Kanako Oono

Kanako is the fourth president of Genshiken. Raised in the United States since the third grade, she graduated from an American high school, joining the Genshiken at the beginning of the Fall term. Normally soft-spoken and easily embarrassed, Kanako is surprisingly upfront when it comes to one of her two main passions: cosplay. With a nice figure and large bosom, Kanako and her cosplaying (using costumes sewn personally by Tanaka, whom she begins dating) quickly become Genshiken’s main attraction at student fairs. Kanako’s other main passion is yaoi involving muscular, middle-aged, exceedingly bald men. One of the reasons Kanako joins Genshiken in the first place is because only they would accept her fetish. She is also close to Saki, as Saki was the first one to find out about Kanako’s preference for older men.

Kanako is against cosplay sex, claiming that doing so betray the characters, but when asked if it’s okay to have sex while cosplaying as a porn character, she becomes very embarrassed and indicates she has already used that loophole. Her decision to become the next president of Genshiken comes from Saki’s suggestion that she could turn it into a cosplay club (literally “Society for the Study of Cosplay” in the original Japanese). Kanako later passes the presidency on to Ogiue. In the relaunch of the manga, it is revealed that she is not job hunting as she is waiting for Tanaka to finish his additional schooling, implying that she may be planning to be a housewife or to help him.