Over the weekend, I unearthed this old Chu-Chu costume that I wore twice in 2000, thirteen years ago. God damn, that’s a long time ago, and I’m once again reminded of just how old I am now. Given it’s age, it’s still in pretty good condition, and could very easily still be worn today.
The scribbles on the ear of Chu-Chu are from the creator and the manga artist of Utena, Kunihiko Ikuhara and Chiho Saito, respectively. I do have a fond memory of the bemused looks of surprise and amusement on their faces when I plopped a gigantic papier mache head onto the table, and the recognition set in to what was actually right in front of them. Hey, at least it adhered to the strict policies that no bootleg merchandise was to be requested to be signed.
At one point, I loaned it out to someone else to wear at a convention, and my mom even wore it to work once for Halloween and won an at-work costume contest, which is the most success it has ever received.
Otherwise, when I think back to a lot of the memories associated with this costume, there really weren’t that many great memories to be had, to be perfectly honest.
First, I look back, and I come to the conclusion that I fucking hated Utena. I think if there was absolutely anything at all, if I had any interest in it at all, it’s because lots of girls I knew were into it. It’s like dudes who try listening to Duran Duran or watching artsy films because of girls, and I call bullshit to any guy that hasn’t expanded their horizons for the sake of girls.
For most straight males, Utena was a putrid story, convoluted in clouds of bullshit, hiding an androgynous homo-erotic lesbian fairy tale overall. Despite its best efforts, all of the characters were practically flow-chart archetypes that were almost no different than any other stereotypical 90’s anime. Utena was the protagonist girl who wished she were a boy, and had a chip on her shoulder because she wasn’t. Anthy, to her credit, whenever she got slapped (which happened a lot), brought me amusement, but she was the typical doormat passive damsel in distress with seemingly, no brain at all. Fill in the flowchart with the rest of the cast until we get to Touga, who is/was the last boss of the series, good at everything, popular with women, probably gay, with long hair, and of course, voiced by Takehito Koyasu in the anime.
Chu-Chu, was the only tolerable character in the entire series, because he was the fucking mascot and didn’t actually serve any purpose throughout the series that I ever noticed. Much like he did in the show, he stole the show whenever he appeared but didn’t actually get involved in any of the series’ bullshit, which is precisely why I saw it fit to be Chu-Chu in costume.
I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t read all of the manga, or even watch all of the anime. Frankly, I couldn’t tolerate it. I want to say it was the feature-length movie they made, but I have vague memories of parts where Utena and Anthy turned into cars, which was precisely the moment when I decided that the series was absolutely putrid, and the phrase “jumping the shark” was about a thousand times insufficient enough to describe the scene, and where I stopped watching effectively immediately.
Cars. CARS. THEY TURNED INTO CARS WTFUUUCK.
2000 was also a really tumultuous time in my life. I mean come on, I was 17 years old at the time, so I was a moody, mopey teenager, even more unsure of what the fuck I was doing with my life than I am today. As hard as it may be to believe, I was actually having a lot of girl troubles at that time and looking back at the Chu-Chu days, I was in the process of losing my then-best friend. Literally, the construction of Chu-Chu coincided with a lot of this teenage bullshit, and the more I think about those days, the more there’s a negative association attached to the Chu-Chu costume in general.
Ironically, I busted out the Chu-Chu at what was probably the worst convention in my existence, the Katsucon of that year, which admittedly was mostly due to my own accord, but bad memories will always remain bad memories, no matter how much you look back and might be capable of laughing at them, especially the whole “hidden” rant page I wrote that a surprising amount of people emailed me about to let me know how easy it was to find, thinking they outsmarted me when they did exactly what I wanted them to do.
But I don’t need to really delve any further into personal backstory of those days. Chu-Chu came about at a rough patch of late-adolescence, so in spite of how awesome looking I made the Chu-Chu head, there’s a lot of gloomy memories mired in that time period that contributes to the less-than-stellar attached to it. Also, the fact that Utena was a really fucking stupid show in retrospect, except I was too girl-chasey to realize it then.
While I was writing all of this, three things were crossing through my head as it pertains to the fate of this Chu-Chu head; after all, this thing has been sitting in storage for about the last 11 years, and it’s held together pretty well but it showing some glimpses of age. The first thing is to simply destroy the fuck out of it. It’s made of papier mache, and is essentially a glorified piñata. Maybe I could fill it full of candy and find a bunch of kids to crack it open, or maybe I can just take it out back myself and go Hulkamania on it with a bat. The second option would be to give it away; granted, this one would ironically probably require the most effort, and I want to put as little effort as possible in unloading it, but there’s a part of me that believes that somewhere out there, there’s someone who cares about Utena somewhat still that would want this legitimate one-of-a-kind piece of autographed memorabilia.
And then there’s the third option; it’s still in good enough shape to wear, and the suit is a baggy, one-size-fits-all clown pattern. Why not try and exercise out all the bad memories and like, wear it to Dragon*Con and attempt to have some good memories with it instead?
But considering my general aversion to clutter and junk in my own home, there’s a better chance that options one or two happens before three does, but who really knows at this point.
