I’m getting my Genshiken images from One Manga, but only because I can’t find my scanner. I do own it all, and it’s good enough that I suggest you buy it rather than read it on the internet.
With that out of the way, I suppose this isn’t an anime moment, per se — but it’s a manga moment, which is close enough, right? My manga experience is limited, I’ll grant, but Genshiken is nonetheless the first manga I saw fit to rate 10/10 on MyAnimeList, and it’ll forever occupy its own special club room in my mind for that reason. Surely it deserves some respect somewhere among these Moments Twelve. Respect it shall receive, and, for this moment, it has Kanji Sasahara to thank.
I mentioned a few days ago that my favorite characters are rarely those who seem analogous in some way to me. Sasahara is one of those rare exceptions, and he manages it by embodying many of the worst things about me. I can’t help but pity him; I know all too well what it’s like to be in his position. He’s often ashamed of his nerddom, he’d just as soon pull his own teeth as make a decision, and his flakiness and lack of confidence combine to render him regrettably devoid of female company.
Until chapter 47.
Enter Chika Ogiue, who draws a yaoi manga of Sasahara and Madarame (my other favorite — the yaoi thing has nothing to do with my preference, I swear), then promptly decides she has a thing for the former. That she cast him as the pitcher in a gay porno comic presents something of a roadblock for her, especially considering certain events in her past, but when Sasahara confesses his feelings to her (which is something of a moment in itself, I suppose), she resolves to show him her work, and, if he doesn’t run screaming, to be open with her affections.
Sasahara’s reaction is…admirable? I don’t know if I have a word for it.
Replace “%$#@” with “a boner.” Yeah.
The thing is, this is the kind of unprecedented (unprecedentable?) event that might happen in such a situation. And, because awkwardness begets awkwardness (trust me, I would know), the probably flustered Sasahara is just honest about it. He tells the girl he likes that her gay porn aroused him. “What the fuck?” about sums it up, in case you were wondering. I found it tremendously funny, and I couldn’t wait to see how Sasahara planned to segue from that into “hey, let’s date now.”
It isn’t much of a segue. It’s the kind of stumbling onward that a guy like Sasahara would probably really do. He fails to recognize Ogiue’s feelings for him for a few more pages, and, when he finally presses the attack (after she more or less tells him to grow a pair), he references his role in the yaoi manga.
Why is this moment-worthy? Because Sasahara is at no point anything other than his usual flawed self, but he manages to get the girl anyway. And because he’s the character in Genshiken to whom I feel I can most relate, his success was a triumph for me as well. There’s someone out there for him, he doesn’t have to spend his life in the company of porn games — isn’t that a tremendous relief?
I’ll grant that my life thus far hasn’t been quite as womanless as Sasahara’s, but the experiences I have had just make me wonder all the more whether there’s really anyone out there capable of putting up with me — anyone out there who wants to put up with me, and also manages to be worth putting up with. When all signs point to no, I flip open the eighth volume of Genshiken. It helps to be able to think, if only for a moment, that this world has its share of Ogiues, who will let me stumble through my confessions of love, who will tell me to man up when I need to man up, who will feel comfortable sharing their oddities with me because, shit, I don’t have many normal points left at this point either. I like to think that, someday, I’ll find the Ogiue to my Sasahara — and I like to think she’ll be someone who really appreciates that reference.
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