{"id":913,"date":"2007-10-10T20:46:42","date_gmt":"2007-10-10T12:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/2007\/10\/10\/genshiken-2\/"},"modified":"2007-10-20T19:40:26","modified_gmt":"2007-10-20T11:40:26","slug":"genshiken-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/2007\/10\/10\/genshiken-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Genshiken 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Genshiken 2<\/p>\n

Genshiken<\/strong><\/a> is a manga series about an anime\/manga\/game club in a Japanese university. The title is short for gendai shikaku bunka kenkyuukai<\/em>, or “The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture”. Basically it’s an excuse for a bunch of otaku and fujoshi<\/em><\/a> to have a room to hang out after school and make funny references to Gundam and ero-games.<\/p>\n

The second season<\/a> just started airing last night and I’ve got a few bones to pick…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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<\/a> just over an year ago. Maybe Kodansha stole my idea! Or not.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

Genshiken 2
\nClick to viewer larger version<\/a><\/p>\n

…Moving on.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Maybe I’ve been spoiled by Kyo-ani<\/a>‘s animated otaku in-jokes encyclopaedia<\/a>, but I recall the first season to be a whole lot more amusing than this sad mess.<\/p>\n

Of course, unlike Lucky Star, Genshiken<\/strong> does have its serious moments and they are<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

Genshiken 2
\nTV-series lame-ified<\/em> style<\/p>\n

And what I really, really hope will not be an indication of future episodes: the Kujian<\/strong><\/a> scenes are done in the TV-series style<\/a> instead of the much more distinct and stylish manga original that was used by the first season. For shame!<\/p>\n

Genshiken 2
\nOriginal awesomerific<\/em> style<\/p>\n

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<\/a> took the brush tool in Illustrator and drew a “2” below the original logo by mouse?<\/p>\n

I hope it gets better… :(<\/p>\n

UPDATED<\/strong>: ZOMG. After watching episode 2, Genshiken is now officially awesome again. Yay!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[720,644,235],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}