げんしけん: 二代目
Genshiken Nidaime Manga Chapter 60

At the Genshiken club room, Kuchiki finds everyone is gone but Ohno, who says the others are helping Ogiue. He’s not happy that his harem is gone so Ohno asks him if he’s looking for a job since it doesn’t seem like it. Kuchiki reveals that his father’s connections will easily get him a job at a local bank. He wonders if Ohno shouldn’t worry about herself and put her skills learned in America to use. Ohno replies that she’s waiting on Tanaka and that there’s still time for fun.

At Ogiue’s apartment, Yajima, Sue, Hato, and Yoshitake are all helping Ogiue with her manga. Yajima is frustrated at seeing how good Ogiue is at drawing even though this is her first professional assignment and she gets angry when she sees how attractive Hato looks as a girl. This causes her to make a small mistake.

The following day, Yoshitake meets Yajima outside the club building as Yajima wonders if she should go, even to be the one who erases the pencil lines. As they chat, a guy comes up asking about the very attractive girl who only seems to show up after school in the club area. They pretend to be ignorant but he is persistent until an irritated Yabusaki happens by and chases him off.

Heading to Ogiue’s place, Yajima and Yoshitake are stunned to see a “new girl” with short hair there, which turns out to be Hato wearing a short wig since the longer hair gets in the way when he’s helping.  They report what happened and since Hato has changed his look, Yoshitake sees this as timely. Yajima tells Hato that he should just quit cross dressing and asks how he got started. He says that he’s only been doing it for a few months so that he could join a fujoshi-filled club like Genshiken. In high school, his being a shounen–ai fudanshi would have led to his persecution so he kept that side of himself hidden.

Hearing about being persecuted, Yajima suddenly regrets asking the question and apologizes to Hato and the others. However, when she considers it again, she decides to open the discussion up again and says that since no one in Genshiken would persecute Hato for being a fudanshi, then he should just come as a male and be done with it. Yoshitake says that it is clear that Hato is doing this because its fun and the whole gender-bender genre has been around for a while.

This irritates Yajima who demands to know if this is true. Hato says that there is some of that in his decision to cross-dress but the main thing is that when he does it, he can be an objective fudanshi. As an example, he cites his use of Madarame’s apartment to change, which he doesn’t see literally but in a fudanshi sense of the kohai going to the senpai‘s room. Thus, he can see that a Hato x Mada(rame) scenario could work. This brings the conversation to an immediate halt, to Hato’s surprise, as Ogiue finds herself wondering how Hato could be the “top” when Madarame has to be the “bottom.”

Yajima and Yoshitake leave for the evening and they discuss how Hato is still going strong and how Sue seems to always be around Ogiue. Yoshitake teases Yajima about only being able to see Hato as a male because she looked under his skirt when he was sleeping and saw the evidence, something Yajima denies. They are interrupted when Kugayama drives up with Tanaka and Ohno. Since this was the only time to get the guys, she had to settle for this late time but she has six boxes of costumes for all of the “girls” in Genshiken (counting Hato as a girl) and wants Ogiue to join them all for some wonderful after school cosplay. Ogiue isn’t having it since she has to work and slams the door on Ohno, who’s depressed by this. Tanaka and Kugayama observe this and Kugayama wonders if they should take the outfits to the campus.

I have to say, this was rather a fun chapter even if my new favorite character, Sue, didn’t say anything but one small side remark.  Well, Sue does have a way of stealing a scene she’s in if she says much of anything, kinda like Chachazero from Negima!  As such, Kio-sensei really couldn’t have her say anything or do much reacting to what was being said since the focus needed to stay on Yajima and Hato. There will be plenty of time for Sue love down the road.  ^_^

Since getting a job was such a big part of Genshiken for a while, first with Madarame and Kugayama finding one (Tanaka going for further education at another school) and then Sasahara’s more in depth search for a job (Saki had been established early on as opening her own clothing store and Kousaka fell into a ero-game job), I’m not surprised that Kio-sensei had Kuchiki basically set up with a job thanks to his father and Ohno basically waiting for Tanaka to finish his continued education so they can get married.  That way, the only job focus can be on Ogiue’s work as a professional manga-ka (and I hope that Sasahara goes a little more screen time with her but that’s another topic).  Everyone else below Ogiue is a 1st-year student and so jobs won’t be a factor for a while, should Genshiken Nidaime continue for a few more years (and I sure hope it does).

Speaking of Tanaka and Kugayama, I’m glad they scored a cameo. Kugayama didn’t get to come to the Genshiken party and so now he’s been introduced to Yajima and Yoshitake.  I wonder what his reaction would be to seeing “Hato-chan.” ^_^;

It was humorous seeing Ohno so fired up for cosplay and then getting shot down by Ogiue. She clearly brought some girl costumes for Hato to be in so I’m guessing we’ll eventually see some cosplay done if Kio-sensei follows his previous path when he got the non-otaku Saki to cosplay twice.  *lol*

Kio-sensei finally decided to address the issue of Hato’s cross-dressing. The issue of being persecuted made sense and if he were into the gender-bender thing (I guess Ranma 1/2 is the only “gender-bender” thing I’ve read and watched), that makes sense too.  I guess Hato must be attracted somewhat to Madarame to even imagine a pairing of himself with his senpai.  We’d already seen Madarame’s apparent confused feelings for Hato when “Hato-chan” was leaving Madarame’s place just as Madarame arrived and Madarame invited him to stay over for some drinking.  No offense, but I REALLY hope Kio-sensei doesn’t go down that route but we’ll see.

The bottom line is that Hato is probably going to be hit on by guys at school now that they’ve been seeing “Hato-chan” although his wearing different wigs would be a defensive move.  He’s not going to stop cross-dressing and so I wonder if the other Genshiken members will ever see him dressed as a male on purpose.  Well, now that I think about it, one of them could end up in the same class as Hato and since he’s not changing his for Genshiken, then he would be known to them that way even if they didn’t recognize his male self.

So, as I said, a fun chapter.  So far, I’m really hoping Kodansha Comics licenses this for the U.S.