Not pictured: The Fat Guy

Of course, it goes without saying that the reason Lincoln and I have this site is because we are colossal nerds, on a variety of topics.

'Twas ever thus, I'm afraid.  My earliest TV memories are literally of anime, broadcast on local TV in Seattle because it was cheap to purchase in syndication packages: Kimba The White Lion; Gigantor; Astro Boy;Speed Racer; Marine Boy.

It was only much later that I discovered that these shows had other names: Janguru Taitei Reo; Tetsujin 28-go; Tetsuwan Atomu; Mach Go Go Go!; Kaitei Shonen Marin. 

But I didn't care.  I loved that Japanese stuff.  The look and feel of it was obviously different from American cartoons (which were not all bad, by the way; just different).  I made a Mach 5 steering wheel out of a Frisbee with the buttons drawn on in crayon.  I had a Gigantor control box, just like Jimmy Sparks, except mine was a shoebox with a couple of pencils jammed into it. 

And, of course, every time I went swimming, before I dove into the pool I had to have a piece of Trident gum, because how is Marine Boy going to save the mermaid princess without his Oxy-gum?

But you get older, and you grow out of this stuff.  Some people grow out of it completely, and move on to, eventually, more "adult" pursuits, like, I don't know, bass fishing, or something.  I have no idea what adults get up to, myself.

Others, people like me, find other avenues to explore.  I got heavily into Star Trek, thanks to an older brother, and comic books, thanks to my mom.  I watched loads of Gerry Anderson shows like UFO andSpace:1999.  I read tons of Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, and, later, Robert Heinlein. 

Tuesday nights on KCTS, the public station in Seattle, were Monty Python's Flying Circus, followed byFawlty Towers, followed by the International Animation Festival, followed by The Prisoner.  That's a hell of a lineup to pour into a 13-year-old brain.

You had to be careful, though.  Being a dork, or any type of different, in junior high school could earn you a savage beating.  I played a lot of sports and listened to rock music, so I was above suspicion, mostly.

But I never quite fit in, so I was always on the search for like-minded individuals, other people who shared my interests.

You had to be careful.  Like early Christians scratching half the sign of the fish in the sand, waiting to see if the other person would scratch the other half, we would throw out half a line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, or a small bit from The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy.  If the other person responded with the correct line, you had a new friend.

And it was like this that many of us came together, to share our interests and discover new ones.  My friends Doug and Dwight introduced me to something called Dungeons & Dragons.  Another friend, Jonathan, showed me the best places to find the AMT model kits for the Eagle and the USS Enterprise.  I got Lincoln hooked on comic books.

And it comes back around.  About ten years ago, right at the advent of DVDs, Lincoln and I rediscovered anime in a big way.  There was a lot of quality stuff out there, and we had the discretionary income to buy a lot of it.  (Lincoln's collection is particularly magnificent.)  We watched anime, discussed anime, joined anime groups, and just generally lived anime.

Then I moved to Japan, and almost completely stopped watching anime altogether.  I can't really explain why, except to say that I was having the absolute time of my life, so I wasn't watching much TV at all.

Then I had to move back here and get this job driving a big rig so that I can save up the money to go back to Japan.  Bleah.

But something happened recently.  I've been taking a case of DVDs with me whenever I go on the road, to keep me from completely losing it when I'm gone for five or six weeks at a go.  I was just taking the usual stuff, Monty Python and Futurama and so on, but now I've started taking more anime with me. 

This makes a certain amount of sense.  Lincoln has a lot of anime.  Some of it I've seen before, some of it is new to me.  So I decided to get caught up.

This time around, as I was getting ready to head out, I grabbed the box set of Genshiken from the shelf.  It looked familiar, for good reason.  I had been reading the manga while I was living in Japan, as it was published in my favorite manga, Afternoon. 

I can't read Japanese very well, but I was able to follow the story.  This was a university club (university clubs are unbelievably important in Japan, in some cases more so than what you study or how well you study it) about a group calling itself "The Society For The Study Of Modern Visual Culture."  These geeks didn't just confine themselves to studying anime or manga; they liked games, models, magazines, costumes, and all aspects of Japanese visual culture.

The amazing thing was how many of my current and past friends I recognized in the characters, and how familiar the interactions were between them.  Everybody has had a girlfriend or boyfriend who didn't quite understand your hobby, for instance.  These characters are easy to relate to, even when they are being particularly difficult, something I had experienced once before when reading Evan Dorkin's hilarious "Eltingville" stories.

The difference here is that the"Eltingville" stories are about cynicism and self-loathing.  Dorkin suffers from the same syndrome I did in my twenties and thirties, a sort of self-loathing that manifests itself in reading only "cool" comics and making fun of gamers.  Why, we're not nerds!  We go to live shows!  We just went to see They Might Be Giants at the Backstage!  I smoke cigarettes!  Those aren't my Magic: The Gathering cards!

The members of Genshiken, by contrast, are refreshingly open and positive about who they are and what they like, and largely supportive of one another.  It's a positive aspect that I wish I could see more of in modern fandom, and that I wish to bring more of to my life.

This show was largely why we got the idea to create this website. in which we are defining ourselves in a positive manner, not in terms of the things we don't like.

It has reawakened my Geek Soul.  I don't think I'll be digging out the Dragon Dice any time soon, but, hey, you never know.

Oh, and the show, in addition to everything else, is killer funny.  Enjoy.