Spotted Flower Chapter 20.5 #1 (Manga)
Spotted Flower manga chapter 20.5 #1 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’s editor stops by for a meeting with !Yajima and the exhausted and depressed !Hato. They discuss an anime where a yaoi pairing is over due to one of the characters dying. !Hato attempts to console himself by coming up with a scenario where the alive male is pregnant with the dead male’s son, then gets into a relationship with said son years later. !Hato wants to do a doujinshi for the next Comifest, which !Yajima isn’t sure about, but their editor things that a woman of !Hato’s talent can do it.

Sometime later after the editor leaves, !Hato concedes that there are limitations on him being a man in that he can’t give birth. !Yajima suggests he try it before mentioning that !Hato has an offer from an all-ages teen magazine. This causes !Hato to freak out as he’s not good with anything not BL. !Yajima suggests !Hato get pregnant and use that as a basis for the story. Then, !Hato would reveal his birth gender. !Hato rejects this as the fujoshi community would go nuts on it.

As to the pregnancy thing, !Hato rejects this as it needs to have two males. !Yajima reluctantly agrees with this, then notes that the surgery for !Hato to give birth is dangerous. She laments not telling !Hato that she’d have donated an egg.

!Hato decides he wants to work on the doujinshi, but !Yajima makes him work first.

Thoughts/Review:

It has been a while since I reviewed a Spotted Flower chapter. To be honest, I kinda thought that Kio-sensei may have dropped the whole thing once Genshiken Nidaime was over. The other day, I looked and was surprised to see that in Japan, chapter 20.5 is in four parts, then there’s a full chapter 21, and then chapter 21.5 has three parts. So Kio-sensei has been very busy even if the unofficial English translations are very behind.

Human Males Can’t Give Birth

I know that in hentai doujinshi, anything (and I do many anything) goes. So yeah, I get that element and that in this world, there are folks who get off on such fantasies. However, in reality, a male cannot give birth. Take this scene from Life of Brian.

😆 A funny moment in the movie to be sure. Still, while !Hato and !Yajima may have seriously discussed the situation, !Yajima’s thoughts about donating an egg shows how much she does love !Hato.

(Thanks to Joe-Kerr for reminding me about the Life of Brian scene.)

!Hato’s Secret

While we’ve known that !Hato still has male naughty bits, I found it interesting that his secret isn’t known in the fujoshi community. Indeed, the editor that visited at the first believed !Hato to be a natural born woman. Apparently, that is what !Hato’s fujoshi fans also believe. Only those closest to !Hato would know !Hato is actually still male. Yet if the secret were to be revealed, apparently the fujoshi crowd would be very negative against !Hato.

I also find it interesting that !Yajima is keen on having !Hato reveal this secret. Those two have such an odd relationship. It will be interesting to see what comes of the other three parts of this chapter as well as the three parts of 21.5.

!Hato Still Can’t Do Normal Stuff

Another little reveal that came out of this chapter is that !Hato still can’t do normal manga stuff. That still seems weird to me. An artist is an artist, so I never understood in Genshiken why Hato couldn’t draw non-hentai, non-BL material. I know the manga gave some excuse or the other, but I never bought it. Still, if !Hato could overcome this, then there’s an offer to make more money doing an all-ages teen manga.

Conclusion

I see parts 2-4 are out in English. I think I’m going to just review them as they would have been done in Japan. Meanwhile, although Hato wasn’t a character that did a lot for me in Genshiken Nidaime, for some reason, !Hato’s story with !Yajima as adults is interesting to me. As such, I’m eager to read what else follows.