BYE

My introduction to Genshiken was back in 2010. I had insomnia and some mental health issues, and it made it difficult to wake up and get to school in the morning. For a while, I had a routine of waking up 30 minutes early to watch an episode of the Genshiken anime to help get my day started in a positive way. I wasn’t particularly invested in it, but overall I would say the series briefly helped me through some hard times in a small way.

The Genshiken Nidaime anime series came out in 2013 and I watched it as it aired. I became very invested very quickly in Hato as a character and the potential of where the series could go. I bought the omnibuses for all of the original manga and read it all at once from the beginning, and I caught up on the manga. I was super into it!

I’m more of an anime person. I don’t read manga very often. When I do read manga, I’m really bad at keeping up with ongoing series because I forget what happens in between chapters. The fact that I kept up with Genshiken and looked forward to it each month and was very involved with it is really saying something, because that’s the only time I was ever really able to do that with a manga.

As Genshiken went on, I became more and more confident in where it was heading. Sometimes people would send me an ask saying they were worried that HatoMada was not going to be canon, and I’d say I’m not worried. Because it’s more fun to look forward to where the story is heading than be anxious about it! I don’t regret that outlook, though I turned out to be wrong. I had a good time while it lasted.

I think I’ve said all I can about my disappointment regarding how Genshiken turned out in older posts, so I want to say that I had an overall very positive experience. Genshiken was a very entertaining manga with well-written characters. It may have self-destructed in the end, turning everything I cared most about into ashes, but that’s life I guess.

Thank you everyone who’s ever kept up with Genshiken or kept up with me. I even got to meet one of you at AnimeFest the other week, which was very cool! I had a great time running this tumblr and hearing other people’s perspectives and getting asks from you guys, and feeling like a nice little community where we all loved Genshiken.