So the majority of chapters are actually split into several parts. The first chapter alone is split into 7. Most likely what I’ll do is translate part by part because it’s shorter and a little easier for me with my current schedule. And then at the very end I’ll post the entire thing as one chapter and categorize it as “full chapter” so that readers can find it a bit easier.

First things first though. Here’s the prologue!

Prologue

Principal’s office—

Principal Hata sat at his large desk. Diagonally behind him stood the Vice Principal with a tablet in his hand.

Before them on the opposing sofa sat Class 3-Z’s homeroom teacher Sakata Ginpachi, lazily reading his copy of Jump. “Sakata-kun,” Hata said unpleasantly. Such a thing was a typical scene in the principal’s office–but today was a little different from the norm.

Across from Principal Hata’s desk, behind the sofa, stood five students with their backs to the door. The five of them had been called to the office for a specific reason.

Takasugi Shinsuke. Kawakami Bansai. Takechi Henpeita. Kijima Matako. Okada Nizou. These were the five students called.

All of them were Class 3-Z’s students. And all five of them, to put it bluntly, had the labels “delinquent” and “hoodlum” attached to their reputations.

“Today you were all called here for a single reason,” Hata said with a scowl. “We’re here because we need to firmly discuss your lifestyles and attitudes and straighten them out… Vice Principal?” Hata directed his words at the Vice Principal. “Please relay to them their collective list of misdemeanors.”

“Ehh? Right now?” the Vice Principal glanced up from the tablet’s screen, his blatant reluctance clear for all to see. “But I’m in the middle of reading my Jump Plus right now.”

“Do that after,” Hata said, an angry vein pulsing on his forehead.

The Vice Principal gave a little huff as if to say “Yeah, yeah” and tapped at the tablet. A new page opened and he and began to read off the screen, “Tardiness, 74 times. Leaving early without permission, 49 times. Truancy, 65 times. Missed homework, 102 times. Riding a bike with two people, 62 times. Picking fights with students from other schools while going to and from school, 38 times. Monopolizing the entire stock of croquettes from the school store, 17 times. Holding unauthorized music performances in the hallways, 7 times. Responsible for sudden baldness, 3 times.”

As soon as the Vice Principal’s droning stopped, Hata immediately continued on.

“Within this one month the times you’ve broken rules and caused problems have reached astronomical numbers. To be completely clear, you’re an eyesore.”

“Uh, no, that last one was done by a certain gorilla, wasn’t it?!” Kijima Matako instantly retorted. “Also the music and croquette stuff was from Nizou and Bansai-senpai only!”

However Hata completely ignored her.

“Whoever did it isn’t the important part, what matters is that it was done. You all are always together in a group all day anyway. I don’t have enough time to straighten you out individually.”

“If you don’t have the time,” a new voice spoke, “then just hurry up and punish us. Don’t bother with such boring numbers.”

Takasugi Shinsuke. A cold-blooded tough guy, and the most charismatic delinquent. At the sound of his frosty, unaffected tone, even Hata flinched backwards for a moment.

“Now then, what kind of punishment awaits us I wonder…” Takechi murmured.

“If I had to make a prediction, then perhaps two weeks suspension… or along those lines, I’d say,” Bansai pondered.

“Maybe we’ll have to submit a reflection essay or something quick to get it over with,” Nizou said with a smirk.

“It… It’s nothing like that!”

Principal Hata’s voice cut through the students’ chatter. He jabbed a finger towards Takasugi.

“Takasugi Shinsuke! And you other four! Your punishment will be… uh, one month of school voluntary service!”

“School voluntary service…?”

Takasugi’s good eye, the one not hidden by the eyepatch, narrowed into a slit. The other four also had quizzical looks on their faces.

And right then, Ginpachi shut his copy of Jump! and spoke.

“Well, to put it simply, your punishment for breaking the rules will be to do unpaid labor at school.”

With a listless gaze, Ginpachi turned to face Takasugi and continued.

“Because if you all get suspended then you’ll probably just treat it like a vacation, right? In that case, we’ll make you come right to school and perform tasks for the school’s sake. That’s what we decided at the faculty meeting.”

“Specifically, what exactly are you planning to have us do? What kind of voluntary service?” Takechi asked.

“What, you say… For example, massaging my shoulders, or buying me my Jump!, or raising my level in Dragon Quest for me… ”

“That’s all just doing work for you, not the school!” Matako cut in.

Ginpachi wore his “Whatever, shut up,” face as he picked at his ear with his pinkie.

“So basically, you know, like weeding the school grounds and stuff like that.”

“And that’s all?” Takasugi asks. “This volunteering is supposed to be for a whole month, isn’t it?”

“Is that all? Hmm, what else… well, you’d have to weed the school gardens too.”

“And that’s all?”

“W-Well? Uhh, oh, there is that. You’d probably have to do the school gymnasium’s fields too.”

“And that’s all?”

“Ugh…” Ginpachi muttered and slid towards the principal’s desk to whisper. “Hey, this eye-patch bastard just keeps going ‘Is that all? Is that all?’ over and over again. Is there anything else that they can do?”

“E-Even if you say that to me…” Hata’s face grew worried. “I haven’t been able to think of anything else other than weeding…”

“Why didn’t you think of anything else?! This is supposed to be for a whole month, right? Do any more weeds exist anywhere anymore?!”

“Why are there only weeds in your brain?! Besides, you went to the faculty meeting, didn’t you?! What other ideas did they have?”

“I did go but I slept like a baby through the whole thing!”

“The hell are you bragging for?!”

At that moment, the Vice Principal let out a snort. “This week’s Demon Memumemu-chan is pretty funny!”

“You damn old man! Put down your Jump Plus and pay attention!”

“Oh, an interesting weed popped up too.”

“That’s not a weed, that’s your own antenna sticking out you geezer!”

“Then why don’t we do this?”

As the teachers squabbled with each other, Takasugi’s voice cut over them.

“Hm?” Ginpachi and the others said before turning to him.

“For our so-called school voluntary service, let’s make it client-based… Would that be acceptable?”

“Client-based?” Ginpachi raised an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Takasugi nodded and continued on with a fearless smile.

“From now on until the end of the month, we’ll form the ‘School Voluntary Service Club’. We’ll say that we’ll do anything and take requests from clients.”

“Take requests from clients, huh…” Ginpachi repeated as he crossed his arms. “So basically, Takasugi, you want to violate Sket Dance‘s copyrights.”

“This is good for you too, isn’t it? Now you won’t have to keep scrambling around to think of tasks for us.”

“Well, being good for us isn’t the point here…” Ginpachi turned to look at Hata. “So what do you think, Principal? About having a ‘School Voluntary Service Club’.”

“Hmmmm,” Hata’s face turned thoughtful. “It’s not a bad idea…”

“Isn’t it a good idea?” the Vice Principal interjected. “The club itself will support the student body’s independence to move on their own. Plus, that means that they’ll really devote themselves to volunteer work.”

That seemed to make Hata waver. “That’s… true,'” he nodded. Once again, he turned towards Takasugi.

“Very well then. From today on for one month, you five will form the ‘School Voluntary Service Club’.”

As soon as those words left Principal Hata’s mouth, Takasugi’s smile became more pronounced.

“Don’t skip out,” Ginpachi tacked on. “Now that you’ve seriously made this club, you need to move as if you were the real Sket Dan.”

“Your warnings are unnecessary,” the moment Takasugi spoke, a red hat and goggles appeared on his head.

“Whoa, Shinsuke-sama, you’re so fast to cosplay! So instead of Bossun, you’ll be Tassun?! How wonderful!”

* * *

As soon as they left the principal’s office, Takasugi and his gang headed to behind the gymnasium.

There, the Takasugi gang had built a prefab shack. The original intention was to make it the clubhouse for their new activities.

“At any rate, it went exactly as you planned it, Shinsuke,” Bansai mentioned casually as they walked. “The whole volunteer club thing, anyway.”

“It’s not a big deal. It’s not something that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about,” Takasugi, walking at the head of their little pack, said dismissively. “It’s just that more than doing boring things that they wanted like weeding, doing this kind of club is more interesting.”

“However, the question is if we’ll even receive any clients in the first place,” Takechi wondered.

“That’s true,” Nizou agreed. “The school’s most notorious students suddenly deciding to do favors on a whim… others will be suspicious of us.”

“Heh. We’ll probably be in for a pleasant surprise,” Takasugi smirked. “Because this entire Gintama High School is full of notorious students too.”

And so the five of them arrived to the front of their prefab shack.

The shack had an aged look. Both the walls and roof were made of sheets of galvanized iron that were starting to rust. The entrance was a sliding door made of aluminum. The top half had originally been a fitted glass window, but that had been broken a while ago. Now it had been changed to a plywood board stuck over the gap.

It was in front of that sliding door that Takasugi stopped and paused.

“Shinsuke-dono?” Takechi questioned.

“… If we’re really going to do this, then we’d better have a sign or something, don’t you think?”

With that, Takasugi crouched down and picked up the black spray can sitting in front of the door. He shook the can and began to spray on words onto the plywood board.

The School Voluntary Service Club… is not what he wrote.

“This is…” Takechi murmured.

Takasugi had written three simple words. In a wild fashion he had written:

“ODD JOBS CLUB.”

“This is much simpler, right?” Takasugi said with a grin.

It was true. The meaning was the same but now it was easier to understand. Appreciative of Takasugi’s wit, everyone mirrored his smile.

And then at that moment, their classmate Kagura came from around the corner.

“Hm? You all, what’re you doin’? So you guys made a club, huh? Uhhh…”

Kagura squinted at the words on the door.

“The Oppai Club.”

“IT’S THE ODD JOBS CLUB!!”

The joke at the very end is that the original kanji for Odd Jobs Club (Yorozubu) is 万事部. The individual kanji can be pronounced “man” (万) “koto” (事) “bu” (部). Put it all together and it rather unfortunately comes together as “manko tobu” which means “to jump on pussy”. Or alternatively, “manko to bu” which can mean “club with vagina”. Since that obviously doesn’t translate in English, I settled on “Oppai” (boobs) being the closest sexual joke to “Odd Jobs” that I could think of.