is a Japanese manga series by Shimoku Kio about a college club for otaku (extremely obsessed fans of various media) and the lifestyle its members pursue. The title is a shortening of the club's official name, , or "The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture". The series has also been adapted into an anime directed by Tsutomu Mizushima. The manga originally ran in Kodansha's magazine Monthly Afternoon from April 2002 to May 2006, and has been reprinted in nine bound volumes. A two-part short bonus story was included across both volumes of the Kujibiki Unbalance manga, published in 2006. In December 2009, a new chapter was released in Monthly Afternoon to celebrate the release of the Genshiken 2 DVD box-set. In October 2010, the series resumed serialization as . Overview Themes The series focuses on the otaku lifestyle and contains numerous references to other manga, anime, video games, and other aspects of otaku culture. Common plot points include such otaku-centric activities as the buying and creation of dōjinshi, fan-made manga usually of erotic content; convincing a character to try cosplay (dressing up as characters from manga, anime, or video games); the creation of plamo (plastic models that must be assembled); visiting Akihabara, Tokyo's electronics shopping district; or attending the biannual Comic Festival ("Comifes"), a reference to Comic Market ("Comiket"), Japan's single largest anime- and manga-focused fan convention. Since the anime is co-produced by Sega Sammy Holdings, the Guilty Gear video game series is heavily referenced, with actual gameplay sequences being shown multiple times, Ohno cosplaying as Kuradoberi Jam, and other minor references. The Sega puzzle game Puyo Puyo also serves as an important plot point as Kasukabe tries to gain Kousaka's attention. Numerous other non-Sega/Sammy properties are also referenced throughout the anime, but their names are changed slightly, such as The King of Fighters '95 being alluded to as COF 95 and Capcom vs SNK 2 as "S-Cup". Discussion of eroge, erotic video games usually of the visual novel genre, also occurs often. Similar to the treatment of video games in the series, popular anime, and manga are often alluded to by pseudonyms, such as "Gungal" (Gundam), "Reass Mood" (Code Geass), "Haregan" (Fullmetal Alchemist), "Scram Dunk" (Slam Dunk), "Neko Yasha" (InuYasha), and many others. Genshiken usually avoids referring to these series so in-depth that it would require the use of names and lines from their real-world counterparts, with