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Bloomer Bloopers (ブルマーを求めて!!, Burumaa o motomete?), or "Seek Out the Gym Shorts" in the Project ILM Scanlation, is the 149th chapter of the Urusei Yatsura manga.

Summary[]

Ryūnosuke Fujinami battles her male class mates in judo to win a set of girl's gym shorts!

Plot Overview[]

It's time for Ryūnosuke Fujinami's first PE class since moving to Tomobiki High School. Unfortunately, her crazed father registered her as a boy, and the space cadet principal agrees to place her in the boy's PE class, over the protests of Onsen Mark. This is great news to the horny guys of Class 2-4, who are eavesdropping on the conversation; today's PE is a judo class, and so they see an opportunity to get up close and personal with her. Unaware of this, Ryūnosuke tries to buy a set of girl's gym shorts from Kotatsu Neko, who is running the store in her father's absence, but he bribed the ghostly cat to refuse Ryūnosuke service, and her outrage is no match for the spectral strength of the bakeneko. Ryūnosuke's father returns and taunts her, vowing that if she can defeat the entirety of Class 2-4's male students in judo today, he'll give her some bloomers. Fired up, Ryūnosuke fights hard, and eventually triumphs over her classmates. Unfortunately for her, whilst she may be concerned with her honor, her father isn't; instead he hides nearby and refuses to come out until Ataru manages to throw Ryūnosuke to the floor by ambushing her whilst she's distracted looking for her father. As soon as she hits the ground, he leaps out and proclaims her the loser of their bet.

Characters in Order of Appearance[]

Trivia[]

  • The shorts worn by Japanese schoolgirls for P.E. class are known as buruma (ブルマ or ブルマー), the romaji for bloomers, and first appeared in Japan in 1903. They evolved from athletic bloomers created in Victorian England in the early 19th century, which themselves evolved from the "health reform" bloomers that were invented in the 1850s. Modern Japanese school bloomers are in fact an even later development; officially called pittari, these bloomers were invented after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and were redesigned for an even tighter fit to the body and maximum freedom of movement. This results in their distinctive near-panties-like shape, which makes them a great contrast to the baggy women's underwear popular from the 1910s to the 1930s which the "bloomers" name is still associated with. Naturally, their tight fit against the frames of their female wearers led to the pittari becoming quite sexualized in Japanese culture, to the point that in the mid-1990s, there was even controversy over girls continuing to wear them for moral reasons. It's no wonder, then, that the femininity-starved Ryūnosuke is so desperate to have her own set of bloomers!
  • Judo (Japanese: 柔道, Hepburn: Jūdō, lit. 'gentle way') is an iconic Japanese martial arts style invented in 1882, with an emphasis on throws, pins, and grappling.
  • The term gi is an English shorthand for the Japanese terms keikogi (稽古着), dōgi (道着) and keikoi (稽古衣) all of which have the same translation of "practice dress/clothes" and are used interchangeably for the formal uniform worn by both martial arts students and those practicing in official bouts. The uniform was in fact designed by the first judo schools and spread from them to other forms of martial arts.
  • The gag of Ryūnosuke being given a gi for a judo class could be culturally translated for a Western audience to her being given a wrestling leotard for wrestling class.
  • When the eavesdropping boys start licking their lips upon hearing that Ryūnosuke will be attending the boy's P.E. class, their expressions are an homage to the mascot character Peko-chan, the symbol of the Fujiya confectionary company.
  • As always, Kotatsu-neko is obsessed with getting to enjoy a kotatsu, a table with an underslung heating element used to counteract the cold Japanese winters. Mr. Fujinami's bribe to him is, of course, a kotatsu quilt, a specially designed quilt used to trap the warmth of a kotatsu's heat beneath the table.
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