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Clarste posted:Let it be said that I enjoyed the references to Bakemonogatari in this episode more than I enjoyed the new episode of Monogatari itself. I... I don't know how to feel about that. (Manga spoilers) In regards to Hato, yes, it sort of is. It's played for laughs at times but it's really obvious that Hato has Issues regarding his sexuality and despite his insistence that he's 100% straight, a lot of his character development has focused on his budding crush on Madarame and his refusal to acknowledge it. Not all of that development is positive, and he even does some pretty selfish stuff because of it, though not having known any transgender or homosexual individuals myself I can't actually comment on the accuracy of the thoughts that run through his head. It's one of the things I like a lot about the series, that a lot of other people seem to hate for some reason. Besides, the subject matter of Genshiken is the Genshiken--that is, the club members themselves. Kio Shimoku's focus has always been on young people and their relationships, their worries, the mistakes they make and the problems they run into, etc. The wacky otaku rituals and preferences, the anime references, and to a certain extent even the characters being otaku, they're just a setting, there so that Kio can plonk a lot of different young people in there and have them interact. Kio's other work has traditionally been very heavy, tackling issues like single parenthood and failed relationships, and I personally think a lot of that shows in the more serious moments of Genshiken even though a lot of it is comedy as well. On the other hand I can see how if you only knew about him from Genshiken, you'd think that he doesn't know what he wants to do with the series (an opinion with which I respectfully disagree). I also think that people who enjoyed Genshiken and only took away the otaku club part of it are more prone to being frustrated by seeing characters interacting with each other in the setting of an otaku club instead of actually being an otaku club, if you get my drift. AnonSpore fucked around with this message at 08:35 on Jul 8, 2013 |
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Jul 8, 2013 08:33
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Soylentbits posted:Yeah it's pretty hard to argue with this. It has no more realistic loser nerds. Now the characters seem to just be the sum of their gimmicks and their desire to sleep with Madarame. I think I'll take a gander at this. Who was a realistic loser nerd in Genshiken? Tanaka? Hardly fleshed out at all; all we know about him is that he likes making outfits and plamodels, and is good with cameras. Oh and by the way he has a banging hot girlfriend. Kugayama? Sure, maybe, but he's about as two-dimensional as they come--his entire gimmick was "fat and draws." The first pres? A walking plot device to keep Saki in the Genshiken who disappeared without a trace soon afterwards. Madarame is still the focus in the new series, even moreso than he was in the first. Besides, I would argue that "realistic loser nerds" wasn't and isn't the focus of Genshiken anyway. The Genshiken itself was sort of a metaphor for being an awkward young person growing up, feeling like you don't have a place in the world. That's why Ohno mentions that all the Genshiken alumni are weirdos; they didn't fit even in the "weird people group" of the world, which in the setting would be the university's Manga Club, and therefore had to make a place all for themselves. In that sense, all the new members fit right in. (Lots of manga spoilers) Hato is constantly wrestling with his sexual orientation issues, which have recently manifested as an unhealthy obsession with Madarame. I dunno why people see this as a bad thing, though, or how this problem he has which is approached from multiple angles can be seen as nothing but a gimmick. His character, the perfect crossdressing guy who can pass as a girl and loves BL, may be unrealistic, but the doubts that he wrestles with are far from being so--they're deeply involved with finding his place in the world and struggling with the fear that he's not like everyone else, which are things that everyone has faced while growing up. Yajima is like the definition of realistic loser nerd, and she's fleshed out to a degree far beyond anything that Kugayama or Tanaka ever got. She's a really interesting character to me, because so many of her mannerisms stem from her awkwardness in regards to social interaction and her extremely low self-esteem, and is anyone seriously overlooking the tons of characterization she gets simply because she's fat and that makes her a Kugayama expy or something? In a way her crush on Hato is a lot like Madarame's own crush on Saki, except the barrier here isn't the normal/otaku divide but the very obvious difference in their looks, and to someone like Yajima that matters a ton. And her self-loathing is very old school otaku, especially in her refusal to let down her guard except inside the club room, and her view of her own hobby as something that very much is something to be ashamed of. Yoshitake is a new breed of otaku, one that exists now but didn't when Genshiken was running before. She's trendy, outgoing, proud of her hobby instead of being ashamed of it. But at the core, she's still an otaku, with a poor grasp of social dos and don'ts that often bites her in the rear end. She's admittedly the flattest of the new blood but she still gets a lot of characterization--scenes with her sister, scenes about her past before she came to the Genshiken, etc. She's not just this person who happens to share the same club room and goes to the Comic Festival with everyone else, which was the case with a lot of the old cast. And she brings her own sort of twist to the feeling of "people who don't quite fit in" the Genshiken has going on, especially in her quieter moments. I could go on but I'm rambling already so I'll cut it short at the main three new people.
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Jul 9, 2013 04:32
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Potsticker posted:Well, if you just read that much, you probably missed the introductions to the new characters, and you're already invested in the old ones so it doesn't surprise me that you had that sort of reaction. There's only one episode out so it's hard to say for certain, but at two chapters per episode and taking into account the fact that Kaminaga has a voice actress, it'll at least reach the late 70s and probably come to an end around chapter 80 or so, which is a very nice place to end. With any luck the extra anime DVDs being bundled with volume 15 and the Second Season blu-rays will cover the part in between the first run and the second that were skipped, namely the Karuizawa arc (Sasahara and Ogiue's development). ^^ Can you explain what exactly you dislike so much about Hato? I see a lot of that sentiment and it always seems to boil down to him getting too much screen time, or him being unable to make up his mind about his issues. To the first, I have to wonder why (manga story spoilers) Madarame isn't getting similar heat, since half of Hato's thoughts revolve entirely around him anyway, and the other major plot thread in the series is also his. And as for not making up his mind, wouldn't it be weird if such a huge thing as "I think I might be gay, or at least bisexual" was wrapped up just like that? Of course he flip-flops back and forth about it, of course he denies it and then goes back on his decisions. Again, I haven't had any gay acquaintances so I can't say if it's an accurate portrayal of that specifically, but Hato's exasperating back-and-forth very closely mirrors other experiences I've had or observed where people try their damndest to look for any explanation for a problem they're facing except the one they fear most. AnonSpore fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Jul 9, 2013 |
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Jul 9, 2013 04:55
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The second OP's animation sequence was a Gundam parody and it was honestly mediocre as a song in my opinion. The current OP is alright, though I was pretty ambivalent about it until I bothered to listen to the lyrics. I will agree that the current ending blows though.
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Jul 15, 2013 12:47
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Sonata Mused posted:Episode 3 stuff: Most if not all of it is taken from the volume only extras. The bit with Madarame looking at Keiko's card, for instance, is an adaptation of this part. The bit after the ending song is similarly this extra, just with Asuka's plug suit humorously censored.
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Jul 21, 2013 04:59
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Ultraklystron posted:You know, while they skipped over the content of 8 and 9, I feel like it made a lot of sense to jump to the new generation since they have so few episodes to play with. Yes, this adaptation is proving to be pretty brisk (definitely didn't expect them to be at Summer Comiket by episode 4 - at this rate they may adapt pretty much everything the new generation has done so far,) but it would've been awkward to shift focus halfway through from the older cast to the new cast when there are only 12 or 13 episodes to play with. Maybe if Nidaime does well, an OVA series for the missing volumes could happen. Genshiken does love its OVA episodes. There is a special animation being bundled with the limited edition of volume 15 of the manga (That's volume 6 of the new series), and another being bundled with the blu-rays of the anime. I'm willing to bet that at least one if not both of those cover the Karuizawa arc from the manga with Sasahara and Ogiue getting together.
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Jul 30, 2013 10:41
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PoorWeather posted:So... This is probably a dumb question considering how it's already been touched on in the thread, but is Hato supposed to be transgendered...? The show seems to be giving mixed signals in how seriously it's taking the character in that regard. On one hand, we get silly or kinda gross/fetishy stuff like the other characters referring to them as a "trap" (though I'm not sure if that's just a translation issue) and them talking about shipping themselves as a boy with someone, etc. Short answer: It's played for comedy and for drama, and it's not really skewed toward one or the other. And like XboxPants said, I doubt even Hato knows what's going on inside his head for sure. Also, the word "trap" is an approximate translation of otokonoko, which is pronounced the same as 男の子 (word for male), but is spelled 男の娘, with the changed character meaning "girl." It's close enough in terms of how both are common words to label a sexual fetish for effeminate, crossdressing males, but I think it doesn't quite carry the negative connotations that the word "trap" does. Long answer: The reason Hato wants to be seen as a girl isn't (in my opinion) gender confusion. It's because he wants to talk about fujoshi stuff with the other girls and not have them weirded out by the fact that he's a guy. The theory is that as long as he's dressed as a girl, everyone can pretend he is one even if they do know that he's a dude. This works to various degrees--Yoshitake doesn't care/thinks it's cool, Yajima thinks it's dumb and is acutely aware of Hato's masculinity, etc. The reason he freaked when Madarame woke him up was because he was intruding; it was rude of him to fall asleep in someone else's bed in a home that he'd been allowed to use just for changing clothes. Manga spoilers: His female persona ghost/split personality is, in my opinion, more or less a representation of his gender confusion/sexual orientation issues. It repeatedly asserts that it's a part of him, but Hato refuses to accept it, and tries to make it go away by dressing as a girl, or running away from his masculinity (and the possibility that he may be into dudes). Later on in the manga this doesn't work anymore, and Hato starts to feel as though that female persona is taking over, a way of showing that his issues aren't going to go away just because he tries to ignore them. More manga spoilers, from untranslated chapters: Something I thought was really interesting was that I got the feeling several times throughout the manga that Hato was being selfish or acting to the detriment of others because of his unwillingness or inability to face his problems, and recent developments have confirmed that in my mind. Instead of either accepting or facing his growing crush on Madarame, he pretty much throws Madarame under the bus by asking Angela to date him. It's a really selfish and rude thing to do, especially with the way that he used Saki to sort of push Madarame into it, and it only hasn't blown up completely in his face because Madarame is really nice (or weak-willed, if you wanna look at it that way). Either way, though, I think it will come to a head sooner rather than later, especially considering that before Genshiken Kio was known more for drama and angst rather than comedy.
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Jul 31, 2013 20:34
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sincx posted:I truly do wonder why the author decided to go with the Hato/trap arc for Volume 10 and beyond. It's pretty clear that he did NOT intend to do so originally; see: Genshiken v09 page 175 (chapter 55), a flash forward at the end of the original manga series where it shows 3 normal guys walking into the Genshiken room sometime in the future. The in-universe explanation of that is that Kuchiki scared them all away with his goony otaku antics. In reality of course it's like Clarste said. That said, Kio does have a penchant for tackling touchy subjects (see his previous work, Jigopri, about teen pregnancy and single parenthood, and cheating and failed relationships featured heavily in another one of his currently untranslated works). It's still to be seen whether he'll actually pull off the Hato thing well or it'll all end up devolving into a poorly executed mess, but it's not like he just up and decided to include a "trap" character for the hell of it. It might also be partly commentary on how a lot of series nowadays do have that sort of token really feminine guy character (and I think the Genshiken members do comment on that in universe, genre savvy as they always are) who's never played for anything except sex appeal and fetishism.
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Aug 1, 2013 07:18
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Dan7el posted:I will admit, I don't totally get the comment that younger sister made about Hato at the end. I haven't watched the episode but if it's faithful to the manga then the line was about Hato having used hair removal cream on his groin, so he had no pubic hair.
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Aug 17, 2013 23:16
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I thought this thread was for the anime (which I have admittedly not been keeping up on, due to various stuff including attending the real-life version of Comifes) but yes, this month's manga chapter was great, and the character who appears on the last page is guaranteed to make the next one even better.  sincx, yes, I am that AnonSpore. Small world, eh?
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Aug 23, 2013 18:44
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sincx posted:Manga chapter 92 raws are out. Very mild untranslated manga spoilers: To be fair, I must give a reminder that Ogiue and Sasahara's relationship was also begun during a hot springs/vacation arc (Karuizawa). Also, I'd ask you to wait for the translations before condemning the chapter; Hato's parts in particular, I think, were pretty good.
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Sep 25, 2013 16:10
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It's not like the reaction in this thread has been significantly different. Take a look at the first few pages.
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Dec 10, 2013 08:14
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With the way I've seen some people talk about Genshiken you'd think that the characters are all six dimensional energy beings from an alternate plane of existence. They're still people with relatable problems and thought processes. Needing a character that's ~*just like me*~ to self insert into is ridiculous, it's the mentality that shits out such memorable Thin Young White Guy protagonists as Nathan Drake and Completely Featureless Harem Leads as gently caress I can't even remember any.
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Dec 10, 2013 20:58
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sincx posted:Genshiken 95 raws are out, and it looks like it's going to be quite an interesting chapter for Genshiken Nidaime. If you're talking about the bit where Hato is laughing then no, he's saying that the points in the list Yoshitake cooked up illustrating why Madarame is Bad Boyfriend Material just make him think that Madarame is adorable, and he's laughing at himself for his own silliness. The word otaku is based on お宅, not on otoko (男). It's gender neutral. Sue being a mega recluse outside of the Genshiken fits with what Ohno's said in the past about her being a loner, though, so I like it. Other than Madarame himself being straight, what is so wrong about two dudes hooking up? For what it's worth I don't see HatoMada being a thing because there's no attraction on Madarame's side, but the way you word it makes it seem you have a problem with the genders involved. Other than Hato being a guy there's nothing making it inherently worse than, say, Madarame x Sue or whatever.
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Dec 21, 2013 08:14
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I like them about the same, leaning more toward Nidaime.
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Dec 22, 2013 02:41
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There is some serious nostalgia going on when people think that characters like Kugayama and the first president were anywhere near being well characterized, let alone comparable to what even Yoshitake and Yajima (who are relatively minor characters compared to Hato and Madarame) have received in terms of fleshing out. And while we're talking about them, those two are pretty good examples of what the average fujoshi is like, with one sample from the "relatively quiet, not that proud of her hobby" end of the spectrum and one from the "loud, exuberant, extremely proud of being a fujoshi" end. I don't really understand how you can say they're "wacky" or "gimmicky" when they're basically two people you could reasonably expect to meet in an actual Genshiken (which have sprung up in various universities around Japan following the first series' run). Yes, Hato is an unconventional character, which I suppose you could call a gimmick, but that gimmick is being given serious plot time (which, humorously, has made many people complain that he should just make up his mind about whether he's gay or not) instead of being the standard "hey let's call this girl I drew a guy" character to put next to the the tsundere childhood friend and the mysterious transfer student in the list of character types to shove into a series and forget about actually fleshing out. Besides, the things he's struggling with, his socially unacceptable interests conflicting with his normal life, are things I feel Genshiken has always been about. That Hato's issues are related to his sexuality instead of, say, Ogiue's being about her guilt at driving away a friend with her "freakish" fantasies, doesn't really matter to me.
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Dec 23, 2013 16:08
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Nate RFB posted:There are such things as "background" or "side" characters who are able to round out an ensemble but do not necessarily need to be developed as heavily as the more prominent characters. This is not a "fault" if they were not intended to be the focus in the first place; it's like getting upset that the student council(?) member who tried to shut the club down hasn't been developed as heavily. Both Kugayama and the president graduate very early and are largely irrelevant; the focus of the first Genshiken was always on Saki and to varying degrees Sasahara, Ohno, Madarame, and Ogiue. That is an enormous difference in both depth and variety compared to the second iteration. And Nidaime's focus is on Hato and Madarame, who have been given large amounts of characterization; I was pointing out that Nidaime's side characters have enjoyed more characterization than those in similar positions in the original, and perhaps unfairly being snippy with people who have implied that the first Genshiken's wider variety of otaku interests (and while we're at that, it's pretty unfair to say characters like Kugayama and Tanaka represented many different otaku interests because they had liked drawing and photography/cosplaying, and then turn around and label all of the current Genshiken members as just "fujoshi" as if there is no variance between Yoshitake's maniacal love of history and Yajima's dabbling in art, but that's another matter) meant more character depth as well. I have read and enjoyed Hourou Musuko. I believe it's possible to treat a matter seriously without having it be Serious Time 24/7. Just because Hourou Musuko took one approach to gender issues (for the record, I think labeling Hato as a trans-female is sort of presumptuous, especially with the anime where I believe the official subs took the extra step of using female pronouns for him) doesn't mean that it's the only way to go about things. Besides, part of what Genshiken is dealing with is the clash of the fetishisized trap/otokonoko character type and actual homo/bisexuality. Of course there's going to be a lot of self-awareness involved when the intended audience is otaku who're already familiar with the character stereotype and the cliches that come with it--that doesn't mean that it's treated as a trifling thing at all. And Genshiken has always been a lighter kind of story, even at its most serious, so I can't fault it for inserting humor into things. What makes you say that Kio is incapable of tackle serious subject matter? He's done some seriously heavy stuff before (and after with Digopri, if you count the first run as a separate thing) Genshiken, which was received well critically though it wasn't the commercial success that Genshiken was/is. He's proven capable of doing it before, and I think that Hato's current issues (and to a lesser extent Madarame's clear inability to move on past a romantic interest, to the point where it starts to affect his life outside of romance) are being handled seriously enough if perhaps not with the gravity that you seem to expect. AnonSpore fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Dec 23, 2013 |
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Dec 23, 2013 17:54
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Nate RFB posted:Let me put it this way; just because a character is given more screentime or "depth" doesn't mean they become a more compelling character or replacement. It isn't a zero sum game anyway, it's not like Kio has simply swapped every character 1:1 with old to new. If anything there are far fewer side characters with as "little" characterization as Kugayama or the president making a direct comparison (at least in this one specific area) a waste of time. The entire range and dynamics of the new cast is completely different from the original to the point where we are really talking about two different products. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing, it could be interesting or just as good or better. Different doesn't have to be bad. But it will inevitably result in a dichotomy where the two are going to be compared. And when I do so, both the style and substance come off as shallow and trite in this new pass. What makes them a more compelling character or replacement, then? First you said that the characters felt like gimmicks, but if they are, then so were the first generation's--hell, the first Genshiken introduced far more wacky gimmick characters, to use your term, than Nidaime, in Kousaka, Sue, and Angela compared to Nidaime's Hato. Yes, they differ in that Hato is a main character instead of being in a supporting role, but his gimmick isn't relegated to being a gimmick despite his own best efforts--at this point his hobby and what it's led to have become serious issues that he's just recently begun to face. And as I stated above, I think that it's being treated well enough, which may be where you and I disagree. I mean, can you state a specific example of why you think the first generation's interactions were better instead of talking in generalizations? For example, I really like how Yoshitake and Yajima include Hato as part of the group in their Genshiken time with no (or few, in Yajima's case) quibbles, but frequently, outside of the circle, they're seen as a pair and not a trio, shooting the poo poo or just drinking without Hato, because at the end of the day he's a guy and they're girls. Several times Tanaka and Kugayama have also formed a similar unit with Madarame, because they're of the same year, specifically excluding Sasahara and sometimes Kuchiki as well, when he doesn't squeeze himself in somehow. There's the sense of small groups, or subsets, of close friends within a larger group of friends (the Genshiken), that I really like. It was there in the first series as well, of course, with Ohno and Saki's friendship, but I feel that it's definitely become a more strongly defined thing in Nidaime. So if we're talking about character dynamics, that's definitely one thing I really like more about Nidaime. And as for Spotted Flower, I don't see how you can say it's pandering and nothing but. Yes, it has humor, yes, it has sexuality, and of course you can tell that Kio is winking at the audience and barely bothering to conceal the fact that the husband and wife are meant to be Madarame and Saki in a parallel universe, but it also heavily features actual concerns that newlywed men feel--irrational fear of making love to a pregnant wife and the worry that one will prove to be a bad father chief among them. It's meant to poke fun at pregnancy, sex, and married life, which isn't entirely inappropriate considering the magazine it runs in is marketed towards adult women--that doesn't automatically mean that it fetishisizes it.
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Dec 23, 2013 20:18
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sincx posted:Arise, Genshiken thread, rejoice and reclaim your rightful place on the first page of the Animated Drawings To Replace Woman (mouse over ADTRW on the Forums' home page) board, as chapters 95, 96, and 97 have been released all in a single week. I don't know. Kio's works before Genshiken, the Kagerou Nikki stories and Yonensei+Gonensei, dealt extremely in depth with exactly the kind of young people relationships you're talking about, though in those cases the characters involved weren't otaku. If anything, I think age has tempered Kio's portrayals--they used to be really raw and biting, sort of like he was just letting everything come straight from his heart, whereas now they seem to be filtered through the lens of time and experience. He has a kid who's old enough to kiddie anime (so around 5~6 at least, I'm guessing) who he mentioned in the author's notes a ways back, so those days of heartbreak and uncertainty are definitely behind him. I do agree that a lot of the things he draws are based on personal experience--DigoPri, for instance, was directly drawn from raising the aforementioned kid--but I don't necessarily think that Genshiken/Nidaime mark Kio's own progression through life. It's just that young people struggling with relationships is a thing he likes to draw and always has, I think.
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Mar 13, 2014 14:39
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