Nozomu Itoshiki is depressed. Very depressed. He’s certifiably suicidal, but he’s also the beloved schoolteacher of a class of unique students, each charming in her own way: The stalker. The shut-in. The obsessive-compulsive. The girl who comes to class every day with strange bruises. And Kafuka, the most optimistic girl in the world, who knows that every cloud has a silver lining. For all of them, it’s a special time, when the right teacher can have a lasting positive effect on their lives. But is that teacher Itoshiki, a.k.a. Zetsubou-sensei, who just wants to find the perfect place to die?
Chapter 9: No Matter What, We've Got to Stick Together
Previous chapter: Be mindful of first-timers; please use spoiler text for any spoilers. Sorry for forgetting to warn yesterday I'd be dumping earlier than usual. Hopefully enough people notice. __________
>No Matter What, We've Got to Stick Together This is a reference to Jules Verne’s 1888 novel Two Years’ Vacation, which was made into an anime in 1987.
>Tarô Sekiuchi, page 117 Translating Tarô’s language is challenging, because sometimes it’s grammatically correct, and other times it’s broken (like how a foreigner would speak English, sometimes with a bit of “Me Tarzan, you Jane” exaggeration). Given the difficulty of Japanese, she often misinterprets, or reinterprets, the harder compound words. Incidentally, Tarô is usually a boy’s name.
>Food Although most of the snack food donated to Tarô is just ordinary food, there are a few in-jokes in the Japanese brand names. Cream Lemon is the name of an infamous 1984 adult anime. Fans of the manga Death Note may catch the reference in Ryuk brand apples.
>ODA ODA stands for “Official Development Assistance,” a category of development aid provided to poor countries by rich ones (not only by Japan).
>NEET kids “NEET” stands for “Not currently engaged in employment, education, or training.” It’s a growing social problem in Japan.
>List of kindnesses Some of Kafuka’s examples of “kindness” are universal, but others are specifically Japanese. The “kindness of allowing a hungry man to eat one’s face” is a complicated reference to a comment by Takashi Yanase, the creator of the manga Anpanman and the children’s book Yasashii Lion (“The Gentle Lion’). (Incidentally, the phrase “Lion 8341” used in panel 10 is also a reference to Yasashii Lion, since “8341” can be read as “Yasashii” in Japanese.) The “kindness of paying TV reception fees without watching” refers to the Japanese law that each household with a television must have a broadcast receiver license and pay for TV reception fees, although enforcement is lax. The line about “territorial waters” refers to incidents when Chinese nuclear submarines and North Korean ships have entered Japanese territorial waters, but the Japanese Self Defense Forces, being forbidden to use arms, did nothing. “Half of Bufferin is made of kindness” is a phrase from a Bufferin TV commercial. Kudokan (short for Kudô Kankurô) is a screenwriter/actor/director.
>They so nice to little kids So Mari definitely right?
Jaxson Cooper
And that's all for today. Are you a very kind person? What sort of "acts of kindness" do you perform? Tomorrow's chapter will probably be posted around the usual time. See you tomorrow.
