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?
Previous chapter: Be mindful of first-timers; please use spoiler text for any spoilers. __________
>Leap Before You Lock Eyes This title is a reference to Miru mae ni tobe (“Leap Before You Look”), an anthology of stories by the famous author Kenzaburo Oe (born in 1935). The Zetsubou-sensei chapter title is Miau mae ni tobe (literally, “Leap Before You Exchange Glances,” or “Leap Before the Eyes Meet”).
>Assorted references Ayako is the heroine of the 1972 mystery-drama manga Ayako by Osamu Tezuka. Sukekiyo is a character from Seishi Yokomizo’s famous 1950 mystery novel /nugamike no Ichizoku (“The Inugami Clan”), who wore a white rubber mask to hide his war-scarred face. Sai is the Go-playing ghost from Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata’s megahit manga Hikaru no Go. Nostaljii (a portmanteau of “nostalgia” and jii, Japanese for “old man”) is a 1974 manga by Fujiko F. Fujio, about a soldier still hiding in the jungle thirty years after World War II, who tries to go back to his hometown.
>“Looking pros” Sugi-sama is the jidaigeki (period drama) actor Ryutaro Sugi, known for his sidelong glances. “T-shi” is short for Masashi Tashiro, a former Japanese TV performer and musician whose career imploded following his 2000 arrest for filming up women’s skirts with a camcorder. (In the original Japanese, he says he looks into the wareme, a play on words which uses the word “eye” but can mean “cleavage” or “buttcrack.”) The “Nouveau” T-shirt refers to a product he did TV commercials for, before his disgrace. “U-shi” is short for another famous voyeur, Kazuhide Uekusa (see notes for page 16). Shusaku is the revolting title character of an X-rated Japanese computer game released by ELF Corporation in 1998; the first character of his name is shu, also pronounced kusai, which means “stinky.”
>All sorts of eyes In Japanese, these are all words or phrases involving me, the kanji for “eye.” Majime is Japanese for “serious” or “ reliable” (actually, if you wanted to say “serious eyes,” you’d have to say majime na me). Honkime means “earnest eyes” or “sober eyes.” Irome literally means “colored eyes” but can also mean giving a person a seductive, come-hither look. Hiikime means “favoring, supporting eyes.” (Aruru is a cute-girl character from the adult video game/fantasy anime Utawarerumono.) When you say you have an oime, it means you’re in debt to someone. Urame literally means “backside eyes”; it’s used in the same way as the English phrase “backfire,” implying an action with undesired consequences. In course takame is Japanese for “high inside strike zone,” a baseball term. “The eyes of the crowd” is seken no me (“the eyes of society”). All these work as “eye” gags in Japanese, but not necessarily in English.
>Clairvoyance = Chiri’s eyes When Kafuka uses the word “clairvoyance” after Chiri starts magically seeing things beyond her realm, Usui snidely remarks, “I bet you set up this whole scary scene just so you could make that pun!” In Japanese, senrigan (“clairvoyance”) is written with three characters that can also be read as Chirigan (“Chiri’s eyes”). It’s all because the kanji for “thousand” can be read as either sen or chi. A similar sen/chi pun appears in the name of the heroine of Hayao Miyazaki’s anime Spirited Away.
>Assorted references “Sawa’s swimsuit” refers to the Japanese idol Sawa Yamaguchi. “The back of the hair of a Hanshin Ace” refers to Kei Igawa, a starting pitcher for the New York Yankees, formerly an ace pitcher for the Hanshin Tigers. He declared that he wouldn't cut his hair while he was on a winning streak, and when his team had twelve successive wins over three months, his hair got really long. Waratte litomo! (“It’s Okay to Laugh!”) is a Japanese variety TV show.
