Baka to Tesuto to Syokanju:Volume6 The Sixth Question

The Sixth Question

Please read the following passage and answer the question.

“Where did Sadakichi go?”

Jihei asks, and Tasuke shrugs as he answers,

“To Okiku. He wants to express his 10 years of love to her with his self-proclaimed specialty of Poetry[1].”

After hearing Tasuke’s words, Jihei cannot help but frown,

“He wants to touch her heart by singing a love poem? I can already guess the outcome.”

“Yeah. Blame that guy for being ‘____’ despite being so bad at it’.

Question 1: Please fill in the common saying in the blank with the correct answer and explain its meaning.

Question 2: What is the ‘outcome’ highlighted in the text? Please write down the outcome Jihei and Tasuke’s expects.

Himeji Mizuki's Answer:

1: ‘<passionate> despite being so bad at it

It means that he does not know he is bad at it, but is extremely passionate about it.

2: Sadakichi’s singing is really bad, so the expected result is that he will not get the girl.

Teacher's Comment:

Correct answer. This common sentence structure ‘despite being bad…’ has other forms of usage, like ‘act like he is good at it’. Either sentence can be used to describe that the person is actually rather bad in some things, and from this, we know that Jihei and Tasuke expect Sadakichi to fail.

Yoshii Akihisa's answer:

1: ‘<stubborn> despite being so bad at it

It means that he will work hard for something no matter how stupid it may look

2: Sadakichi may be bad at singing, but Jihei and Tasuke expect that he will get Okiku's heart after seeing him work so hard to sing.

Teacher's Comment:

This answer cannot be considered the correct one, but sensei here does not hate it either.