Ueno-san wa Bukiyou - Vol. 8 Ch. 80 - Regarding the Rear Skort

[JumboWheat01]

"Ya done goofed, Ueno!" "Oh, okay."

Amazing how calm her interactions are with other characters.

 

[delaprd]

Finally, the materialization of the Male Gaze!
Bueno!

 

[Buraindo]

President Ueno, please stop developing new fetishes, thank you

 

[FilthyWeeb739]

I don't get it

 

[HYBRID_BEING]

Jokes on you, Ueno, that only made those forms more accentuated.

 

[Bana]

so, which girl likes the club captain?

trick question. they're all lusting after her.

 

[Ttreco]

Anyone remember the chapter where she had the pants that let you sit in midair?

 

[Roadkill]

The skirt was reacting the readers!

 

[Oeconomist]

Without being told how the skirt really works, there are multiple possibilities, which include [ol]that Tanaka is less innocent than he seems (very unlikely);
that one or more of the girls was gazing lustfully;
that the skirt was actually reacting to Minamine's obsessive concern;
that the skirt was reacting to the gaze of the readers of the manga (@radstylix's suggestion).[/ol]

 

[Arlo]

Amusing sort of a fourth wall break there.

Yes Minamine - somewhere a boy is leering at your lower body. It's tugeneko. And me. And undoubtedly many, many others.

 

[Bainhardt]

@huntercheco @reu @Bana @Oeconomist
I know everyone is probably joking around and it may not be a big deal, but I feel partly responsible anytime it sounds like there might be some confusion resulting from choices I made while translating.

Spoiler

In the introduction of the Rear Skort in chapter 37, it's worded as responding to specific wavelengths resulting from men's stares (オス個体の視覚意識から発生する波長をセンサーで検知), which I chose to word as "male gaze" because it's a somewhat-well-known shorthand for like... perving and objectification, basically. Minamine is also introduced as "hating boys," so I figured it would make sense to readers that inventions she requests or employs are intended to thwart them specifically.
The wording used in the explanation for this chapter actually refers instead to "the opposite sex" (異性の視線を感知追随する変形機能により), but I assumed people would be familiar with Minamine or even the invention from the original chapter, and simplified the explanation to fit the text boxes. I'm guilty of that pretty often if I'm being honest - text boxes tend to have more influence over how the final script turns out than anything else involved.
I haven't gone back to double-check the text, but I think the Kilt Hide from chapter 15 would respond to both sexes. Minamine should borrow that or the Kumatanda No.2 if she has any trouble with lesbians in the tennis club. Although I think it'd be cute if, like how boys crowd around to watch their matches, there were girls who joined the tennis club specifically for her.

@JumboWheat01 I really like this about Ueno's character. She's genuinely helpful with everyone besides Tanaka. Traces its routes back to the science club's origin as a public service club, probably.

@SafetyShark There's one more chapter, actually, but 81 will be the last one for a while.

 

[SafetyShark]

@Bainhardt Really? Guess it got 11 chapters cause of the short ones. Should've known cause tugeneko always starts and ends with a lore chapter in the recent Volumes.

 

[manabi]

@FilthyWeeb739 Whenever the Rear Skort detects someone trying to peep under it, it moves to block that gaze. What happened here is that it kept moving around, making Minamine aware that someone was trying to peep. In effect it took something she might not have noticed (someone trying to discretely peek up her skort) and turned it into a physical sensation.

This made her fundamental problem much, much worse, because now she'll know about more peep attempts and feel them.

 

[Oeconomist]

@Bainhardt—

Let me begin my comment by saying that I in no way fault your translation.

If Ueno's invention really does exclude anything other than something emitted by males, then the only suspects left are Tanaka, tugeneko, and we. And I think that the most reasonable interpretation is indeed that the skirt was reacting to the readers.

But what I'd want to ask would be Wavelength of what? In reality, the eyes are passive receivers of light. We could imagine tugeneko, for purposes of story-telling, falling back on the ancient idea that the eyes emit something in the process of seeing; we could even recognize that, despite the absence of evidence, eyes might in truth emit something, even were it not light. But, once we're in the business of accepting the idea that something — something with a wavelength — is involved in the male gaze, we could imagine it coming from the male brain instead of from male eyes, and could further imagine that other things might also generate that something.

 

[Doctor_Who]

Thanks!

 

[radstylix]

@Oeconomist Without being told how the skirt really works, there are multiple possibilities, which include
that Tanaka is less innocent than he seems (very unlikely);
that one or more of the girls was gazing lustfully;
that the skirt was actually reacting to Minamine's obsessive concern;
that the skirt was reacting to the gaze of the readers of the manga (@radstylix's suggestion).

I was partly kidding when I said that and we're all probably overthinking this.
But overthinking is also fun so, as CHh. 37 says:
[ul]
[li]It only works with the "male gaze" and if they're trying to look up their skirt. How that works is a mystery, but you know, comedy manga.[/li]
[li]But if the skorts also works for lewd "female gaze", there's going to be a lot of that since we've seen that some of the girls here are huge perverts, Ueno included.[/li]
[li]I'm not sure if the skorts will also move if one is just staring at her legs or her ass, and oh boy, guys do love some nicely shaped bottoms. [/li]
[li]We know from Ch.37 that they have an outdoor tennis court.[/li]
[li]She mentions "The lifelong dream of the girls' Tennis Club, although I'm not sure if their club is female-only. I'm also not sure how many tennis courts the school have or how many members are required to keep a club. I'm guessing at least three members minimum because of the Science Club, and from what I've seen from Ch. 66, there are at least four girls of them in the tennis club. I do think they do have their own female tennis club since they already have the minimum amount of members required.[/li]
[li]I don't think it mentioned anything about picking up thoughts/concerns, though I suppose that's an alternate way to measure the "gaze" since Ueno has already made stuff that can read minds.[/li]
[/ul]

So... these skorts are useless because of boys entering puberty and they're gonna leer no matter what. Male tennis club and student onlookers the most likely culprits. And the fact that while I was still in college, I can't help but appreciate (discreetly) the female volleyball club's assets whenever our class is using the indoor gym together with them.

 

[Oeconomist]

@radstylix—

You may have been half-joking, but I think that the interpretation that you gave earlier (and was subsequently given by other commentators) was exactly what tugeneko intended.

@Bainhardt, @radstylix—

While I think that the skirt is responding to the reader, the situation is none-the-less ambiguous.

I have a problem with any interpolation of an “only” in the translation of the Japanese. Ueno said that sensors detect wavelengths generated from the visual consciousness of males. To me, it seems that Ueno is simply making a variety of unstated presumptions. I think that she's presuming that the males are not merely heterosexual, but have a sexuality of the sort that she keeps (mistakenly!) imputing to Tanaka. And I think that she's presuming that anyone who might look with desire of that particular sort would be male.

 

[LordZero]

Keep the notes, i bet half of us read manga for the notes, hahaha. Not kidding.

 

[te-kun]

There is another thing you guys are not taking into account. How does the skirt defines what is a male gaze? Can a girl produce a male gaze? Does it matter if the person is a male at heart or at body? How can we know one of the girls isn't a cross-dressing boy infiltrated? Considering how anything is possible on this manga there could be invisible boys, ghosts, or body swapped people...

 

[Oeconomist]

@te-kun—

There is another thing you guys are not taking into account. How does the skirt defines what is a male gaze?

That was covered by my remarks:

Ueno said that sensors detect wavelengths generated from the visual consciousness of males. To me, it seems that Ueno is simply making a variety of unstated presumptions. I think that she's presuming that the males are not merely heterosexual, but have a sexuality of the sort that she keeps (mistakenly!) imputing to Tanaka. And I think that she's presuming that anyone who might look with desire of that particular sort would be male.