Manga Review: Genshiken: The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture, Volume 1.
This manga is set in college. That means there will be story elements suitable for college age kids. So it’s recommended for older readers. The back of the book says 16+. That sounds about right to me.
If it was a planet, the club would be the otaku home world. Seriously, I want to join that club myself.
A lot of manga and anime stories are centered around the high school or college club system. Genshiken, by Kio Shimoku, uses this and uses it well. Without the club system Kanji Sasahara might have a hard time making any friends. You see, poor Sasahara, like many of us, is an otaku. To make things even harder for him, he’s a college freshman.
What would any of us do in that situation? Join the college anime or manga club. That’s what Sasahara tries to do too. Both clubs are pretty busy during the recruiting drive and he’s fairly shy, so he doesn’t get the chance to sign up. He does find out about another club at the drive though, one that turns out to be better suited to him.
The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture.
The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture is a very wide ranging club. Anime, manga, cosplay and games are all subjects of interest. If it was a planet, the club would be the otaku home world. Seriously, I want to join that club myself.
As you’d expect from such a club, the members are all various kinds of otaku. You have Madarame the “bossy expert” otaku, Kugayama the “shy overweight” otaku, Tanaka the “cosplay dude” otaku, and Kousaka the “clueless, doesn’t think he’s otaku” otaku. Just to make things interesting, there is also Saki Kasukabe. Saki isn’t otaku at all, she’s just there because she has a crush on Kausaka. Once Sasahara passes the entrance test, which I thought was pretty funny, they welcome him to the club. The club members take Sasahara in and teach him some of the finer points of being otaku.
Man, this is a good manga. I loved everything about it. All the characters have their own personalities, which comes through in the art as well as the story. Everyone looks different. There will be no problems telling the characters apart in this manga. The art is great.
I’m hooked, I’ve got to buy the rest of them now. If you haven’t read Genshiken, go buy it. Now. It’s worth every penny of the price.
Manga, Reviews, Manga Review, Genshiken, Genshiken Volume 1, Genshiken The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture, Genshiken: The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture, Kio Shimoku, Otaku, Rating OT Ages 16+
August 31st, 2007 at 8:05 pm
I love Genshiken! Any anime/manga fan can relate to this…it becomes creepy ^^
September 4th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Yep, I do too. I picked up the first DVD of the anime. I’m planning to review it when all the con report posts are done.
September 13th, 2007 at 5:42 am
[...] Review: Genshiken, DVD volume 1. by Jason I’ve done a review of the Genshiken manga already. I was happy to see that the anime is pretty much the same. There aren’t any major [...]
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:51 am
[...] I read and loved the first volume of the Genshiken manga I was a little worried. Would the second one live up to the great work in the first? That happens [...]
October 31st, 2007 at 1:59 am
[...] of OtakuUSA. Truly it was a blessing of the otaku gods, who I imagine are a lot like the cast of Genshiken. I’ve heard of the legendary book before, but I’d never been able to find it. Until [...]
December 14th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
[...] a waste of money. If you want to throw away $10 just send it to me. I’ll use it to buy some good manga. Then I’ll review it here. Everybody wins and nobody has to suffer through reading a waste of [...]