This is the part you’re familiar with. Azuma posits that otaku, and postmodern media consumers, have stopped consuming in the traditional manner and have adopted, instead, a kind of database consumption. An aside: if you like Azuma, you’re contractually obligated to be OK with random philosophy/theory references; this chapter is full of them, from Freud and Lacan down to Zizek and Hegel. It was pretty crazy. In fact, Azuma’s theory is indebted to Hegel and readings of Hegel by Kojève. Hegel claimed that once history died (history being the phenemological struggle for self-hood against a similar-in-kind Other), only two routes would be available for the actualized person: animalism and humanism. Hence the database animal. Hegelian animals live in harmonious co-existence with their environments, as contrasted to humans, who fight their environments and shape them.

The database is a collection and collation of material from media, spread out in a kind of nebulous web from which creators and consumers alike draw. Indeed, Azuma claims the database is the fundamental way in which fan artists, such as doujin creators or amv remixers, are able to do their work. Without a sense of connectivity between elements that aren’t actually connected in any way (for instance, at no time does Linkin Park actually do soundtrack work for Naruto), such remixes, fan creations, and even “official” peripheral creations would be impossible. His example of the latter is the Eva spin-offs, created by GAINAX but just as removed from the show as anything else. In fact, remember all that good Baudrillard stuff from last time? Azuma brings him up specifically, and claims the media itself (the show, NGE) and the fan art are equally simulacra – that is, hyperreal, removed from “original” and “real” as opposed to “fake.” He has good reason to say this… but he doesn’t use his good reason – the contemporary manufacture and consumption process. He claims they’re hyperreal because they draw from the database. But he also brings up something that, in Japan, is called “anime realism.” It works on the prevalence of anime ideas. They’re so widespread, the habit of thought goes, that referencing them is like referencing reality. The viewers accept it as something that appears.

This, especially, doesn’t seem like something specific to anime or Japan. It’s the whole of the backing of genre theory, it seems to me – the understanding in the audience that some things simply appear. Suvin’s theory of SF talked about nova, or estranging things. Space ships might be an example. And that makes sense, but the concept of “anime realism” points out that fans of space ship shows or books simply expect the space ships to be there. They’ve read/seen so much of them that it’s simply a facet of the genre that’s true.

The database is supposed to be Azuma’s illustration of how we no longer use grand narratives. And in the nineteenth century way, he’s right – there is nothing comparable to, say, the Victorian grand narrative of one’s duties, privileges, and obligations. But between this chapter and my experience, both personally and with other fans, is that the database allows people to build a different kind of “narrative.” It allows them to build an identity. Think of all the people you know who, as fans, identify themselves with certain database elements. Some people go with whole shows, like giant robot fans, or romance fans. Others identify as loli-con, or glasses fans, or even zettai-ryouiki fans. Instead of grand narratives, society-wide, users of the database build personal (or small in-group) identities based on certain specific cullings of the database. This has a lot to offer the studies of genre, specific genres, and, of course, anime.

Anime is a genre, of course.

Yes yes, don’t boo me just yet. Let me drop the tiniest amount of Derrida on you. He pointed out that the term “genre” had been stretched too far from its original base. Now, in light of that, I’m not trying to reclaim the term. We use it the way we use it. However, the original meaning of the word was a particular kind of media. For instance, in the original sense one couldn’t read more than one genre of novel – novel was the genre. The distinctions of what happens inside them are actually, in the traditional sense, “modes.” So in the classical sense anime is a genre, and there are many modes within it.

So what? There are a lot of arguments about what makes up certain genres. That’s genre in its modern sense; mode, in the traditional vernacular. The distinction allows us to see that there are database markers that have to do with the way something’s made – animation styles, designs, etc., as well as database markers that have to do with content – character behavior (GAR is one example), plot points, so on.

That’s the argument Azuma makes that works but is most alien to me personally – that plot and setting are database elements as much as characters. But it makes sense. Into the database go traditional plots, like the “meatball” structure of a shounen, or the young woman gets pulled into another world thing. The database is basically the undercurrent where our knowledge of tropes lives.

I’m used to thinking of plot as something that emerges from the bringing together of characters and setting, even though I know many plots are shared across stories and even across media.

I do think Azuma goes a little too far in some of his claims. His historical account of the shift from grand narrative to database doesn’t take into account the different reading habits of different sorts of fans over time. That is, no postmodernist would deny that the grand narrative was strong in Regency-era England, yet Catherine Moreland and her friend, in Austen’s Northanger Abbey, read Gothic novels more like database animals than any fusty “grand narrative seeking” reader. I suspect what’s really going on is that fan behavior adheres to the database, no matter when it’s happening. If one is a fan of something, one follows it through all its permutations, even when it looks different or does something out of the ordinary. Scholars trying to define SF in traditional terms have flailed around for years because there’s no single shared element. But there is a database pool of things that are associated with SF, including certain plots. That’s how Peake’s Gormenghast novels can be fantasy even when nothing unrealistic happens (at least, not in the first novel). Because the characters and setting are drawn from the sub-database of fantasy as much as from anything else, and the plot is, well, odd.

Can there be many databases? I think Azuma does imply there is only one, though he is specifically examining otaku culture, so he may not have felt the need to discuss any others. However, in a book claiming otaku culture is a microcosm for all postmodern culture I would have expected at least some work connecting the two in that particular way.

As I said, I suspect this is more fan behavior than any new postmodern thing, though I certainly believe the postmodern condition shaped the rise of mass fandoms. The otaku look like microcosms for everyone simply because, in our postmodern world, most everyone is a “fan” of something. Not just a follower, but a fanatic. C.f. Genshiken.

These are, at any rate, the major divisions I make when I read Genshiken. The Madarame/Kasukabe subplot is significant enough to drive the story on some occasions, and sustained enough to warrant mentioning; the Comiket/doujin arc is a leveling-up moment for both the Genshiken and Sasahara (both of whom, lo and behold, actually do something, and continue to do things thereafter); and, for me, the most significant shift occurs when Ogiue brings her quirks to the clubroom table.

In a way, Ogiue is the most “character-like” of all the characters; she’s easily identifiable as both tsundere and a potential love interest with a tragic past. Of course, her co-characters peg her character traits, too, and her “tragic past” involves a yaoi doujin, so the spirit of Genshiken remains intact throughout. But the way things play out for Ogiue isn’t unheard-of — she softens up to the other club members over time (she’s one of those classic-type tsundere characters, I guess), and she learns to live with her past with the help of friends and a love interest.

Here’s something I find interesting, though: why doesn’t Madarame go for Ogiue?

He has every reason to, doesn’t he? Given his lolicon tendencies and his preference for tsundere, Ogiue is precisely the kind of manga character he likes (literally!). When she’s finally talked into cosplay, she even dresses as Madarame’s favorite Kujibiki Unbalance character, who, in terms of broad traits, isn’t all that unlike her.

Wouldn’t Ogiue provide Madarame with a distraction from the girl he loves but can’t have? She might even be able to relate — she liked a guy, once, and suddenly found that he was beyond her reach. The circumstances were different, I know, but that doesn’t mean the two situations don’t contain some seed of commonality that might serve to bring Madarame and Ogiue together. One has to wonder — but, in the end, I can think of a few reasons why things don’t play out like that.

Firstly, maybe Madarame’s just that into Kasukabe. Maybe he’s holding out hope not because he particularly wants to, but because he can’t help it. That’s how it goes, isn’t it? And, anyway, Madarame’s the type to let his circumstances carry him where they will; I suppose this is why the fujoshi girls have him pegged as a sou-uke, a “total receiver” of…well, you know. For anything to develop, the girl in question would probably have to make the first move, and Ogiue certainly wouldn’t go that far.

Secondly, maybe this is a simple case of 2D preferences not making the leap to the 3D world. I, like Madarame, have a thing for flat-chested (albeit not underage) tsundere characters (plus glasses, plus nekomimi, plus forehead…goddammit Shimoku-sensei, get out of my head!), but I don’t require those qualities in my real-life love interests. Hell, it’s not as if “tsundere” is something that applies well to reality; people are, after all, a little too crazy for neat classification, as the social sciences continue to discover. I seriously doubt that Madarame evaluates Ogiue (not to mention Kasukabe) based on his 2D preferences, their actually being manga characters notwithstanding.

And, thirdly, the possibility of an Ogiue/Madarame end may be precluded rather early in Ogiue’s tenure as Genshiken member, as she may fall for Sasahara earlier than is readily obvious. This time through Genshiken, I noticed myself picking up on more of Shimoku’s brilliantly-situated hints, and while I might’ve initially wondered about the abruptness of the Ogiue/Sasahara setup, I have no such complaint now. It’s possible that Ogiue has developed a healthy thing for Sasahara as early as the explosive doujin production crisis control meeting, which occurs only a few chapters after her appearance…

…and it seems likely that her feelings begin to take shape before the end of the doujin arc, given her reaction to Sasahara when she sneaks into the following winter Comiket (or Comic Fest, or whatever they call it).

It’s the resultant carelessness (with a little help from Ouno’s accoutrements) that gives her away, in the end. And I especially love this scene. I mean, check out Ogiue’s expression here; you have to wonder if this is the moment at which she realizes her feelings. It’s panels like that one that completely and utterly justify all the sacrifices made on the altar of fandom.

But I digress. While it may seem somewhat logical that Madarame should at least develop a passing crush on Ogiue, even if he isn’t prepared to date her properly, logic often doesn’t factor into the decisions we make regarding the people around us. The gut acts first, you may recall. And Genshiken is nothing if not authentic — so authentic, in fact, that it can be as difficult to read as it is enjoyable. But, lest I spiral off into another, more personal digression, I’ll end here.

(Because I failed to namedrop him anywhere else: SDS is, of course, the undisputed king of Ogi fandom in the English-speaking world. He has written about her at length on his blog, aptly titled Ogiue Maniax. But of course you know about SDS already if you even know about someone like me.)

I picked up Genshiken for the first time back when I had only just gotten back into anime, manga, and all related accoutrements after a few years of Japanese pop-cultural drought. And it left quite an impression on me, to be sure, but my experience this time around is a bit different. Consider, for example, that, in terms of sheer hours watched, I’ve seen about twice as much anime now as I had when I finished Genshiken the first time — not to mention that the amount of manga I’ve consumed by now renders the amount I’d read at that point positively pitiful, and, in the greater scheme of things, I still haven’t read nearly as much as quite a lot of people.

While the character I admire most, for various reasons, is probably Madarame, I’m undoubtedly most like Sasahara. He’s the professional That Guy of the group, and I share his talent for leaving no impression at all on anyone without putting forth sustained effort. But, more than that, I, like Sasahara, have always been something of a multiclass nerd, with some experience in a variety of frowned-upon pursuits.

Presently my level distribution probably looks something like this:

• Level 3 gamer (favored enemies: CRPG, puzzle, strategy)
• Level 1 role-player
• Level 2 computer nerd
• Level 4 otaku (subclass: weeaboo)
• Level 6 litterateur (schools: speculomancy, canonism)

This would’ve looked different the first time I read Genshiken. I was still figuring out what it really meant to be an anime fan, and while I had been to conventions at that point (two Otakons, even), and I’d stumbled haphazardly into blogging, I was still firmly rooted in the American fandom of the mid to late 90s. I had yet to really puzzle through moe, I hadn’t seen Gundam or Macross, and things like Touhou and Vocaloid made no sense to me at all.

So I think it’s safe to say that certain of Genshiken’s self-referential moments were simply beyond me. And I rated it 10/10 on MAL (MML?) anyway. You can imagine how much fun I’m having with it this time through.

For one thing, those between-chapter bits, which usually amount to in-universe fanboying about Kujibiki Unbalance, ring truer to me now. Consider this one, from the second volume:

… Shinobu’s glasses symbolize her attempt to cut herself off from the outside world. And when she removes them her personality changes. Similarly, when Maori-san takes out her braids, it symbolizes the release of a repressed part of her personality. … [Del-Rey trans.]

Madarame laments the descent of the innocent choosing of favorite characters into “an examination of the most minute and meaningless details.” And maybe I would’ve agreed with him in early 2008 — but come on! This is important stuff, I say; we need to tease out these little details. But that opinion is probably part of why I’m still a relatively obscure blogger despite having been at it for two years, so I suppose it’s debatable.

I’m also getting more out of those chapters which are especially heavy on the fan culture. The thirteenth chapter, in which the club builds Gunpla models, is a good example. I always understood what was going on there, on some level — I mean, if you’ve been an anime fan for longer than three minutes, you don’t have to have seen Gundam to recognize the RX-78 and the Zaku II. But this time I went about it a little differently; I saw this panel…

…and thought, “Hey, it’s a GM, and a Za — no, wait, this is no Zaku, boy!” and figured that, yeah, now I’m probably much better equipped to enjoy this thing than I was before. But it isn’t just the meta-references; now I can more or less understand why the Genshiken devotes so much time to the assembly of cheap little pieces of plastic.

Consider Smithy’s adventures with his Dollfie Yoko. Upon glancing through those pictures, two things occurred to me at once:

• This is a piece of plastic lying in the grass.
• This is something more than a piece of plastic lying in the grass.

Of course the latter is more relevant. I’m still not really into figures, but they make sense to me now as means by which fans can interface with both the art they appreciate and the fandom itself. I suppose this is how I use DVD box sets; I buy them not for the “hard copy” of the show in question so much as for the physical object, the proof of my support for the artistic work the DVDs represent. Box sets can be displayed, discussed, and lent to friends; they’re foci of fan activity. And while a figure and a DVD are fundamentally different sorts of thing — there’s a case to be made for figures and models as sculpture, I’m guessing — I don’t think the analogy is wholly misguided.

At any rate, I get why Ouno reacts as she does when Kasukabe breaks the leg off of her poor high-grade Gouf, the result of a week’s worth of effort, each second of which brought her closer to other Gundam fans, and to Gundam, and to Ramba Ral — and who doesn’t want to be closer to Ramba Ral? Monetary value is one thing; value accrued through time and effort spent or through aesthetic and social use is quite another.

If put to the knife or something, I suppose I’d conclude that I appreciate Genshiken most for the sheer depth of its relevance to the lives of anime fans, something I understand now more than ever. But let’s not forget that the intertextual stuff is also pretty great.

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?

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.

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.