Spotted Flower 16.5, I continue to think that at the end of the day, Madarame doesn’t chose any of the people in his “harem” and he ends up with Saki.

In the end, this was a very interesting and good chapter. I can’t wait to see what happens next.