Personally, from a logical standpoint, I think it would be bittersweet endings or just so-so endings that most people would find to be “realistic” since the majority of life for the majority of people is somwhere in the middle of the emotional spectrum. You have your peaks and valleys, but stretch it out over a long enough time line and you have a straight line with tiny spikes.

I would contend that the events depicted in Genshiken are realistic enough to be plausible. I would also contend that the characters themselves (taken as overall characterizations, NOT their individual actions in all depicted circumstances) are also plausible.

The symantics behind the word otaku I think is a pretty moot point. The show can call them whatever they want, but it’s the actions of the characters which defines them to the viewer. If they were all called jocks but acted the same way would we think they were jocks?

To the viewer, if they come across more as the “geek” interpretation of otaku rather than “person suffering from psychosis” interpretation of otaku, then I think the series is pretty plausible.

If one were to believe that the characters all more frequently display the qualities of having a more extreme psychotic disorder (which I think would be hard to argue as being true) then I would say no, the series is pretty implausible.

The one thing I do have to bring up though is that, statistically, it’s unlikely that each male character with a corresponding female love interest would end up dating them on essentially their first try.

We also have to keep in mind that we are witnessing roughly only about 2 years of these people’s lives. That’s not a very long time. Granted these are part of their most transient years (early adulthood). We don’t know what ends up happening to each character in the end, we just know what happened after a couple years. It’s possible that what we saw was a period of high points in these character’s lives and it all goes downhill from there. Would that make all you tragedy lovers (which I am) happy? ;)

The people of Genshiken move from the realm of “otaku” to “anime fan” then if you want to throw labels around. They learn, they grow, they change, without losing their love of anime. Take Madarame for example, he makes major changes like how he dresses and how he talks to people as the series goes on. Yet, he never dates, no one falls in love him by the end, and he becomes a salaryman. He has improved and its not as if he is a player living the otaku dream.

It is not detrimental, there are truths and paths to becoming a better fan in Genshiken, it is basically a process. See Ogiue Maniax recent post (http://ogiuemaniax.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/response-a-further-look-at-the-realism-of-genshiken/). If someone misinterprets that as having to do nothing and getting everything you want, there is nothing to prevent it. People are just as able to delude themselves from realistic sources as they are from non-realistic ones. The inability to change comes from within. But that ability to change exists and Genshiken highlights that.

How probable this scenario is, well we will have to agree to disagree there since it comes down to personal outlook on life.

Our point wasn’t that Welcome to the NHK is more or less realistic than Genshiken. I wish to clarify our statement now, our point is they are both in the same realm of realism. They both exaggerate truths for comedic effect. One focuses on the positives of anime fandom the other the negatives. But they are both based on seeds of truth in anime fandom. It’s not a zero sum game, saying one is realistic doesn’t negate the other’s position.

The major thrust of our whole article is that there is both light and dark in anime fandom and in real life in general. You cannot label one as unrealistic and the other as true to life. They are both a part of life. They are both necessary and worth reading about.

Sasahara was not passive. In the end he had to go out there and put himself on the line in order to achieve romantic success. Tanaka may or may not have had a difficult time with it (definitely, if you’re going by the anime), but it’s not like this was an immediate occasion. They know each other for about a year before anything happens. If you go by the anime, it takes Ohno’s understanding that otaku tend to stay inert when confronted by the prospect of romance for anything to happen at all.

Is the problem that none of the members who managed to find girlfriends got REJECTED in the end? Is that what it would take for this to satisfy some notions of realism?

As for the definition of otaku, wasn’t it some disparaging term to begin with? It’s fucking co-opted now, so I guess you’ll have to deal with it, just like graphic novel has become a catch-all term.

Let’s go back to the original article. Why do people prefer the dark and gritty stories over the sugar and spice? Well, for one thing, you get interested in a story if there’s conflict. In slice-of-life, there tends to be no big conflicts. It’s “boring” as some would say.

That’s why people prefer ridiculous super-long shounen over simple stories that may mirror their own lives. That brings up the second point. Why would you want to go from your average life to watching something about average life?

Personally, I don’t care either way. I’m gonna watch fucking Naruto, Natsume Yujincho, Bleach, Genshiken, Time of ever- whatever can hold my attention. I’m okatu ;)

I do agree that Genshiken can be sinister in the way you describe it, however. It is appealingly realistic yet at times just as fantastical because it may have omitted some key moments or components that are necessary in regular human relationships.

“Go to any convention and you will find a few good-looking cosplayers guaranteed. . . . But you’d be hard pressed to say that no otaku date, ever. Heck, just thinking of other geeky hobbies like Star Trek, there are people who get married dressed up as the characters! Where in the rules does it say that geeks don’t date?”

This passage and what it implies reveals why the basic premise of this post is fundamentally misguided. You’re equating “otaku” with “fan” or “geek.” Perhaps “nerd,” maybe even “dork.”

If you use “otaku” synonymously with any of those above terms, then it’s easy to see why you think Genshiken’s not especially unrealistic. Everything that happens to the cast of Genshiken is possible in the realms of “geekery,” things like “when you are in close proximity with a group for long periods of time, relationships are bound to happen.” At the end of the day, you’re operating under the assumption that otaku are still human beings under there.

And that’s why you’re wrong. Per the Japanese definition of “otaku”—the only one that really assigns the term a unique definition rather than just a synonym for “fan”—the vast, vast supermajority of anime enthusiasts in the US is NOT otaku. Not even among the anime con goers or hell, bloggers. “Otaku” is something a lot more severe than “fan” or “geek” or “nerd” or whatever. The rough translation commonly given is “obsessed geek,” but the mistake everyone makes is focusing on the “geek” part instead of the “obsessed.”

Anyone who tries to demonstrate their “otaku cred” by showing off their collection of items or detailing some feat they performed is someone who doesn’t understand this concept. You’re not an otaku because of the size of your DVD/manga collection, how many cons you attend, how many costumes you make, or how much knowledge you have. It’s a mental state you’re not necessarily actively aware of.

That “optional awareness” is why there is nothing—NOTHING—more damaging to a real otaku than watching/reading something like Genshiken or Densha Otoko such that you come away with the message “that’s awesome, IT COULD HAPPEN TO ME.” Because even when watching the most pandering of moe, the otaku’s reaction is generally something like “I really wish that happened to me” with a tiny voice in back somewhere adding “…but reality and anime/manga are different.” Stories like Genshiken take away that tiny voice.

The nefarious lie of Genshiken is not that it’s unrealistic or portrays a positive image, but that it does so under the pretense of truth. It presents a set of (mostly) otaku, some more idealized than others, living and behaving as such at first…before presenting them with situations as though they were (mostly) normal people (fans/geeks/nerds as we’d understand them). The implication of this is that what’s true for “geeks” et al can be true for “otaku” as well, which is not only unrealistic, it’s DANGEROUS.

For the otaku, the girl of your dreams isn’t going to just walk straight through the door of the anime club and love you for YOU so much that she’ll court you as though she were a dating sim girl. Yet because she didn’t step through a mirror like Belldandy, the otaku might not consider this simple truth. So you’ll go about just as the Genshiken crew did, waiting for their saviors to walk through that door. And waiting. And waiting. It’s a good bit of waiting, enough that your sense of reality becomes horribly warped as a result. So warped that you actually think freakin’ Key visual novels are the realistic depictions of how stuff goes down that you’ll actually ACCEPT “real romance” as a term when (as you say) it’s anything but. Eventually you’ll catch the mistake. But by then, it’s too late. You’re already dead.

If you have to ask “why are otaku different from the rest of those people such that it’s not true for them?”, then you’re not an otaku and never were. Rejoice.