History Manga / Genshiken

* ExpressiveHair: Ogiue hairbrush or turnip-like ''{{Ahoge}}'' hairdo serves as her mood indicator. In the manga, Kasukabe directly [[LampshadeHanging takes note of it]] in Oguie's face.

* ExpressiveHair: Ogiue hairbrush or turnip-like {{Ahoge}} serves as her mood indicator.

%%* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: Kousaka, which causes Kasukabe a world of anguish because, well, see the immediately preceding trope
%%"Saki-chan's moe? You don't have any."

%% * ClothingConcealingInjury: At Comic Fest, Madarame slips and seriously injures his wrist, but hides it in his pocket from both the others and himself until the pain becomes too unbearable.

%%* DatingSim: [[POVCam Parodied.]]

%%* ExpressiveHair: Ogiue.
%%* EyesAlwaysShut: Tanaka.

%%* BlankWhiteEyes

%%* GenkiGirl: Yoshitake and Susan in Chapter 56.

%%* HandBehindHead

* KaraokeBox: They go to one to help Kugayama become more outgoing - he ends up interrupting Madarame's performance of the Anime/CombattlerV theme.

** This is much truer of Sasahara and Ogiue's false starts at their relationship, with lots of matchmaking going on behind the scenes by Ohno, Kasukabi, and Madarame to get them together. While the anime never reached far enough along in the manga's storyline to see the Genshiken vacation where Sasahara and Ogiue finally express their feelings, the anime shoehorned those emotional elements into Tanaka and Ohno's relationship. It still works, but seems a bit strange after reading the manga first.

* {{Doujinshi}}: Featured very prominently in the series: Sasahara spends the first few chapters getting used to buying erotic doujinshis, they never miss a single Comifes to return with entire trainloads of them, in the first few chapters of the second season they actually create one for the Comifes, and Ogiue later draws another one for the next Comifes.

* ExpospeakGag: The episode titles of the anime's first season, which describe aspects of otaku-culture in the academic argot of a graduate thesis. For instance, the episode titled "The Fetishism of Leisure Time Expenditures Considered by their Economic Result" is about the younger Sasahara deciding to "become an otaku" (''fetishizing'' the idea of "otaku" itself) because she thinks doing so will have the ''result'' of getting Kousaka to notice her, not because she actually enjoys said "''leisure time expenditures''".

* GeniusDitz: Kousaka. While he appears to be extremely manipulable and oblivious to most things, he is unbeatable at videogames and manages to secure a respectable career at the end of the series.

* IfItsYouItsOkay: [[spoiler: Its still a little unclear whether Hato is a homosexual or just Madarame-sexual. He strongly denies being a homosexual and yet admits to being in love with Madarame, though since switching one's sexuality just for one person is pretty much impossible in real life, he's likely bisexual.]]

* ManipulativeBastard: Although many circles admit that Haraguchi is very capable of making a plan to sell 3000 copies of doujin at the price of 1000 yen in a single day without any of them doing any work, they all know none of them would see a sen of it.

* TheNotSecret: It's not exactly clear exactly when the others found out, but everyone in Genshiken knows about Madarame's crush on Kasukabe. [[spoiler: Yes, even Saki herself - she kept quiet about it because she didn't want to make things awkward. Yes, even Kosaka, who somehow noticed it ''and'' never blabbed about it.]] The new club members in ''Nidame'' pick up on it almost immediately.

* OutOfFocus: Since ''Nidaime'', some of the former Genshiken members have pretty much dropped off the radar, save occasional appearances. Not too surprising for Kasukabe and Kousaka, a bit more for Sasahara since he's Ogiue's boyfriend. Actually, even Ogiue seems more and more absent in the latst chapters, the story being increasingly focused on Hato. This was explicitly the point of ''Nidaime'', to show what was happening with the new Genshiken membership. However, a drifting focus has been built into the series from the start as leadership has changed hands and the group has added and lost members. Kasukabe and her struggles with understanding otaku took much of the early focus; it drifted more onto Sasahara for his tenure as president; Ogiue grabbed the focus once her backstory started to come out, and now it's drifted towards the new group with Hato. Meanwhile, the other characters have moved in and out, retaining a secondary focus and sometimes losing it. [[TruthInTelevision It's remarkably alike to the feeling of watching a real college club evolve over several years as membership changes and the social circles rebalance.]]

* PlotHole: A flash forward at the end of the original manga series shows 3 normal guys walking into the Genshiken room sometime in the future. However, in the first chapter of the new series, the author clearly changed his mind and made the new members 3 girls [[spoiler: actually 2 girls and a "girl"]]. The inconsistency was never explained, though one can chalk it up as even more into the future.

* SequentialArtist: 2 specific arcs are built around attempting to be in this trope. Ogiue creates the [[YaoiFanGirl Yaoi]] variety.

* ShipTease: The novel has some pretty blatant ShipTease for Madarame X Kasukabe. It's possible a bone thrown to all the Mada x Saki shippers with ''Manga/SpottedFlower'', a manga by the same author about a suspiciously familiar otaku and his pregnant non-otaku wife.

An anime aired in July 2013, adapting the ''Nidaime'' material. The material from volumes 8 and 9 of the mang remains unadapted.

''Genshiken'', [[PortmanteauSeriesNickname short for]] ''Gendai Shikaku Bunka Kenkyuukai'' (or ''The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture''), is the story of the members of this ostensibly-useless club. Formed in the past as a sort of bridge between the manga, anime, and gaming clubs, most members of those three are at best indifferent to the continued existence of the Genshiken. The new extracurricular activities board has decided to close all clubs who don't hold any meaningful activities, the Genshiken is among them, and it's up to its members to do something that prevents the club from getting closed.

[[caption-width-right:350:From left to right: [[{{Moe}} Madarame]], [[NiceGuy Tanaka]], [[CosplayOtakuGirl Ohno]], [[{{Tsundere}} Ogiue]], [[TheFriendNobodyLikes Kuchiki]], [[AudienceSurrogate Sasahara]], [[BrilliantButLazy Kugayama]], [[{{Bishonen}} Kousaka]], [[OnlySaneWoman Kasukabe]], and [[AnnoyingYoungerSibling Keiko]].[[note]]If you look carefully, you can spot the First President in the top right corner of the picture.[[/note]]]]

* OutOfFocus: Since ''Nidaime'', some of the former Genshiken members have pretty much disappeared from the radar, save occasional appearances. Not too surprising for Kasukabe and Kousaka, a bit more for Sasahara since he's Ogiue's boyfriend. Actually, even Ogiue seems more and more absent in the latst chapters, the story being increasingly focused on Hato. This was explicitly the point of ''Nidaime'', to show what was happening with the new Genshiken membership. However, a drifting focus has been built into the series from the start as leadership has changed hands and the group has added and lost members. Kasukabe and her struggles with understanding otaku took much of the early focus; it drifted more onto Sasahara for his tenure as president; Ogiue grabbed the focus once her backstory started to come out, and now it's drifted towards the new group with Hato. Meanwhile, the other characters have moved in and out, retaining a secondary focus and sometimes losing it. [[TruthInTelevision It's remarkably alike to the feeling of watching a real college club evolve over several years as membership changes and the social circles rebalance.]]

* NoodleImplements: Yoshitake is badgering Yajima, saying they can ask [[WholesomeCrossdresser Hato]] all the things they couldn't ask before they knew him. Suitably primed, Yajima finds a strangely suggestive piece of plastic left in the clubroom and both their imaginations run rampant.

* {{Bishonen}}: Kousaka, bordering on DudeLooksLikeALady.

* KansaiRegionalAccent: Yabusaki, who [[HypocriticalHumor upbraids Ogiue for slipping into Tohoku-ben]] when she gets flustered.

* TohokuRegionalAccent: Ogiue usually speaks in formal Standard Japanese, but reverts to her native Tohoku dialect when she gets nervous or embarrassed, which only serves to throw her further into panic-mode.

** In ''Second Season'', Ohno's accent at least isn't nearly as strong (see SurprisinglyGoodEnglish below), and Angela's replacement VA also attempts an American accent, but while she has the pronunciation down for the most part, she still ultimately sounds like a Japanese woman trying to sound American.

* SurprisinglyGoodEnglish:
** Rather realistically, Ohno and Kasukabe speak rather correct English with one hell of a rough Japanese accent
** Angela actually sounds convincingly American even when played by a Japanese {{seiyuu}}. Although Angela's choice of words (lack of slang and all) make it harder to swallow. She says "sensible" where she obviously means to say "sensitive". Normally such a mistake would go all but unnoticed, but she has an entire monologue about the "sensibility" of Japanese men and so repeats it enough for it to become very jarring for English speakers. Furthermore, much of her lines are delivered in this weird sing-songy inflection that sounds completely unnatural. For example, when she says, "I can't wait to go to the Butler's Cafe!", it sounds more like she's calling someone off-screen than a joyful declaration.
** In contrast to her [[Creator/AyakoKawasumi original VA]]'s performance, Ohno's [[Creator/{{Yukana}} replacement VA]] in ''Second Season'', while not excellent, does a much better job with the English. Better pronunciation, better delivery, slightly better inflection; all in all, a general improvement.

* ADateWithRosiePalms:
** That's what male and female otaku use hentai for, according to the otaku themselves. An extended sequence showed Sasahara getting into an eroge after he bought his new computer but the scene ends when he finally gets in the mood.
*** Also implied after he returns home from seeing Ogiue in cosplay (naturally at Ohno's insistence) in the club room.
** During his graduation day, Kuchiki blurts out he had planned to beat his own record for the whole day before he moved out of his apartment.

** Chapter 56 has Sue channeling [[LightNovel/{{Bakemonogatari}} Senjougahara Hitagi and Hachikuji Mayoi.]] She's also taken on Oshino Shinobu, albeit with some more... realistic... undergarments.

** They went absolutely nuts on cosplay in [[http://ogiuemaniax.wordpress.com/2013/08/06/the-cosplay-id-game-for-comic-festival-in-genshiken-second-season-episodes-4-and-5/ Episodes 4 and 5]] of "Second Season". Let's see, there were [[Franchise/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica Kyubey and friends]], [[Anime/GargantiaOnTheVerdurousPlanet Chamber, Amy and Saaya]], Yamada from ''Anime/KujibikiUnbalance'', [[Anime/PantyAndStockingWithGarterbelt Panty and Stocking]], [[Manga/CuticleDetectiveInaba Don Valentino]], [[Manga/YouAreBeingSummonedAzazel Azazel]], a [[Manga/AttackOnTitan Titan]], [[LightNovel/{{Bakemonogatari}} Tsukihi and Karen Araragi]], [[Anime/PsychoPass Akane Tsunemori and Shinya Kougami]], [[Music/{{Vocaloid}} Miku and Rin]]...

* TakeThat: Not too prevalent, given that it's a series about enjoying being an Otaku, but in one episode preview the club members mention that you really shouldn't sing [[Manga/LuckyStar "Motteke! Sailor Fuku!"]] and [[LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya "Hare Hare Yukai"]] in public.

** A one-off form of it, when the series got {{Uncancelled}} after about four and a half years, but events in-series had only moved on a couple months at most. Suddenly characters move from making references to series current to early and mid 2006, to referencing series that wouldn't even have existed yet if a strict chronology was followed on with the continuation. Angela's references to the ''LightNovel/{{Bakemonogatari}}'' series get only the narrowest pass if she's quoting the original light novel which came out within the rough time of ''Nidaime'' thus far, but the ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'' cosplay doesn't fit anywhere.

* BlankFaceOfShame: Ogiue, shortly after she's revealed to be a YaoiFangirl and shortly before she tries jumping out a third story window because of it.

* {{Fanservice}}: While the manga has some of this, the anime is ''rife'' with this, especially during the episodes covering [=ComicFes=], half of this is supplied by...

* ShowWithinAShow: ''Kujibiki Unbalance'', an in-universe manga/anime that the members of Genshiken obsess over. Despite being an [[InvokedTrope intentional]] ClicheStorm that featured a lot of tropes common to anime and manga at the time ''Genshiken'' was first published, ''[=KujiUn=]'' eventually became popular enough to be spun off into [[Anime/KujibikiUnbalance its own series]].

** They went absolutely nuts on cosplay in [[http://ogiuemaniax.wordpress.com/2013/08/06/the-cosplay-id-game-for-comic-festival-in-genshiken-second-season-episodes-4-and-5/ Episodes 4 and 5]] of "Second Season". Let's see, there were [[Franchise/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica Kyubey and friends]], [[Anime/GargantiaOnTheVerdurousPlanet Chamber, Amy and Saaya]], Yamada from ''Anime/KujibikiUnbalance'', [[Anime/PantyAndStockingWithGarterbelt Panty and Stocking]], [[Manga/CuticleDetectiveInaba Don Valentino]], [[Manga/YouAreBeingSummonedAzazel Azazel]], a [[Manga/AttackOnTitan Titan]], [[LightNovel/{{Bakemonogatari}} Tsukihi and Karen Araragi]], [[Anime/PsychoPass Akane Tsunemori and Shinya Kougami]], [[Music/VocaLoid Miku and Rin]]...

* SpinOff: ''Anime/KujibikiUnbalance''

An anime aired in July 2013, adapting the ''Nidaime'' material. It is unknown what, if anything, will be done with the material from volumes 8 and 9 of the manga.

* DatingSim: [[VisualNovelShot Parodied.]]

* BandageBabe: Invoked by Tanaka and Madarame at the appearance of Ogiue, who had previously thrown herself out a second-story window and broken her arm.