This is the story of college freshman Kanji Sasahara and his fellow members of the college club he joins, The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture (aka Genshiken), as he goes shopping for doujinshi, attends conventions and slowly but surely makes his way down the road to fandom

Itoshiki Nozomu is the world’s most negative person. To his way of thinking, there is no hope or meaning in this existence. Even the three kanji of his name become the two-kanji word zetsubou, “despair”, when compressed. What an ironic twist of fate, then, that he becomes teacher to a class containing his precise opposite, the invincibly positive-minded Fuura Kafuka.

Plot Summary:Some things never change: Ame no Kisaki, that famous and extraordinarily exclusive boarding school, STILL doesn’t accept boys. And Kanako, Kisaki’s most romantically unfortunate student, STILL doesn’t accept them either. They give her the hives. Literally. Sadly, that means that Kanako’s STILL trying to connect with ANYONE of the same sex , and having the usual horrid luck; STILL being in imminent peril of dying from the constant nosebleeds she gets from being over stimulated by the presence of her fellow classmates; and STILL being forced to endure the tragedy of sharing a room with the school’s most beautiful girl, who is, of course, STILL a guy in drag. Poor Kanako! She came to school to major in loving women, and instead she’s STILL failing relationships in Maria Holic Alive!