|
|
||||||||||
 |
| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ||||||||
| Rent | Stretch | # | ||||||
|
(All episodes watched): Genshiken 2 struck me as being as much an educational as a humorous show, being semi-amusing without many LOL jokes. But there's nothing wrong with that, because I'm curious about how, for example, a doujinshi would come into being. Episode five was pretty weird and teaches you all sorts of things which you may not have wanted to know about homosexual-themed manga. Episode seven was startling as Madarame, Kugayama and Tanaka suddenly graduate--it's not often that three well-developed characters are given up, even in war movies. The "newcomers" never really gained my complete trust and I was sorry to see these guys go (actually they come back now and then). I was curious to see how the club would function without these three. The American otaku girls were fun, being definitely un-Japanese but not total idiots either. I can't help feeling that Genshiken 2 is a significantly more serious, at times even depressing show compared to the original series. A lot of time is spent on subjects which don't directly involve anime, manga or video games--things like job hunting. We see how the characters' personalities have been molded by their lives as otaku (even if they deny it), and how this affects their lives in the real world. The results are not always pretty or amusing. Early on, this was probably the one show I most looked forward to watching this season, but since it hasn't exactly turned out to be more of the same otaku hijinks I was expecting, it has slipped somewhat in my ratings. I watch anime to escape the real world, not to be reminded of it! But things come together for a sort of bittersweet happy ending. More drama but less humor than the first time around Last updated Saturday, January 05 2008. Created Friday, October 26 2007. | ||||||||
| ||||||||
| Rent | 8 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 7 | AstroNerdBoy | # |
|
I loved the 9-volume manga Genshiken because of the characters and their otaku world. It was just good stuff and got better as time went on so that when volume 9 completed, I wished there were more but was happy with what I had. Thus far, the first TV series and the subsequent OVA anime adaptation of the manga have been very good. When this 2nd TV series came out, would I get to see the same quality or no? The one thing that kind of put me off at first are the odd character designs that are used at times. The characters would look jarringly ugly or somehow not right at times which was very distracting. Then the scene would change and the characters would look good again. I'm not sure what gave there, but it was a recurring problem throughout the series (though less so as time went on, but maybe I was used to it by then). From a story perspective, the writers mostly get it right. The adaptation is a pretty good one most of the time. There were moments when the anime was superior to the manga such as when Genshiken sold their doujinshi at ComiFes and Kousaka dressed in drag. That was much funnier in the anime, as was the moment when Ogiue is selling her yaoi doujinshi and Ohno's American friend Suzy wants Ogiue to sign it. However, there were moments where the anime wasn't nearly as good. These often came from the writers padding out an episode and needing to fill time. Unfortunately, this 2nd TV series doesn't finish the story, but ends with Sasahara getting a job. So that means that things from the manga like the budding romance between Ogiue and Sasahara is dropped complete with Ogiue's very interesting back story. I was very disappointed by that because Ogiue was the most developed character in the manga and I liked her and Sasahara's romance. Well, maybe we'll get a 2nd OVA series.
Bottom line: This is mainly a pretty good adaptation of a manga, though with a few bad spots and and ending that will likely disappoint readers of the manga. As such, I'm going to have to only give this one a "Rent" (with an upgrade to "Buy" if another OVA series is created to finish out the manga story). Last updated Saturday, December 29 2007. Created Friday, October 12 2007. | ||||||||
| ||||||||
Other Sites
| Name | URL |
|---|---|
| Official Japanese Genshiken Site | http://www.genshiken.info/ |
| |
