Even the Genshiken characters can't believe how shitty this series is.
A letter to Saki Kasukabe:
Dear Giant Twat,
The following is a list of grievances I hold against you:
- 1.) You cling to a relationship that is purely physical in nature, regardless of how wrong you are for the other person.
- 2.) You are vapid, selfish, elitist, and contribute nothing of value to the club.
- 3.) You are an egotistical hypocrite who thinks she knows what’s best for everyone else.
- 4.) You deceived your current boyfriend by intentionally concealing the fact that you were still in contact with an ex-boyfriend.
- 5.) You intentionally tried to shut down the Genshiken club.
- 6.) You intentionally sabotaged the club’s recruitment of new members.
- 7.) You forced a group of people to throw away prized memorabilia because you are a clutz.
- 8.) You destroyed said memorabilia in a fire, and carelessly destroyed a model kit that another member spent hours building.
- 9.) In both aforementioned instances you agreed to cosplay in order to make up for it, but bailed out both times, seemingly having no regard for the promises you broke.
- 10.) You are a huge bitch.
In summary, please die a horrible death. Try one of the following: seppeku, walking into oncoming traffic, or eating the gun. Your death would doubtlessly bring happiness to the world of self-respecting human beings, and it would vastly improve the quality of the television series Genshiken. Please consider my recommendation.
Sincerely,
BrikHaus
The real life Genshiken club.
Genshiken seems like it would be cool at first glance, but as it turns out, it’s a steaming piece of shit. I previously ranked it as number 9 in my 20 Shittiest Anime of the Decade (2000-2009) article, and I thought it would be fun to revisit my hatred for it.
This series claims to be centered around otaku lifestyle, so the choice to make the main character, Saki, an otaku-hater was a very poor decision. The main character should have been Kanji. He is an otaku, but with far more mainstream interests than the other characters. It would make more sense to bring the viewers into the otaku realm through someone a little more identifiable to the audience. Sure, he’s otaku, but he’s not hardcore like the other club members. Quickly, it becomes apparent that his girlfriend Saki is the main character. Everything is shown through her vapid, narcissistic, bitchy eyes. 75% of the show is from her perspective. Otaku are shown as vile, slimy, disgusting creatures. This makes it very difficult to enjoy the series when most of it features Saki’s inability to form healthy relationships with other human beings. It’s a good study of a psychiatric personality disorder, but it doesn’t feature the otaku lifestyle very well.
This is why Welcome to the NHK is a vastly superior anime. It manages to show the oddities of otaku lifestyle in equal amounts of positive and negative light. All at once we get to identify with, be repulsed by, laugh at, root for, and empathize with otaku. They are shown as real human beings with flaws and redeeming qualities. Welcome to the NHK got everything right. Genshiken, on the other hand, is a piece of shit that gets everything wrong. It trashes the culture it claims to love, and attempts to make anime-viewers feel like outsiders. I don’t need to feel ostracized while watching anime. I can get that by simply telling a cute girl or a random passer-by that I watch cartoons from Japan. Besides, it just feels lazy when the entire series is written as LOL OTAKU SURE ARE GROSS AND WEIRD LOL instead of coming up with a storyline and creating characters that show actual growth.
On a random note, they did get the characters Ohno and Tanaka together. It’s pretty rare for an anime to seal the deal in terms of relationships. Usually everything is just left up to your imagination, and you can classify as that as good or bad. Personally, all the characters are weak stereotypes, so I could care less. I can, however, imagine what kind of gross otaku sex they had. Sweaty, unwashed flab must have bounced everywhere. Ugh.
I found it difficult to care about anything in Genshiken. The entire show just felt weak, cliche, frustrating, and kind of creepy. Every character is a huge, worthless loser, and Saki is the most repugnant of all. There was more stuff about this series that I hated, but it’s too big a piece of shit to waste any more time on. Fuck this series.
Verdict: Shitty
Awesomely Shitty 