Before anything else, a note: I will often be referring to the work subject to this review (Genshiken Nidaime) as just 'Nidaime', while referring to it's previous incarnation (Genshiken) as 'Shodaime' for the sake of avoiding confusing descriptors.

Genshiken Shodaime might at some point become a work that i dare put in my favorites. It's a really interesting work for me to read, as i feel like it speaks to none of my own experiences as an otaku. I began my consumption of anime and it's sibling mediums roughly around 2016, which is closely reaching the mark of "a decade ago" in terms of descriptors. Yet Genshiken takes place in the 2000s. It takes place in a time when i was nothing more than a little kid, when most of my favorite pieces of media had either not released yet or were considered recent, a time when the internet had yet to become a mainstay of modern visual culture. It also takes place in a country that's as far away from my own as possible, with a culture and language that I am learning but will never truly live in. Genshiken Shodaime exists in complete separation from my own identity as an otaku, and yet I still felt myself reflected in it's pages. So much has changed in the 20-odd years since Genshiken was written and yet I can sit here and read it, feeling like it was made for me. I have never once set foot in a comiket event, and yet i felt a sense of closeness to the characters as if they were living my own experiences.
Part of what made the characters of Genshiken Shodaime stick with me had to do with the fact that they didn't limit themselves to any single medium. They will sit down to discuss a currently on-going manga they are all reading, then they will talk about a eroge and which heroine they preferred. They will talk about the TV adaptation of a manga while playing fighting games and then they will go out to buy erotic doujinshi. It speaks to me a lot in how I, too, do not limit myself to a single medium, instead opting for enjoying many of them. Later additions to the genshiken include things like cosplay and BL, both subcultures that I do not engage in and yet ones that I do appreciate as a part of the vast landscape that is and should be otaku culture.

Genshiken Nidaime lacks such landscape.

It became really underwhelming to me that I went into this work, a direct sequel to Shodaime which featured so many facets of Otaku culture, and found myself in one which featured none of them. Genshiken Nidaime features a cast which is almost exclusively female, and those females are almost exclusively fujoshi with an interest in BL. This is not a flaw of Nidaime, as I do not think that a work about fujoshi is without it's worth, but it was ultimately one of the features that made it stand out less to me. My problem with Nidaime is not the fact that the cast is mostly girls (though i shall admit that the lack of male characters made it harder for me, a male reader, to feel myself at home), instead my problem is that the girls in Genshiken lack variety. Ogiue and Ohno were already a Fujoshi/Otaku hybrid both, but with the arrival of Yoshitake, Yajima and Hato, the club became overwhelmingly fujoshi-centric. The only characters within the story who weren't fujoshi were Kuchiki, Madarame and Sue, all of which often fell to the sidelines when it came to the story.
But it would also be a lie to call Genshiken Nidaime a story about Fujoshi. Though it explores the topic a bit, and it made me understand their side of otaku culture a lot more than i did prior, Genshiken Nidaime is ultimately not a story about Fujoshi either. At first it's a story about Hato's struggle with cross-dressing, and later it becomes a romantic comedy about Madarame's complicated love life. Both of those story-lines were interesting to read, and both deserve their spot in the light, but it was strange to have that be the continuation of a work like Shodaime, which would be best described as "otaku slice of life".

This makes Nidaime a hard work to judge. It's not that it fails at maintaining the tone and focus of it's parent series, but instead it does a completely different thing. It explores a completely different focus, with a different type of story and overall different genre than what it's predecessor was aiming for. I do not blame Nidaime for it's choice of topics, I instead blame it for it's choice of being a sequel. This story could have been told on it's own, and it feels like gaining the role of "genshiken sequel" only serves as a detriment to my opinion of it.

Still, I cannot truly encompass my feelings on Genshiken Nidaime in a way that sticks to the wall of my brain. I cannot truly claim that it is a bad sequel through it's story alone, so instead I will say the best real criticism I can give it;
I have said in the past, and I will say it in the future, that a work is defined by it's ending. A story that starts great and ends poorly is a story that I can never in good faith recommend. A story that begins poorly and ends in a great way is a story that I will insist you give a try. A bad ending to a story will be a stain that no amount of fanfiction can ever truly undo, and a good ending to a bad story can work as a redemption-through-death for my opinion of it. Some of my most hated pieces of media come as a result of being bad sequels to works i hold dear, and some of my favorites were shitty games that managed to win me over in their final stretch.
How did Genshiken Nidaime fare when it came to reaching the finish line? it's... mixed to say the least.
It's final moments when it came to Madarame's romantic comedy were possibly the best I could have ever expected. I don't think I can ever write or read a line better than what Madarame said in that phone call. If you've read it, maybe you agree with me or maybe you think I'm stupid. But I am the stupidest of idiots and I will forever be in love with genshiken's final volume because of it.
It's true final moments were disappointing. Even if we do not include the final extra chapter (which completely kills the vibe), Nidaime's final chapter feels like it's promising another sequel. I feel like there exists a secret 13th volume of Genshiken Nidaime which i am being deprived of. It feels like I was being promised an epilogue and they didn't give it to me. I would perhaps let this slide, because it is often said (and I agree), that it's better for a story to end leaving you wanting more than making you feel like it should have ended earlier.

But that's the thing. It did end earlier.

Five years before the publication of Genshiken Nidaime started, Genshiken Shodaime was having it's final chapter. And Shodaime's final chapter is amazing. All of it's characters, all the ones that were there when the series began, had graduated. With Saki, Kousaka and Sasahara all leaving the club, the story felt like it could truly come to a close. The one open thread of Genshiken Shodaime, the one point that could truly be said to have never been left to end, was Madarame. His love for Saki had gone unresolved by the end of the story, and even then it felt like it was enough of an ending. It would remind many, myself included, of the way one sometimes has to just deal with unrequited love and just walk forward in life. Even in it's lack of a conclusion, Genshiken Shodaime gave Madarame an ending that made sense for him, sad as it were.

That is the true gripe i hold with Genshiken Nidaime. It's a sequel to a work that didn't need one, and while i adore what it does both with it's new and old characters, I can't help but feel like it re-opened an old wound and forgot to close it. Perhaps in a few years we will get the real Genshiken Sandaime that we deserve, but i fear it might be too late for that now. After all, Genshiken Nidaime ended back in 2016, and that year is closely reaching the mark of "a decade ago" in terms of descriptors.

Is Genshiken Nidaime good? I would say so. It does many interesting things and it's a work I enjoyed reading.
But is it a good sequel? that is something I'm not sure i can answer with a yes.