I’ve always believed Madarame was a sex symbol. The first time I heard the word moe, it was in a Genshiken fan sketch of Madarame. “I’ve always thought Madarame was the most moe character in Genshiken,” the artist commented.

Even though I’ve since learned that “moe” is a word more often attributed to babyfaced high schoolers with huge, glittering eyes, the connection in my neurons is still stuck.

Hence, the most fascinating part of Genshiken: Second Season, also known, confusingly, as the third season of Genshiken, is the self-fulfillment of this prophecy. Virtually every girl (and boy!) wants a piece of our favorite 2D loving misanthrope.

Well, except for the one he wants.

Like most longtime Genshiken watchers, I’ve always held a torch for the appealing but impossible Madarame/Saki pairing. The scene in which Saki finally gets Madarame to admit his feelings—only to gently turn him down—was the most emotional scene I’ve watched all year.

In a way, Saki was letting all of us down in this scene. But it’s clear that Genshiken mangaka Shimoko Kio did his best to go easy on us—in the form of a ready-made Madarame harem the very minute Saki stopped being an option. Will he pick the beautiful, crossdressing Hato? The bold, American Angela? Or petite Sue, who looks like she walked straight out of Madarame’s 2D loli fantasies? Kio better not leave us hanging.

This post is the third installment of The Twelve Days Of Anime, a blogging series in which anime fans write about shows that inspired or impressed on them this year.

I think I may have made some of my readers uncomfortable while Free! aired this summer. It certainly compelled me to share a very fujoshi side of myself, culminating in the post, Do you think anime characters are sexy?

But in my personal life, watching Free! was far from a lewd experience. In fact, I got together each week with my husband and a mutual friend, Grant, to watch it. I doubt they were as hooked as I was, but they certainly humored me. What I didn’t expect was how much watching Free! with two straight men would impact the way I experienced the show.

By now, even western audiences have accepted that a romantic relationship between two attractive men is a type of fan service, in the same way lesbian kisses are. But anime publishers know that fan service that overt could drive viewers of other sexualities away. As a result, fujoshi have learned to take even the tiniest cues as evidence of a gay romance. In Free!, CPR between two hot guys is likened to kissing. And hugging after a big win? Totally gay.

It wasn’t until I was watching this with guys that I realized how much this limits men’s behavior. As a result of our seeking out “coded” gay gestures, the briefest male/male contact can be perceived as romantic. Case in point: the band One Direction, whose fandom’s fervor for finding hints of a forbidden love has actually hurt bandmates’ relationships with one another:

“This is a subject that was funny at first, but now is actually hard to deal with as I am in relationship,” Louis said in July. “Me and Harry are best friends, people look into our every move, it is actually affecting the way me and Harry are in public.”

I asked Grant to write a bit about his experience watching Free! He wrote enough for a guest post in itself (comment if you’d like me to post it!) but this is the paragraph that stuck out for me:

“Free! was an interesting viewing experience for me. I had been trained to look for ‘coded’ gay gestures for years as a matter of defending my claim to manhood, and doing it in this context—for humor and titillation—was different because the stakes were different. I was interested to discover that I was able to appreciate Free! in many of the the same ways I’d appreciate a hetero-male-oriented comedy, by looking for more-or-less overt innuendos and laughing at the characters’ ‘accidentally’ bawdy behavior, for example, or finding humor in a ‘fish out of water’ situation. It also helped me understand how some women can enjoy fanservice shows made for straight men.”

Free! may sexualize male touch, but as Grant points out, this isn’t breaking news. Long before Free! taught him to look for subtle homosexuality, he was already aware of it. It’s not fujoshi that robbed men of male touch, but decades of homophobia. The only thing different is the context.

This post is the second installment of The Twelve Days Of Anime, a blogging series in which anime fans write about shows that inspired or impressed on them this year.

Shows have always defined eras in my life. It’s no coincidence that I latched on to Welcome to the NHK after I got my master’s degree, only to become underemployed and move back in with my parents. Sweet, sentimental slice of life Honey and Clover defined the first few year I dated John, when we were both still in college. The Devil is a Part-Timer, which aired this spring, was the background music to my transition from no time to part time to full time.

Fittingly, The Devil is a Part-Timer is an anime that some reviewers have guessed was designed to get hikikomori revved up for the simple pleasures of minimum wage earning—living on your own, getting a promotion when you’re barely making ends meet, splurging on a beloved bicycle. After all, the Devil loves this lifestyle, and he’s the supreme master of Hell!

I quit my job in December 2012 and I spent a few weeks laying low, feeling drained. But after a month or two, it was my bank account that was feeling drained. I had to get to work, but I had lost confidence. I was rusty at reporting. My ebooks didn’t sell. My blog had barely 100 readers.

I had been slowly taking on new work since February, and at first it crushed my ego to realize that I spent 75 percent of my time pitching places, and only 25 percent getting accepted and writing articles. It felt like I was working very hard for little payoff.

But by the time I’d gotten halfway into The Devil Is A Part-Timer, my life looked very different. I was working full time again by juggling two part time jobs, and I had more offers for freelance work than I was able to accept. Work no longer felt like a means to an end. Like the Devil, I saw the satisfaction of completing a task and feeling like I did my best on it. I also realized the ability to work the way I do, making my own hours, choosing my own assignments, is a privilege. I felt grateful to have work, instead of begrudged.

I didn’t find the ending of The Devil Is A Part-Timer satisfying at all. It got too caught up in the weeds instead of focusing on the major plot. But by then, between planning for my wedding and working my new jobs, I hardly had time to watch it anyway.

This post is the first installment of The Twelve Days Of Anime, a blogging series in which anime fans write about shows that inspired or impressed on them this year.