Genshiken is a manga series about an anime/manga/game club in a Japanese university. The title is short for gendai shikaku bunka kenkyuukai, or “The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture”. Basically it’s an excuse for a bunch of otaku and fujoshi to have a room to hang out after school and make funny references to Gundam and ero-games.
The second season just started airing last night and I’ve got a few bones to pick…
Episode one of season two continues from where the first season and the ova series left off, right around volume six of the manga or so, exactly as I predicted just over an year ago. Maybe Kodansha stole my idea! Or not.
Actually, I’m not going to review this episode, I just want to rant a bit. But here’s a bunch of screen caps if you really want them:
Click to viewer larger version
…Moving on.
As a fan of the manga and the anime’s first season, I’m somewhat disappointed by the first episode of season two. It appears that the producers are not even trying anymore. There’s one Gundam joke and some references to doujin artists, but that’s about it for this entire episode in the comedy department. It’s like the series was robbed by the humour bandit and suddenly lost all the things that made it awesome.
Maybe I’ve been spoiled by Kyo-ani‘s animated otaku in-jokes encyclopaedia, but I recall the first season to be a whole lot more amusing than this sad mess.
Of course, unlike Lucky Star, Genshiken does have its serious moments and they are pretty good too. But so far season two is just…boring. It’s not funny, and it’s not much else. That and a complete lack of proper introduction means that the producers are not going to woo any newcomers to the franchise. Which I guess means that they are depending on loyal fans of the manga, ergo they don’t have to try too hard. That sucks.
TV-series lame-ified style
And what I really, really hope will not be an indication of future episodes: the Kujian scenes are done in the TV-series style instead of the much more distinct and stylish manga original that was used by the first season. For shame!
Original awesomerific style
Hell, even the new ending theme sounds like a cheap copy of “Biidama”, the ED to the first season. And did I mention that the new logo looks like some monkey took the brush tool in Illustrator and drew a “2” below the original logo by mouse?
I hope it gets better… :(
UPDATED: ZOMG. After watching episode 2, Genshiken is now officially awesome again. Yay!
Man, I was really hoping for Genshiken season 2 to be at least as good as season 1 or the ovas, but after reading what you wrote about the first episode, I’m pretty disappointed. After all, I had high hopes for Genshiken.
Oh well, let’s just cross our fingers and pray hard that starting from episode 2, it’ll be a blast!
I wonder, why people even bother mentioning some crappy in-anime anime like Kujian ? Who really cares about that garbage ?
You must be crazy, the original Kujian was funnier than 90 percent of anime out there.
I actually enjoyed the first episode…ok, it’s not as good the ep.1 from first seasson but it’s still good.
But like you said, I hope the next episodes to be actually better.
Will we see moar of Chika Ogiue?
I loved the first season so I had high hopes for this, although shame that the first episode is disappointing. Will wait for the fansub to arrive and see for myself.
And man, Kujian was brilliant.
O man i was waiting for this series to come out..now it doesn’t really seem to please me.
i didn’t think it was too bad…
the first eps felt slow, but what i liked about genshiken is not the humor but the embracement of real life and anime.
but i almost choked when i saw the very very end part of the ED…
DO THEY NOT HAVE QC!? I MEAN CMON. THAT WAS JUST SAD. I COULD DRAW BETTER EYES WITH THE PENCIL STUCK UP MY BUM.
never tried though, and hopefully never will.
Lucky Star is not an animated otaku in-jokes encyclopaedia.
that’s Zetsubou sensei :]
“But so far season two is just…boring. It’s not funny, and it’s not much else.”
o_o
I thought the episode was “back to normal” for me, so I liked it, and I thought it funny at times. And besides, it’s only been one episode.
“the first eps felt slow, but what i liked about genshiken is not the humor but the embracement of real life and anime.”
Same here. The humor’s a bonus, and I thought they had enough of that here. They don’t need references to make it work. :3
“Hell, even the new ending theme sounds like a cheap copy of “Biidamaâ€, the ED to the first season. ”
It’s good enough and it works for me. :P
I’m worried you’re falling into the situation that some people had with Lucky Star when it started out. Not meeting expectations and all that jazz. :/
I remember when I watched the first episode of the first season (having not read the mange at that point) I gave up on it half way through, it seemed so boring. But after looking at it’s good feedback on ANN I managed to finish the ep and at the very end when they all come back in the room, it was like a completely different series.
So hopefully season 2 will do something similar.
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