I think it’s high time that I provided an actual answer. I don’t mean some muddled, vague explanation that doesn’t really resolve anything either—I think it would be for the best for me to give, in my own words, a clear, direct, succinct answer regarding what I believe to be the true nature of chuunibyou.
This would be so much easier if I only had to provide a dictionary-style definition. I could talk for hours about that. The thing is, though, that language is ever-changing. People have started using “eleventh-grade sickness” and “image-obsessive” as pseudo-synonyms for the term these days, and the meaning of “chuunibyou” itself has gradually shifted with the times as well.
And, of course, if I’m being completely honest, the word chuunibyou is, well...it kinda feels like it’s on the verge of becoming obsolete. I’m not saying that people are going to stop saying it entirely—just that it feels like it’s a lot less prevalent in society at large now than it was just a little while ago. The word’s popularity has peaked, and now that the boom’s over, it feels like it’s a relic of a bygone era. Who knows? Maybe a few years from now, people really will stop using it altogether. Maybe a new word will be born to take its place, and “chuunibyou” will be relegated to occasional listicles with titles like “The Top Ten Nerdy Words of Yesteryear” at most.
That’s where my feeling of urgency—my feeling that now is the moment for me to give my answer—is coming from. This is the moment for me to explain what chuunibyou is to me as best as I can. And, well, I figure I might as well cut to the chase and open with my conclusion: To me, the true identity of chuunibyou is an imitation.
Yes, an imitation. A fake, a counterfeit, a faulty copy, a flawed derivative, a half-baked forgery. That’s what I see as the true nature of chuunibyou and the true nature of its sufferers. No matter how I try to pretty it up, no matter how positive of a spin I try to put on it, that core reality is something that I simply can’t deny. It’s a truth from which there can be no escape.
This is so obvious it really doesn’t even bear saying, but I’ll say it anyway: My name is not Guiltia Sin Jurai. Deep down, I’ve always known that. I knew it...but I couldn’t stop myself from perpetuating my own lie. I thought that the name was cool, and I wanted to be as cool as I thought it was. Whatever society at large thought about it, the fact that I thought it was cool was something I could never be mistaken about. My feelings—the feelings of someone who had looked up to countless fictional characters over the course of his life—were, without question, genuine.
And yet...I couldn’t help but wonder. Like it or not, a certain thought was never far from my mind: Was the fact that I longed to be like those fictional characters not, in and of itself, irrefutable proof that all I was doing was spuriously imitating them?
I don’t think any of the characters I was so obsessed with looked up to anyone in the way I looked up to them. They didn’t put on airs and pay careful attention to what people thought of them. Sure, they had evil eyes, wrapped their right arms with bandages, chanted incantations, and went by titles and aliases, but they weren’t doing any of it to look cool. They weren’t doing it because they were imitating someone they looked up to.
At the point where I looked up to them—at the point where I thought they were cool—I had already made it painfully clear that all I was doing was making myself into a sad, hopeless imitation of them. Maybe it’s possible for an imitation to devote themself so thoroughly to the bit that they become the genuine article in their own right...but not me. I couldn’t handle it.
I can’t do it anymore. It’s time for me to own up and face facts. It’s time for me, at long last, to admit the obvious.
Right now, I’m on the verge of getting over my chuunibyou.
I’m not really sure when it started. Somewhere along the way, almost entirely unconsciously, I started feeling from time to time like I was just playing the role of the one chuuni in my social circle. I’d find myself thinking “Oh, I should have some overblown chuuni reaction to this! It’d be weird if I didn’t,” acting out a chuuni persona due to some strange, self-imposed sense of obligation. As time passed by, I started feeling that way more and more frequently. Some part of me was keeping my chuunibyou going solely for the sake of preserving the status quo.
“To be a chuuni is to never lie to yourself, even as you lie to the world.”
Those were my words—though I can’t exactly remember when from—and if I may say so myself, I think I did a pretty good job of hitting the core of the matter with them. That said, if you look at them from another perspective, you can extend that conclusion to reveal another truth: Once you’ve started lying to yourself, you can no longer remain a chuuni. If you’re forcing yourself to act out a case of chuunibyou, then you’re not really suffering from chuunibyou at all, or anything like it. At that point, you’re just making up your own personal fiction—just putting on a persona. The more you become conscious of your own behavior, the more your chuuni potential diminishes.
I’m not saying that I’ve stopped loving all the ultra-chuuni works of fiction that I’ve always been into, of course. I still adore manga, light novels, anime, and video games that cater to the chuuni crowd’s particular tastes from the bottom of my heart. But...it’s different. Something about it’s not the same anymore. The sense of uniqueness and omnipotence that led me to the misguided belief that I was special in some profound way; the rebellious spirit that drove me to critique society first and think about what I was actually saying later; the aesthetic preference for lone-wolfism and being in the minority; the drive and grit to tell myself that I wasn’t like everyone else and that that made me awesome, portraying myself as a cynic in every way I possibly could; the glee I took in my use of the word “cynic” despite the fact that I didn’t really understand what it meant on anything but a surface level... All the things that actually well and truly make someone a chuuni have begun to fade away within me.
They haven’t completely vanished yet. If anything, I still have a surplus of them sticking around. But still—I can tell that their peak has come and gone. From now on, I’ll drift further and further away from my chuunibyou. The illness will lapse, and I’ll make a full recovery. I’ll grow up. I’ll become one of the perfectly ordinary adults whom the old me held in such utter disdain.
When all’s said and done, I’m nothing but an imitation. I could never hope to become the real deal, and I also lack the resolve to stick with my deception. I’m pretty darn half-baked all around. But...I can’t help but think: Could that very half-baked nature, in and of itself, be the true essence of chuunibyou?
I said something a while ago about an imitation being able to become the real deal if it sticks to its bit, but the truth is, if a chuuni stuck to the chuuni bit with that sort of dedication, they’d become something else entirely. They’d become something sublime—something precious and lofty that nobody could ever criticize—but still something different.
I believe that chuunibyou is only chuunibyou because its sufferers will eventually get over it. Someday, we’ll all move on from our illness. An end will inevitably come. Everyone, without exception, will eventually grow up—we don’t have a choice in the matter.
Chuunibyou is chuunibyou because it ends. Just like the cherry blossoms fall year after year, and just like every human will someday go to their death, so too a day will come when every chuuni is forced to give it all up and move on.
I’m no exception. Someday, I’ll move on from my chuunibyou as well. I’ll reach my twenties, then my thirties, then my forties, and as I move along into adulthood, there’s every chance that I’ll look back on the current me and feel such a soul-wrenching sense of shame I’ll want to drop dead on the spot. Or maybe I’ll manage to get over that as well. Maybe I’ll end up telling my friends stories about what a crazy cringelord I was back in high school, using my dark past as conversation fodder over drinks. Maybe I’ll go online somewhere and write a thread titled “When I was in highschool, I insisted that my classmates refer to me as Guiltia Sin Jurai. AMA.”
I am an imitation—I’m not authentic by any means, nor am I resolved enough to see my mimicry through. I’ve been operating on a distinctly youthful set of values that I’m sure to view as a cringey blot on my history when I grow up—a blot that will only last for the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things, and one that will depart in a split second as I mature and move on.