My Girlfriend is a Geek, Vol. 1

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, show more 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.

I'm not a fan of epistolary novels and usually won't even go near them unless their descriptions interest me, as was the case with My Girlfriend's a Geek. Another strike against the book was my dislike of Pentabu, which was fairly strong during the first third, came and went in flashes for most of the rest, and sorta kinda went away by the end.

Pentabu's reactions to Y-ko during the first third or so of the book often had me thinking something along the lines of “The lady doth protest too much.” He'd frequently write stuff like “my fujoshi girlfriend is dragging me into her world, the horror!” and “the only anime I've ever really watched is [fill in the blank],” and I don't think he considered himself to be an otaku. Certain details struck false notes, however. How could a guy who said “I basically don't watch anime” have a favorite Fushigi Yuugi character and know enough about the show to have cried over the death of a character? This, and other details, had me viewing Pentabu as a hypocrite, a secret otaku (and possibly secret shoujo fan?) who enjoyed making fun of his girlfriend's fujoshi interests via his public, semi-anonymous, and hugely popular blog.

In later posts, Pentabu wrote about Y-ko's cosplaying efforts. Her Christmas present to him was to dress up as a pink nurse with cat ears (Pentabu has a pink nurse fetish – seriously, is this guy really in any position to be making fun of his girlfriend?). She also spent a period of time dressed up as a maid, greeting him when he came home. Pentabu's response was annoyance that she didn't act like a proper maid (the only real change in her behavior was to add “Master” to the end of all her sentences) and that her outfit was so difficult to remove.

Which leads me to one of the things about this book that made me a little uncomfortable – the references to Pentabu and Y-ko's sex life, which, if Pentabu was to be believed, was fairly active. Pentabu never mentioned having told Y-ko about his blog (although the final few pages of the book indicate that he probably told her at some point, if not from the very beginning), so it wasn't clear if he had her permission to refer, even in a fade-to-black way, to moments in their life that lead to sex and/or making out. If he didn't get her permission, and if I were Y-ko, I'd have been mad. There were quite a few indications that Y-ko was too embarrassed to be very “out” about her interests, so I'd imagine that even semi-anonymous references to fujoshi-fied aspects of her sex life would be hugely embarrassing. Fade-to-black sex/making out while wearing a dress shirt she bought Pentabu (Y-ko has a suit fetish), while wearing Pentabu's high school uniform (Y-ko also has a gakuran fetish), and during Y-ko's maid cosplay period, etc. You get the idea.

The book had its good points, though. Although the depth of Pentabu's embarrassment over Y-ko's interests sometimes annoyed me, other times I laughed and felt more sympathy for him. I liked the entry about a sick Y-ko asking Pentabu to read her new BL doujinshi to her - “Put all your emotion into it and play both roles” (73). Oh, poor guy. And I laughed when he realized all of Y-ko's friends knew him as Uke-Sebas.

There were cute relationship moments too, and those are what eventually won me over and convinced me that (assuming those sex life details weren't posted without Y-ko's permission) maybe Pentabu was a decent guy after all. I loved reading about Pentabu meeting Y-ko's family for the first time (Y-ko's mom was fabulous), and the entry on Y-ko's Christmas present was good, too. The final entry (in this volume, anyway) was incredibly sweet and could be summed up like so: “I know I gripe a lot about Y-ko's fujoshi interests, but, in reality, none of it really bothers me, because I love her and enjoy having her by my side.” Everybody, say it with me now: Awww.

I probably would have enjoyed this book more if the sentiments Pentabu expressed in that last blog post had been clearer from the beginning. Actually, there's a lot that Pentabu made clear in his final few posts in this volume that I would have liked to have known sooner: how he and Y-ko met and became a couple, and that, at some point, he must have let Y-ko know about the blog (the final post mentions Y-ko sitting behind him, giggling over BL manga, and an epilogue features Pentabu and Y-ko answering questions asked by Pentabu's readers). The occasional blog post written by Y-ko would also have been nice.

All in all, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this book. I spent much of it annoyed at Pentabu and a little uncomfortable about some of the things he wrote, even as he occasionally charmed me and made me laugh. I have a feeling I'd probably get along well with Y-ko – we'd at least make great shopping buddies. The final few pages were very sweet and managed to improve my overall opinion of both Pentabu and the book – my romance-loving heart melted over Y-ko and Pentabu's comments about Pentabu using bookmarks. I don't know if I'll hunt down and read the second volume, but I also don't resent the time spent reading this volume. I'll have to see if I like the manga adaptation of Pentabu and Y-ko's story more.

(Original review, with read-alikes and watch-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

I don't know how this book got to be popular enough to be licensed and published in English. It has its origins in a blog, which got converted to book form, but is still very obviously some guy's blog: there's next to no narrative, very little character interest, and it has a very myopic topic range (as in: exactly one). Basically, while it is probably interesting enough to click to on the web now and then and read, the whole thing fails as a book.

From what I'd heard of My Girlfriend is a Geek, I'd understood it to be a book based on the blog, not the blog transcribed. I thought that the author had taken the anecdotes and fleshed them out with more story. This is not the case.

As a result, the characters are very flat. Every single bit show more of story is about how embarrassing the girlfriend is for the guy writing. I truly wondered why on earth they even continued to date if he was so ashamed to be with her in public - but, then, he seems to find her to be incredibly hot and they appear to have a lot of good sex, judging by some of the stories. I guess that's reason enough to keep it going? There must be something more to the story, but the only hint the reader is given is the story of how the two got together, which is relayed on their second anniversary.

There is so much bad and wrong about the book, but I do have some positive things to say: the format of the text is quite nice, recalling blog formatting and the way text is presented there. There is a lot of playing with the size of the typeface, as well as whitespace and linebreaks. This is somewhat interesting and novel to read, though really it's just mimicking the way blogs get written (especially the Japanese-language ones I've seen). show less

So, I read the title of this on another blog in the writer's "To be read" pile, and got supremely excited over the name of the manga.

Promptly, I headed to the book store and purchased it... thinking she was going to either be some sort of math nerd, or be into Sci-Fi or something.

Oh did I learn my lesson.

No... no that's not what this manga is about at all. It's about a rather stupid guy who wants to date a cute older woman (yup... that is the extent of his requirement list) and ends up working with one... who happens to be a Yaoi fangirl.

This is NOT a manga to hand off to someone who knows nothing about manga... I mean, there are certain manga I'd give to people if I were trying to get them interested (Full Metal Alchemist, Host Club, show more DeathNote...) NOT this manga. Heck, I wouldn't even give this manga to half the manga readers I know. Here's why:

I cannot for the life of me figure out why the main character is still dating this girl. He's a cute guy, he shouldn't be desperate... and he barely even seems to like her. Other than her motivations for Yaoi fangirl squeeishness... she really has no personality. My only conclusion is that the main character truly is an idiot.

For me, this manga seems like some heavy Yaoi fangirl fanservice... and since I'm not a Yaoi fangirl, I really can't appreciate it.

Oh, and for those of you wondering, Yaoi is manga's term for Boy Love.

So... my advice on this one... don't waste your money. Buy Skip Beat, D. Grey Man... or any other more worthwhile title instead. (or hope you have a friend as dumb as I was, who didn't read the synopsis before buying!) show less