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?
I'm really sorry about this very late dump. I fell asleep under my kotatsu. Pages will be posted as soon as I figure out where my glasses are.
Leo Garcia
>kotatsu urayamashiiiii~ they used to be sold by me but it's so hot year round there was 0 demand and a few years ago they stopped selling them...
Daniel Jones
That's equally parts cool and sad. Anyways, I've found them.
Previous chapter: Be mindful of first-timers; please use spoiler text for any spoilers.
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I’m Predestined to Be in the Shadows, page 48 This title is a reference to Horoki (““Vagabond’s Song”) by Fumiko Hayashi (1903-1951). The novel includes a famous line, Watashi wa shukumeiteki na horosha de aru (“I’m predestined to be a vagabond”).
>Shinsengumi The Shinsengumi (“New Select Squad”) was a special police force of about three hundred ronin created at theend of Japan’s Tokugawa era (about 1863-1869). Their mission was to keep the peace in Kyoto and defend the Tokugawa shogunate against the revolutionary elements, which would eventually lead to the Meiji Restoration. The members of the Shinsengumi have a special place in Japanese folklore and pop culture as some of the last samurai and loyal defenders of a doomed regime. Soji Okita, Toshizo Hijikata, and Isami Kondo were highranking members of the group, while Yoshimura is more obscure, as Kumeta points out.
>Assorted references Sadaharu Oh and Katsuya Nomura are Japan’s #1 and #2 ranked professional baseball players. The Saiyans are an alien race and Kuririn is a human character in Akira Toriyama’s manga Dragon Ball, aka Dragon Ball Z. Wuthering Heights was produced as a play in Suzue Miuchi’s classic manga about a young actress, Glass no Kamen (“Mask of Glass”).The manga’s heroine, Maya Kitajiima, played the young Cathy and outshined her counterpart who was playing Cathy as an adult. Yujiro Ishihara (1934-1987) was an actor and singer, while Tony Tani (1917—1987) was a vaudevillian, comedian, and singer who was most popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Takuya Kimura (aka Kimutaku) is the name of an actor and member of the Japanese idol group SMAP, while the other Takuya Kimura (pronounced the same but written using different Chinese characters) is a professional baseball player. “Sibling rivalry” and “father’s death” refers to the feud between the sumo wrestlers Takanohana and Wakanohana (see notes for page 15). Hidetoshi Nakata is a famous soccer player, while a different Hide was a popular participant on the Japanese reality TV program Ainori (“Car Pool” or “Love Ride”), in which seven young single men and women ride around the world in a pink bus. “Madame Dewi” refers to Dewi Sukarno (1940-), formerly Naoko Nemoto, a Japanese woman who married Sukarno (1901-1970), the first president of Indonesia. After Sukarno was overthrown in a 1967 coup and died three years later, Dewi became a wealthy international socialite.
>Hercules Beetle and Acteon Beetle Hercules Beetle and Acteon Beetle are cards in Mushiking: The King of Beetles, an arcade collectible card game released by Sega in 2003. Each time a player deposits money to play, the machine dispenses a random card with a barcode, which can then be scanned into the machine and used to play.
>Assorted references The donjarahoi is the name of the dance in the children’s song Mori no Kobito (“Little People of the Forest”). It’s a word which, to Japanese audiences, conjures up cute images of little elves dancing cheerfully. Meitantei Kageman (“Famous Detective Shadowman’) is a classic children’s manga and anime created by Aooni Yamane. Lum-chan is the romantic interest in Rumiko Takahashi’s 1978-1987 manga Urusei Yatsura.
>Sunlight Monkey Troupe The Nikko Saru Gundan (“Nikko Monkey Troupe”) is a real tourist attraction in Nikko, Japan, in which costumed monkeys perform tricks. Nikko also means “sunlight,” so Kumeta is making a pun.
>Assorted references This page has some of the trickiest references in this volume. “Kage Utada” is a reference to the real-life singer Hikaru Utada (kage means “shadow” and hikaru means “light”). Keiko Fuji is Hikaru Utada’s mother. “The night unfolds” is a reference to Keiko Fuji’s hit song Yume wa Yoru Hiraku (“Dreams unfold at night”). “Stomp the shadow,” aka kagefumi, is a Japanese game similar to tag, in which the person who is “it” stomps on the other players’ shadows to tag them.
And that's all for today. Really sorry again, I didn't intend to post this late. I woke up to the Utada Hikaru block on r/a/dio; not the worst thing to wake up to, but it's just not comforting at all when you have the sense there was something else you were suppose to take care of. Anyways, whatever question I'd ask would probably just be overshadowed by my lethargy today, so I'll just ask the simplest one: would you want Maria to stomp on you too? Very nice.
