Ask John: What Makes a Character a Chuunibyou?

Question:
Where is the limit between having simple fantasies and an actual chuunibyou? You seem to think that the Watamote heroine has a chuunibyou, but to me she is far from acting like the characters in “Chuunibyou” or “Samurai Flamenco” who seem to have a genuine case of chuunibyou.

Answer:
The Japanese concept of “chuunibyou,” coined in 1999 by radio personality Hikaru Ijuin, is actually a contemporary moniker for a concept that predates the term. Since the introduction of the initial “self-delusion” term, the concept has been expanded to a variety of subdivisions including “kounibyou,” “shounibyou,” “dokyun kei,” and “jyakigan kei,” to name a few. The status of “dokyun kei” or “wannabe gangster” has actually appeared in manga and anime including Kyou Kara Ore Wa (1988), Bad Boys (1988), and Chameleon (1996) that debuted more than a decade before the popularization of the term “chuunibyou.” Japanese literature critic Boushi Chino has reportedly even suggested that Don Quixote be diagnosed as suffering a variety of chuunibyou.

Every young person considers personal fantasies and indulges in flights of fancy to relieve boredom or anxiety. However, such natural, transitory digression isn’t severe enough to warrant identification with specific, categorical terminology. Other psychological affectations that have justified unique Japanese terminology, like “hikikomori,” “tsundere,” and “yandere,” refer to mental statuses that noticeably affect an individual’s social behavior. The hikikomori withdraws and becomes strictly averse to social interaction. The tsundere exhibits practically bipolar personality shifts. The yandere sublimates psychotic anti-social tendencies. If chuunibyou legitimately deserves its own title, than the condition it describes should be at least as severe and appreciable as other psychological states that have earned comparable Japanese names. Characters in Chuunibyou Demo Koi ga Shitai, Aura: Maryuin Koga Saigo no Tatakai, Kyou Kara Ore Wa, and Samurai Flamenco allow their self-delusions and fantastic aspirations to influence their behavior to a degree that evokes social stigmata and even potential harm. Their fantasies aren’t merely harmless, momentary distractions. Tomoko Kuroki in Watashi ga Motenai no wa dou Kangaetemo Omaera ga Warui! so firmly and intractably believes that she is right and everyone around her is wrong that she unwittingly digs herself continually deeper into her own dissatisfaction. Her effort to psychologically appease herself and escape from distasteful reality actually counter-productively reinforces the very situation that she’s desperate to alter. And the natural Japanese sense of social decorum and aversion to open and beneficial discussion of mental health issues merely relegates responses to such psychological impairment as either, “They’ll grow out of it eventually,” or “That person is abnormal.” The later response is particularly noticeable in anime including Aura: Maryuin Koga Saigo no Tatakai and Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei in which no assistance is extended to individuals exhibiting obsessive psychological disorder. Instead, such individuals are ignored, ridiculed, or just accepted as idiosyncratic instead of needing psychological counseling.

My own interpretation is that daydreams are entirely ordinary and harmless. However, someone that allows daydreams, fantasies, and exaggerated unrealistic self-identification to become so compulsive and consuming that the behavior affects and obstructs positive social interactions and hinders productive maturation, or even places the individual in potentially harmful circumstances, suffers from “chuunibyou,” a psychological delusion that Japanese society laughably dismisses when, in fact, the disorder is severe enough to warrant serious attention. Hikaru Ijuin coined the term “chuunibyou” to refer lightheartedly to harmless, childish aspirations that he, himself recognized and acknowledged were childish. Ijuin himself in December 2009 publicly disavowed himself of the term “chuunibyou” because the concept had evolved in Japanese society so much that it had disconnected itself from Ijuin’s original intention. What began as a playful way of referring to staying young at heart has turned into a Japanese means of dismissing and marginalizing psychological disassociation as a joke or a pitiful affliction instead of a condition that should be treated, and its underlying causes explored and fixed.