The newest issue of Monthly Afternoon has revealed that a new Genshiken anime is in the works. This calls for a celebration:

I’ll be honest: even with the serialization of Genshiken II (aka Nidaime aka Second Season), I never expected it to get another anime adaptation. I wished for it, of course, given that the anime never even resolved Ogiue’s arc, but I thought its time had passed, and the reception to the manga sequel has been mixed, with a number of fans both inside and outside of Japan feeling alienated by the new setting.

Of course, this development begs quite a few questions. First and foremost, will the new anime actually cover the remaining parts of the original Genshiken, or is it actually just an adaptation of the second series? Would it be half and half? Would they speed through the remaining parts of the first series in order to get to the new characters? How many episode will it be? For that matter, will it even be a TV series?

Second, who is going to animate this new version? The first Genshiken anime was by the now-defunct studio Palm, while the OVAs and Genshiken 2 were done by Studio ARMS. Responsible for Queen’s Blade and currently Maoyu: Maou Yuusha, ARMS brought a bit of a perverted slant to Genshiken, and given the presence of not only Hato but also a very aggressive Angela I could imagine them going hog wild, for better or worse. I don’t exactly have a dream studio I’d like to see work on it, but the resulting product could definitely be a tad unexpected depending on who gets it.

Third, what about voice actors? We have all of these new characters, with Hato especially presenting a challenge. Do you go the route of having one of the “masculine” female voice actors vary her voice, or do you find one of rare male voice actors who can successfully do a female voice? I would actually suggest Ishida Akira as Hato, if he weren’t already playing Kuchiki. As for the other characters, maybe they’ll go for a curveball, like Kugimiya Rie as Yajima. In any case, it’ll be good to hear Mizuhashi Kaori’s Ogiue again. Over the course of the anime, Mizuhashi’s conveyance of Ogiue’s blunt and awkward personality improved tremendously, and I’m wondering how it might have changed in the 4-5 years since she last played this blog’s favorite fujoshi.

There’s plenty to think about and anticipate, and I’m sure I’ll do even more when the next bit of info is out, so I’ll just conclude with the following words.

BANZAI!

OGIUE BANZAI!

OGIUE-KAICHOU BANZAI!!!

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