Whose eyes are those eyes?

Takumi’s Essay from 4th Grade

“Whose eyes are those eyes?” (その目、だれの目？; Sono me, dare no me?) is a phrase that was made up by Takumi Nishijou, and something he would mutter to himself whenever he felt “the gaze”. He wrote an essay on the subject when he was in fourth grade, and drew a picture with the Ir2 equation on the back of it.

"Whose eyes are those eyes?" is the translation used by the Committee of Zero fan translation of ChäoS;HEAd NoAH and official ChäoS;Child translation. The ChäoS;HEAd anime translated the line as “Those eyes, whose are they?”, and the official translation of ChäoS;HEAd NoAH uses "Whose eyes are those?"

The Original Essay

This is Takumi Nishijou’s original essay from fourth grade, translated by the translation group Committee of Zero.

“Whose eyes are those eyes?”

Class 4-3 Takumi Nishijou

I dream a lot. In my dreams, older me visits me in a time machine. He doesn't look like me at all. His time machine has a lot of buttons. I think if you push one a shower or some shampoo or something comes out. I asked older me how it works and he said you could go see dinosaurs or even go back to when cavemen were around. He asked me what I am bad at in school and I said I am bad at math. He told me there was a switch that would make me really good at math. I tried to push it once but he got mad. He said I had to work hard and get better by myself.

That was the only time he got mad at me. After he stopped being mad he was super nice so I was happy. He told me about the girl I was gonna marry. That’s a secret. I asked him about God. He told me God is real. I think he's real too. My Mom said God is always watching, and he'll make you go to hell if you do bad things. So I can absolutely never do bad things. I have to be nice to my little sister too. Mom told me God doesn't watch you do bad things, but that it's a scary man instead. The scary man is the whose eyes are those eyes monster. He makes you go to hell if he sees you. God’s eyes and whose eyes are those eyes are in the sky, the ceiling, the walls, and there's a lot of them in my school and they're watching me no matter what. So I think I have to do a lot of good things like studying and other things because of that. It's embarrassing though because they watch me even when I do things like go to the toilet or take a bath.

Also, ever since I was little, I could close my eyes and dream sometimes even though I wasn't sleeping. It was like the inside of my head was like a video game or a manga. But when I do that the whose eyes are those eyes monster comes out so I don't want to do that. I asked my Mom and she told me not to do it. But while I'm writing this essay I asked older me in my dreams to tell me more about the time machine but he said I knew everything. He wouldn't tell me more stuff because I'm just a kid. So from now on I want to do lots of good things so I can beat whose eyes are those eyes. (The End).

Vampbuyer

The phrase was first introduced to the media in the fourth New Gen case, Vampbuyer, where the message was written on the wall in the victim’s blood in the photo uploaded to Taboo! Auctions. By the next day, it had already become a popular new meme online and people even started saying “Whose eyes are those eyes?” in real life.

The Group Dive

When the MewTube video of the Group Dive was released, the media was sent reeling when one of the victims clearly murmured the sentence “Whose eyes are those eyes?” before they all fell to their deaths. It was thought by the public that the phrase had started in the Vampbuyer case, but now that it had appeared in an incident before that, the police were no longer able to call it mass suicide and gave into public pressure to investigate it as a serial murder and part of the New Gen killings.

Gaining Popularity

After the Vampbuyer case, the words “Whose eyes are those eyes?” quickly became popular with the inhabitants of Shibuya. After it also appeared in the Group Dive case, it became even more wildly popular. People started to tack the phrase onto ends of @channel and chatroom posts in nonsensical ways, and large crowds would chant the phrase for no apparent reason. T-shirts and merchandise were produced, it was put on the popsicle sticks of Crunchy-kuns, and the slogan was blazed around the jumbotrons in Shibuya Crossing.

Trivia

• The opening song for the first half of the Robotics;Notes anime, Junjou Spectra, has the line “Sono me, dare no me?” (“Whose eyes are those eyes?”) in it.
• The Science Adventure Series fan translation group Committee of Zero (link) has the website address sonome.dareno.me, the Romaji spelling of “Whose eyes are those eyes?”.
• The unofficial patch of the Committee of Zero shortens the phrase to WEATE at times.