Funny story: Cuchlann and I chose the same moment again, and completely by accident. Unlike our Gurren-Lagann overlap, this one’s actually mildly obscure. If you didn’t believe me before when I said I was assuming his identity, you ought to believe me now.

But we’re taking different approaches to said moment, so you really should read both posts. Really.

The other day, CCY coined a term ripe with relevance: “romance-of-life.” I cannot think of a better way of describing the 53rd chapter of Genshiken (I know I’m shameless with all these series repeats). Really, the term is relevant to the situation I outlined before, but the Sasahara/Ogiue situation is something of a best-case scenario; both have found someone who can accept them for who they are, someone genuinely worthy of their romantic attentions. Chapter 53, on the other hand, looks much more like most of my actual romantic (and I use that term loosely here) situations.

Cuchlann laid it out already, so I’ll run through the situation quickly. Madarame, former Genshiken president and unashamed otaku, finds himself falling for Kasukabe, a staunch “normal” and girlfriend of another club member, as the manga progresses. Madarame/Kasukabe chapters were some of my favorites, so it’s safe to say that I was waiting for chapter 53 on the edge of my proverbial seat for quite a while. When faced with an opportunity to reveal his feelings to Kasukabe, what does Madarame do?

He keeps it all to himself.

I can only imagine how many thoughts ran through Madarame’s head at this point — a number almost comparable, perhaps, to the number of heartbeats per minute he experienced in the above panel. Or, no, I suppose I can do more than imagine; I can try to guess based on personal experience.

Most of my posts abide by a strict “hazukashii serifu kinshi” policy. Not so, this one. Prepare yourselves.

I was in Madarame’s position once. My Kasukabe was, to my young mind, perfect. She had looks and too damn much intelligence. We shared just enough hobbies, and had just enough dissimilar interests. I fanboyed over Love Hina and read The Lord of the Rings. She fangirled over Escaflowne and read Catcher in the Rye. I was good at English; she was good at math, and knew her way around French. Combine the two of us, I thought, and we’d be unstoppable. Ours would be the love that pierced the heavens.

Problem was, she was dating a good friend of mine at the time. This friend was actually quite the opposite of Genshiken’s Kousaka; he was an intense intellectual, someone with whom I could discuss the implications of Evangelion at great length (yes, I was doing it even then).

I didn’t know what had happened at first. I fell for my Kasukabe without understanding what it was to fall for someone. It was the first emotional revelation she invoked within me, but not the last.

Once I realized — at long last — what had happened, I tried to make myself feel better using many lines of reasoning that Madarame would later closely match. “If I can talk to her on AIM every once in a while,” I reasoned, “I’ll be satisfied.” That just made matters worse, of course, so it became, “Once she’s been dating my friend long enough, my opportunity will have passed, and I’ll be able to move on.” I wasn’t able to move on, and besides, there’s no accounting for opportunity. I even resorted to lashing out at her for stupid little things. I was desperate.

In point of fact, my opportunity arose after my Kasukabe had been dating my friend for about eleven months. Things seemed to be on the rocks for them, by her own admission; I guess I had become something of a confidante at that point. My opportunity arose — my moment alone in the club room, so to speak.

I took it.

Though there was no real “cheating” involved — she broke up with my friend, then started dating me a few days later — I had nevertheless, through my meddling, grossly violated the holy Man Law. I was, perhaps needless to say, not on good terms with that friend for a while, and who could I blame but myself?

That was, to this day, the most monumental, life-altering decision I ever made. My attention was drawn to the college I ended up attending because my Kasukabe chose it for herself, and I was tired of living so far from her at that point. In a twisted sort of way, I owe her for many of my closest friends at that school (though I feel that I owe those friends much more for sticking with me during The Aftermath — I’ll get to that in a minute). I suppose Madarame, being a college graduate already, is in such a position at the end of Genshiken that such things wouldn’t be concerns for him, but, even in my limited experience, there’s always some degree of lifestyle alteration when it comes to relationships, especially if they get serious. Was Madarame’s decision to withhold his feelings a result of fear? Was it prudence? Was it his valuing a friendship too highly to wager it in the face of Romance the All-Consuming?

Why did I decide to pursue my Kasukabe? Love? What the fuck does that mean? It makes less sense than Deconstruction, which makes no sense on purpose. You may have noticed that I like things to make sense. I like to make things make sense — I’ll break things down, file off the sharp edges, and ease them together in whatever shape I see fit. James Joyce and Aria? Sure, why the fuck not?

Let me tell you, good readers, love can’t be broken down and reassembled. Love is amorphous. Love is a gelatinous cube. When you’re backed against a wall, at the end of a long corridor, all your exits blocked as the cube slowly approaches, your inventory is meaningless, especially if you are but a lowly teenager. (Oh God, did I just use the gelatinous cube as a metaphor!?)

Whatever my reasoning, things didn’t work out with my Kasukabe. The worst thing that could’ve happened to us happened to us: we grew up.

To get back to Genshiken, Cuchlann said the following:

So I get it, Madarame, I really do, but like all the characters, you’re not finished growing up yet. And in the end, this moment, and others like them, help to tip over Genshiken’s own credo, that of a coming-of-age story in college. That is, it ends by claiming that these people aren’t done coming-of-age, even after they graduate, and that it’s okay.

Had Madarame and Kasukabe, apparently still in the throes of growing up, wound up together, would they have faced the same end as I did with my Kasukabe? Would Madarame’s youthful obsessions have turned into adult passions, while what few things Kasukabe had in common with him became things of the past, relics of childhood to be scorned and discarded? Would Madarame, tired of his love interest haranguing him for what he enjoyed, become as much a closet nerd as I did? Would he have been literally afraid of anime, of what suppressed things it would unleash? Consumed by this fear, would he have turned against the communities he once embraced?

Would it have been worth it?

My Kasukabe and I broke up over the course of a year. A year. That year is now the standard by which I measure awful. To her credit and mine, and to our mutual discredit, we more or less share blame for it taking so long. And after that came The Aftermath, a period of lingering passive-aggression. Love, you know — it absorbs you and doesn’t let you go until you’re well and truly dissolved.

And when the high-level cleric resurrects you, you’re not quite the same. Nothing’s missing, exactly, but something’s off; it’s as if a few of your particles got mixed up with a few of hers during the resurrection process, and you’ll live the rest of your life with her right ventricle, and she with yours. You want to hate her, but you can’t. You want to stop believing in love, but that’s the easy way out, and you’re both an emotional masochist and a huge sap.

So you start looking for the next gelatinous cube to dive into. Cubes present themselves, but you never get very far with them. They aren’t the same as the first; they don’t move you. You aren’t a lowly teenager anymore. You slay them with a few well-placed magic missiles. Where is your next worthy adversary? Surely there must be one among all the dungeons of the world!

Would this have been Madarame’s fate? Would he have turned into someone his friends described as unemotional, ambivalent, too goddamn picky, unromantic — someone who would, through words and actions, earn these descriptors, despite still being the kind of person who was hurt by being described thus?

Would he, in a moment of indiscretion, write way too goddamn much about himself on his anime blog?

Tags: genshiken

Thus spake Pontifus on Wednesday, 24 December 2008 at 5:22 am, and Manga expanded tenfold. Become privy to further discussion on the matter via RSS 2.0. You might grace us with a brilliant comment, or trackback from a distant podium.