Why is a “Dark History” black?
A self-deprecating series digging into Chuunibyou [2]
An image posted on the X (formerly Twitter) timeline with the caption, “I found some manga I drew a long time ago,” showed a protagonist drawn with awkward lines alongside an unusually verbose list of special move names.
The line, “Seal Release: Demon Sword Gilgamesh!” garnered thousands of “likes,” and the comment section was filled with “I get it,” “I had that too,” and “I want to burn it.”
The term “Dark History” (kuro-rekishi) originally referred to the “sealed, ominous past wars” in the Gundam series.
However, it has now become a symbol of the “painful” past that everyone shares. Chuunibyou-style self-expression, cringey fantasy notebooks, poems and novels uploaded to posting sites.
—They are all memories you don’t want anyone to laugh at, but can’t quite bring yourself to throw away.
But why is it “black”?
Why is it painted over with the colors of shame and regret?
It is because the version of you back then was “serious.” You genuinely wanted to change the world, wanted to be stronger, cooler, and more beautiful than anyone else, and stayed up all night writing stories. That intensity, when viewed from your current self, seems ridiculous, immature, and makes you cringe. That is precisely why you want to paint it “black.” By denying your past self, you try to protect the “normality” of your current self.
But is it really right to discard that past?
Adolescent “delusions” are often regarded as escapism.
They are seen as the state of an immature mind unable to adapt to society, hiding away in the fantasy of fiction. However, within those “delusions” lies a craving for an ideal that cannot be reached in reality. In days where you felt crushed by a classroom where you didn’t belong, relationships you couldn’t navigate, and an invisible future—believing that “I am actually special” was the only thing keeping you afloat.
Therefore, a “Dark History” is not merely a failure of the past.
It is a record of how your former self fought desperately against the world, and it is also the origin of all fiction. Delusion was not escape, but a counterattack. It is the trace of an attempt to imagine and create more freely than anyone else from a place where no one recognized you.
Self-creation is not the work of repainting a dark history white.
Rather, accepting that “blackness” and acknowledging the “pain” within yourself becomes the starting point for a new story. Instead of pretending your embarrassing past “never happened,” there are narratives that can only begin from there.
In fact, many manga artists, writers, and animators who are commercially successful today have a “Dark History” without exception. Everyone draws “Demon Sword Gilgamesh” at first.The question is how long you kept drawing that picture, and where you gave up.
When you become able to laugh at your dark history, you can finally begin writing the next chapter. Because fiction is not a repetition of failure, but a reconstruction of possibility. Chuunibyou might not be something you graduate from, but a rite of passage for growth.
Even so, there are nights when you might wish you could “burn it all.” But those are also nights when you can talk to someone about it. When you meet someone with whom you can share your pain and shame, your dark history ceases to be just a past. Because that happened, I am here now. The day you can say that will surely come.
Next time, I will dig into social media and otaku-style desire for approval from the perspective of “Where did communities where we can talk about our ‘cringe’ come from?”
Will I be able to finish writing it—!?
Chuunibyou... I’ve started writing about this theme, but...
I’m honestly writing this while squirming. It gives me goosebumps with these indescribable emotions 💦
If you can, please actively press the ♡ button. I need even a little bit of your power to finish writing this to the end!!