Japanese culture
What does Chuunibyou mean?
Japanese slang for the second year of middle school: a teen who imagines they are special, with homemade lore and a covered eye.
Definition
Chuunibyou is the slang for the teen who stretches their voice, hates what everyone likes, and invents a sealed power, a Dark Flame Master past, a lore notebook. Fans shorten it to chuuni. English localizations say eighth-grader syndrome because 中二 lands on American eighth grade.
The cut the anime exported is the 邪気眼 type: eyepatch, bandaged arm, mystic eye. Ijūin’s older sense was broader: black coffee, pointless factoring, a “true friend.” The sealed-power cut is what survived in the meme.
Origin
Chuunibyou is Japanese 中二病: chūni — second year of Japanese middle school, about 13–14 — plus byō, illness. The 病 follows the mould of “forty-shoulder”: an age ailment, in the tone of a cold. Hikaru Ijūin coined the name on TBS Radio (深夜の馬鹿力) on 11 January 1999, after a chat with Jun Miura, and the next week opened the corner 「かかったかな？と思ったら中二病」 until March. The spelling 厨二病 comes from the 2ch insult 厨房.
History
The radio corner stayed with listeners. Around 2005 the word came back on 2ch as a jab; in 2006 the 邪気眼 copypasta (evil eye, eyepatch, YuYu Hakusho) pulled the sense toward secret power. Hyōya Saegami’s 2008 manual (中二病取扱説明書) named three types: DQN, subculture and evil eye. In 2009 Ijūin said the meaning was no longer his. Torako’s light novel came out on 1 June 2011; Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions (Kyoto Animation) premiered on 4 October 2012 — Rikka’s eyepatch, Yuuta as a former Dark Flame Master.
How it emerged
A mocking nickname was needed for fourteen-year-old cringe — and for people still using the sealed power later. Forty-shoulder was already an age ailment; Ijūin glued the same mould onto middle school, and 2ch and KyoAni glued on the patch.
Usage examples
That is pure chuunibyou, the patch.
My fourteen-year-old notebook is too chuuni to reopen.
Says they left chuunibyou in high school.
Translations
- pt chuunibyou / síndrome do oitavo ano
- en chuunibyou / eighth-grader syndrome
- es chuunibyou / síndrome de octavo grado
Synonyms
- chuuni
- eighth-grader syndrome
- middle-school second-year syndrome
- 邪気眼