Oh, Genshiken, is there no awesome you can’t handle?  Yes, there is no awesome you can’t handle.  Luckily for me this just happens to fall into 2008, as I bought the final volume of Genshiken just a week into January.  The “moment” this is about is the point at which Madarame gives up, entirely, his ambitions to confess to Kasukabe.

I think this scene might be one of the most poignant in the series, but I’ll freely admit part of the reason for that is Madarame’s my favorite character.  He’s loud, and brash, and likes what he likes no matter what anyone else says.  Very slowly, over the course of nine volumes, we come to learn — as Madarame comes to learn himself — that he has a bit of a thing for his not-at-all-otaku friend, Kasukabe.  He even learns to take an interest in how he looks because of her, as her driving passion is fashion, not anime.  I see that as a growth, by the way, as I (no longer) believe one must totally eschew paying attention to appearance in order to avoid being  a shallow, image-obsessed asshole.  It is, in fact, entirely possible to do one while avoiding the other.

Anyway.  This moment does some pretty heavy lifting in the series as a whole.  The manga, fast-forwarded, reads like a romantic comedy, with people pairing off like crazy, from the very first chapter onwards.  However, being more realistic than that, Genshiken makes it fairly clear that, while these characters (for the most part) have pretty good chances together, they aren’t necessarily guaranteed to marry one another and be happy together forever and ever, with sunshine and ponies and bears that come rainbows.  This scene helps cement that in the minds of the readers, showing us someone who’s not ending up so happy — but, at the same time, isn’t a tragic figure of pity and pathos.  Madarame’s happy, ultimately.  He’s wistful about Kasukabe, but in general that isn’t ruining his life, it just adds moments of melancholy to it (I would argue those are necessary to be really happy.  My ex-girlfriend apparently disagrees, which is probably what led her to claim I’m “deeply depressed.”  Anyway).  Sasahara was the catalyst that made the group of people with like interests into real friends, while Kasukabe helped them grow up, one at a time — without actually managing to fully grow up herself.  Madarame was responsible for making them have fun, and he did that, and continues to do it.

But the moment, you cry, talk about that moment.  It is poignant, as I said, and slightly sad.  This is a bit of a shocking statement, I know, but I genuinely think Madarame and Kasukabe could be better than Kousaka and Kasukabe.  As I said, Genshiken is being realistic with its relationships, and sometimes people are just in places, in their lives, where they can’t have one just then.  Kousaka is in such a place.  He is so busy with his work, and so constitutionally oblivious (a trait that, while described as part of Kousaka by his friends, is probably more a product of his single-mindedness in his pursuit of his hobby / career than anything else, and as such would pass eventually) that he’s not really ready for a relationship — that is, one that could potentially be his last relationship.  Despite, we must assume, Madarame never having had a girlfriend before, he seems, at the series’ end, more ready for that than Kousaka.  He knows all about Kasukabe’s faults, and seems to like them, rather than not notice them.  I get the feeling that Kasukabe might seriously get on Kousaka’s nerves if he ever noticed her for more than five seconds.

So, in my mind, Madarame is giving up a pretty good shot at happiness, because Kasukabe isn’t really ready yet.  He’s handing over a chance, because she’s still in a place where good looks and great sex mark the bounds of a relationship for her.  The book is, in my opinion, quite clear that if Kasukabe broke up with Kousaka, he wouldn’t really care.  So it’s not fear of breaking up that relationship that’s stopping Madarame.  It’s never really explicated all that well, but I believe part of it lies in Kasukabe still being pretty immature when it comes to dating.  How to get on in the world, yes, she’s got this figured out, but she still doesn’t know what she wants out of a guy.

Now that sounds, as my title line suggests, an awful lot like a raving shipper.  I’ve never gone in, much, for believing one pair should be together over another.  I read fanfiction — mostly past tense, but sometimes I read it (present tense) — and I would read most any pairings if they were made interesting by the text.  I didn’t demand sticking to a OTP (and oh, how I wish I didn’t know what that meant — damn you, Henry Jenkins!).  So I’m not arguing that the book should have gone this way, that Madarame and Kasukabe are the greatest thing ever.  I just think, in the context of the book’s own reality of relationships and characterizations, that these two would be better for each other, in the same way I can feel that about friends dating someone I think they shouldn’t.  I guess it’s a testament to Shimoku-sensei that I examine the love lives of the characters in the way I would my friends, rather than characters in a comic book.

I would also like to touch on the most obvious reason, in the book, for why Madarame doesn’t say anything.  He seems to have caught a touch of the tragic “we can never be together” bug — you know, like Tomoyo (oh, there’s an example disproving what I said earlier:  I loathe Cardcaptor Sakura fanfiction unless it involves Sakura and Tomoyo declaring undying love for each other.  I thought there would be one, at least).  He says, and I’m paraphrasing here, that it’s okay if he only sees her at the club room, that “that will be enough.”  Which is bullshit, frankly, and we all know it.  I used to suffer from this bug as well; I would have huge, epic crushes on people and never act on it, or act on it by telling the person I had a crush on them — to which, mysteriously, I would always get a noncommital reaction, and never a confession in turn.  Hmm, wonder why?  Anyway, I got over this — mostly, at least.  I may not slide up to women at parties and charm their panties off them within minutes, but I have actually managed to start dating two women I’m interested in in the past year (not at the same time, dolt).  So obviously I’m not just sitting on my crushes until they fade away (or not, I still get sort-of wistful about a few of the girls from high school, unless information I have about them since violates the picture I have — because that’s what a crush is, a picture of the person, and not the person.  I suppose Sartre might argue that’s all we ever have, but fuck him for now, he doesn’t matter).  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.  Bold, for a genre (manga) that often has people figuring out everything about themselves before graduating high school, a time at which I knew almost nothing about myself, personally.