Spotted Flower

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I don’t get why Spotted Flower makes everyone so upset, this shit is amazing.

Okay, maybe I do understand. It’s the messy one, a questionably-canon take on the Genshiken cast in their thirties working, having kids, and keeping in touch with one another. Maybe a little too in touch. This is a manga to remind Genshiken readers that the author’s first love was not otaku culture, but cheating dramas. And it’s so much fun for it.

Genshiken’s unspoken forte has always been in depicting the complicated emotions of those who have feelings towards their friends and will not ever share them, just letting it all stew forever ... instead. There’s some real bittersweet interiority there, and Spotted Flower is kind of an entire manga of that! Some of the romantic relationships are swapped around so that the losers from Genshiken actually ended up with who they wanted to. Are they happy now? Well, sometimes. Either way, a giant web of cheating and drama ensues. If Genshiken is het, and Genshiken Nidaime is about yaoi, then Spotted Flower is the yuri one. Few can truly appreciate all three, and in this case being able to do so is a sign of a balanced media diet and good taste.

A lot of people treat the actions of the Spotted Flower cast as completely out of character to their Genshiken incarnations, but I think it’s all pretty grounded, as long as you able were able to grasp everyone’s unvoiced desires and not just what they were saying to each other’s faces. Also, did you really think that the crossdresser everyone had sexuality problems with *wouldn’t* be a homewrecker. If this was a big enough betrayal that your scanlation group dropped the manga, then that’s on you, sorry.

I wouldn’t care about this kind of drama if it was all characters I’d never met before, which is why Spotted Flower's ties to Genshiken are so important. It’s a space where we can witness these characters finally acting on their desires, come what may. It’s liberating and hilarious and made my jaw drop more than once. Another direct Genshiken sequel wouldn’t have made sense – we’d be so many years removed from the original cast that keeping them around at all would eat into their own agency. This is the best-case continuation.

To me, Genshiken has always been about experiencing a college friend group kind of ferment and evolve over time, as people join and graduate and reach new stages of life at different paces. Eventually, more than a few people begin to have Realizations about sexual orientation and gender, there’s ingroup crushes, and things get messy. I’ve lived this! Which makes it so cool to see reflected in media. And while I can’t say that the exact sequence of events in Spotted Flower have happened to me, I maintain that it’s far too maligned for what it’s doing.

I can’t empathize with the main character. I think pregnant women are ultra hot and had a lot of fun with one when she was with my kids. That said, I have heard a lot of guys have this issue. They can’t get a woman can be a mother and a lady at the same time. It’s particularly odd here since our hero is into Porno games where you can impregnate the girls.

The hook is supposedly about this otaku who somehow got a girl pregnant. I tend to look at this more from the wife’s perspective as she is starved for attention. This is ... played up for yucks as she is horny and the husband won’t touch her. She tries to play on his love of hentai and various other otaku things to get his motor running. Haha. It’s funny because the guy is really neglectful of the mother of this child. Apparently.

The second volume takes a turn. The focus seems to be more about this backup duo of a mangaka and her editor who have a thing for each other and BL comics. Cool…and then their story runs into the the husband and wife in a real bad way. And the author is apparently a trans woman? Not a clear point until it was made explicit. The whole second volume seems like a good set up for a third but it hasn’t surfaced in a decade.


When I read it, I did not know this was supposed to have anything to do with Genshiken.

Spotted flower.

Or rather: waisted premise.

It started as a weird spin-off or an alternative take on archetypes from Genshiken, but all went south for no reason really.
Last time I was this disappointed about pointless turnarounds and shockers, was when I did watch the Disney's Star Wars trilogy.
But from the top.

Me, like probably most people here, looked at this series because of the author's previous works, the "Genshikens". Those two series were long serializations about students spending their free time at the uni manga and anime club. Something like Big Bang Theory, but funny and sans cringe.

So "Spotted flower" takes archetypes from that series, looks and traits, ... mix it up, and leaves the reader with pregnant wife and hers husband, who likes to rub out to some loli and shota porno games. Like any normal Japanese man would, right?
Wife is progressively getting more into her pregnancy, and because of that, and how actually many men feel, she wants sex and her husband is reluctant.
Funny shenanigans happen, comedy, slapstick, slice of life and some dirty adult jokes as well. All is fine.

This manga started before Genshiken Nidaime (second Genshiken manga "season") really took off, and surpassed that publication because it was made at slowest pace possibly.
And as the Nidaime started devolving into weird harem-gay tropes for no good reason, same did happen to this series.
It degenerated.

For me personally events in the series, which should be a one shot, or 2-5 chapters at most, are just random.
There's the power-duo of husband with weak character and his wife, who's strong and rather direct, which is then supplemented (to call it lightly) with 10 or so "side characters", who take the lead and derail the narration.
Series goes for a full plate of cheap soap opera plot twists.

I'm wondering if those events are some repressed urges? Or did Shimoku Kio and his editor just spent too much time indoors and forgot how world filled with humans works? Even for a comic series, and I've read some unbelievable junk, events in Spotted flower just don't add up. None is cohere after few chapters here.
Those are, again, just disconnected events, and plot holes are filled with more and more idiosyncratic people, popping every chapter.
Narration is chaotic and story just loses its core to wander aimlessly around some weird fantasies I presume?
It would be all good, if it was connected with buildup, premise or at least some logical hints. But nothing like that was present before hand.
Story just randomly drops the bomb, and the drama ensues - just like in Nidaime? No. Just like if you were reading a book about carrots, and in fourth chapter there would be only explanation how different diesel engines work, and no more mentions of said carrots.

Because I was following said previous works for very long time, and it was probably the only serialized comic that made me wait at night for the next chapter to be released, this off-brand "Genshiken" is tarnishing the good memories I had of the adventures of the otaku club members. Author unintentionally made a stinker, and I have so little words to stress this fact until I go into excessive swearing to express my anger.
It's that bad.


After reading what is available as of May 2024, there's just this one question: why?


If you are also someone who knows Shimoku Kio because of Genshiken - just stay away from this. If "Spotted flower" is your first read from this author, just know, it's probably his worst piece to date.

DISAPPOINTED!!/10