January 17th, 2016 
AstroNerdBoy Spotted Flower Chapter 17.5 (Manga)
Spotted Flower manga chapter 17.5 review
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
NOTE: For the purposes of this and future reviews, until the characters are given names, since these characters are obviously from Genshiken (or Genshiken Nidaime), I will call the “not-Saki” character !Saki, the “not Madarame” character !Madarame, and so forth for all other unnamed Genshiken characters.
!Hato decides to pay a visit to !Hato’s and !Yajima’s senpai’s stand. The senpai isn’t there, so !Hato exchanges doujinshi books with the person running the senpai’s stand.
While there, !Sue shows up, cracking a joke at !Hato’s expense on how her bra is getting tighter, then demanding !Hato’s new book.
Thoughts/Review:
Another 2-page chapter. I suspect Kio-sensei does these when Genshiken Nidaime takes up more of his time. Plus, whenever he focuses on !Hato solo, the chapters seem to always come out at 2 pages.
I’m guessing that !Hato was going to pay a visit to !Ogiue. She’s the only one whom !Hato and !Yajima would address as senpai and have a doujinshi stand. I wonder if that is !Yabusaki there, but we never got to see her face so it is impossible to say.
As to !Sue, I laughed at how she’s grown up. Kio-sensei is still subtly hitting on the old joke about how old Sue really is in Genshiken. I really want to see more of !Sue in Spotted Flower.
In the end, a short but still fun chapter, simply because of !Sue. ^_^
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Wow, it’s like Sue was just like 12 years old or something when she appeared for the first time!
Her age is a longtime joke of Genshiken. 🙂
Man, I just read all the chapters of spotted flower. I love this. This is scary. The way it looks like a (NOT) alternative future of nidaime makes me wanting this being the true end.
It ever hints as !Madarame being accused of going to visit !Keiko at the cabaret on the shimapan incident.
So…. if this !Sue is the future Sue…. On Genshiken Madarame is a true lolicon haha!. But I always considered that she being a minor is not posible after knowing that she apparently lives alone without a tutor (and being not japanese).
I hope this is not the way of the mangaka to please the fans after going another route on nidaime.
I’m not sure what this was ultimately intended to be. I’m not sure that Genshiken Nidaime was supposed to have Madarame come in and take over as much as he did. Since Genshiken was over, I think Spotted Flower was Kio-sensei’s way to have the Madarame x Saki ending that Genshiken didn’t provide. Speculation has run wild on whether or not this is the true end or the alternate ending for the Genshiken story. At this point, I’m hoping for the true end, mostly because this would be an ultra rare manga series that explores the lives of characters years later.
I’m with you!!! And also this would be another rare occurrence: The simultaneous telling of the same story at two different points of time, but with such a narrative that permits it evading major spoilers. Not merely a prequel and a sequel different enough to be told independently (as it is common nowadays with several prequels told after the original story currently developing).
If the author pulls it off, it could be like reading the first and second half of a book at the same time without ruining the story flow. (Granted, the second “half” is shorter and at very lower speed of reading than the first “half”)
Precisely. ^_^