Plenty of Nothing

Genshiken Welcome Pamphlet

Incoming members of the University of Tsukuba Genshiken are issued this orientation booklet. I want one! Source.

Hashikko Ensemble Volume 2 Cover

Source.

The Final Heisei Winter Book

This is the doujinshi the University of Tsukuba Genshiken brought to Comiket 95. 500 yen. They also brought a copybon, 100 yen. Source.

Genshiken Cosplay

How can you tell ordinary nerds from people cosplaying the men from Genshiken? Cosplay wigs. These three appear to be playing Madarame, Sasahara and Tanaka. Source.

Hashikko Ensemble Mouths

This reaction shot from Hashikko Ensemble, chapter 9 shows where Kio Shimoku is at with faces. The hair is Ogiue's and the glasses are Yoshitake's, but the mouth is something he has come up with for this new manga about singing. He didn't draw the teeth or tongue in Genshiken. Compare the mouths in A Bride's Story:

University of Tsukuba Genshiken

Kio Shimoku attended the University of Tsukuba, where he joined an otaku club. Some years later he drew on his experiences to create the manga Genshiken.

Today at the University of Tsukuba there is an otaku club called The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture (現代視覚文化研究会, Gendai Shikaku Bunka Kenkyūkai), or Genshiken for short, though probably for copyright reasons they write it GSK instead of げんしけん.

They have a Twitter account.

Yonensei Reissue

Kio Shimoku's pre-Genshiken manga Yonensei and Gonensei are getting reissued with new cover art, to accompany the first volume of his new manga Hashikko Ensemble. Source.

Karuizawa

The past few weeks the place name Karuizawa has cropped up. Turns out it's a small resort town in the hills of Nagano that became popular after it was recommended by the 19th-Century Canadian missionary A.C. Shaw, who built a chapel there. You can see why he liked it, it looks so much like Canadian Cottage Country. I've seen the name mentioned in an anecdote about Yasunari Kawabata in Donald Keene's memoirs, and in a short story by Banana Yoshimoto, and looking back through the files, in volume seven of Genshiken. In every instance the place is connected to sexual desire in some way, which would explain why it's a popular place to get married.

Marie Kondo x Genshiken

Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up; Kio Shimoku, Genshiken, volume 1.

Their

Either Facebook has gone gender neutral or it thinks I'm a band. (Image from Hashikko Ensemble.)