REVIEW: My Girlfriend's a Geek (manga, vol. 2) story by Pentabu, art by Rize Shinba, translated by Stephen Paul

My Girlfriend's a Geek is a contemporary romantic comedy series based on the real-life relationship of author Pentabu and his girlfriend. I wrote about the first volume of Pentabu's original book about 7 years ago.

Review:

Taiga gets excited when Yuiko asks if she can use his computer because hers is broken - it'll be her first time visiting Taiga's apartment, and they'll be alone together! However, the situation isn't quite what Taiga thinks it is. Also in this volume: Taiga continues the BL fanfic Yuiko asked him to write but has difficulty viewing the characters the same way she does; Taiga meets Yuiko's friends and is forced to go to a school uniform cafe with them; there's a new guy at Yuiko's workplace who she's nicknamed "Milan"; and Taiga feels conflicted about the way Yuiko views him.

REVIEW: My Girlfriend's a Geek (manga, vol. 1) story by Pentabu, art by Rize Shinba, translated by Stephen Paul

My Girlfriend's a Geek is a contemporary romantic comedy series based on the real-life relationship of author Pentabu and his girlfriend. I wrote about the first volume of Pentabu's original book about 7 years ago.

Review:

Taiga is a broke college student who really wants a "cool" part-time job, meaning something that pays well, is easy and close to college, and would involve working with cute female coworkers. When he spots a cute employee through the window of an apparel store advertising for a warehouse loading and unloading position, he jumps at the chance. He easily gets the job...and then spends the next few weeks struggling to even find moments to talk to Yuiko, the cute employee he spotted. When he does manage to talk to her, he can't always keep the conversation going, and he's worried that the summer is going to end before he has a chance to ask her out on a date.

Taiga does manage to get his chance, but his interactions with Yuiko are a bit odd. Why does she get so excited when she sees him in glasses? Why does it sometimes seem like they're talking about completely different things when they talk about manga? Before they started dating, Yuiko told him that she's a fujoshi, but what does that even mean?

My Girlfriend's a Geek (book, vol. 1) by Pentabu

I'm pretty sure My Girlfriend's a Geek began as a blog, with the posts collected into a two-volume light novel set. The English translation was published by Yen Press and is listed by them as being for "older teens." The story has also been adapted into a 5-volume manga series - I own, but haven't yet read, the first two volumes and hope to review them someday.

Synopsis:

A 21-year old college student writes about life with his girlfriend, a fujoshi (female fan of yaoi/BL or, more broadly, a female otaku, according to the book's glossary), in his blog, which becomes hugely popular. This book collects those blog entries.

The writer of the blog is never named, although his girlfriend often refers to him as "Sebas" or even "Uke-Sebas" (which is just...yeah...poor guy). I'll refer to him as "Pentabu" to make things easier on myself. His girlfriend is always referred to as Y-ko.

Most of the blog consists of the usual events in a dating couple's life - meeting up with friends, spending holidays together, meeting parents (Pentabu meets Y-ko's parents at one point), and just hanging out. Things are a little different for Pentabu and Y-ko, though, because of Y-ko's interests. To most people, Y-ko seems like a perfectly normal, respectable young woman. With Pentabu and her friends, however, Y-ko lets her interests have free rein, reveling in her love of anime, computer games, BL and shoujo manga, cosplay, and her favorite character pairings (she's a particular fan of Roy x Ed). Pentabu's feelings on this are often a combination of embarrassment, humor, and fascination, since she seems determined to pull him into her world.

Review:

I'll start this review off by listing a few questions you should ask yourself prior to deciding whether to read this book:

• Do you consider yourself to be a fan of anime and manga?
• Do you have at least some idea of what these things are, and what their appeal is? - Gundam, Neon Genesis Evangelion, shoujo and BL manga, maid cafes, cosplay, and slash pairings
• Are you okay with reading a book consisting of a bunch of blog entries?

If you answered “no” to any of these questions, except possibly the second one, you should probably give this book a pass. A good chunk of it will go over your head if you don't have at least a basic understanding of anime and manga fandom. Although the explanations included in some of the blog posts help, and the glossary at the end is decent, those things won't do you much good if you've never seen examples of shoujo and BL manga and anime, and don't know what Gundam is. For example, while the glossary explains that Hagaren is an abbreviation of Hagane no Renkinjutsushi, the Japanese title of Fullmetal Alchemist, it does not explain that “Roy x Ed” refers to a fan-invented romantic/sexual pairing between two characters in the series. And Pentabu's embarrassment about Y-ko storing her shoujo and BL manga at his place is best understood if you've seen examples of them.

And I should mention that, if you've never seen Neon Genesis Evangelion and plan to do so at some point, you might want to save reading this book until afterward. In one blog post, Pentabu watches some of the show with Y-ko and one of her friends, who shamelessly spoil all kinds of story and character details. I've only seen a little of the show and thankfully don't plan on watching more, or I might have found the spoilers to be more upsetting. Oh, and there are also a few Fushigi Yuugi spoilers.

Now that I've gotten all the warnings out of the way, it's time for my review.