What is Chu-Chu? (Shoujo Kakumei Utena Analysis)
SPOILERS!!!
In this highly symbolic, ambiguous 'hellscape of a show' everything has a hidden meaning, even the animal companion of the main characters. SPECIALLY the animal companion of the main characters.
Chu-chu is irrelevant to the plot; apart from being the comic relief (honestly I find his gluttony quite distasteful, rationing the meals of a diabetic monkey-mouse is pretty fucking far from funny) he is the only friend of Anthy across the show.
He is cute and useless, but what is he?? Well, he is a lot of things:
Chu-chu is a mouse: he is small, has big, rounded ears and makes the sound of a mouse (chu). His name is a repetition of that same sound. But when have we seen a mouse in the show???
In the shadow play, of course
There is a chapter (sorry, I don't remember wich) where the shadow girls tell the story of a family of mouses who want to know where the cat is located. One of the mouses suggest putting a bell on the cat while it's sleeping. When the question of who is going to do the dirty job is raised, the mouse tells them that she already put the bell. But it's a lie: the mouse lied to them so that she would win the cat's favor. The cat ends up eating everyone, the traitor included.
In previous episodes, we see the cat being tantamount to the prince, and now that we see the real prince as a sexual predator, se can also see the cat as a predator.
Mouses are a cat's prey, the same way that girls are Touga and Akio's preys.
Chu-chu, the witch's familiar, is a part of Anthy, so we can assume that it's Anthy who is betraying everyone, making them think they are safe while she feeds them to the cat (Akio). The saddest part of this metaphor is that we know what happens to the traitor...
Chu-chu is a monkey: he eats bananas, goes to the jungle when body-swapped with Saionji and, more importantly, he is an imitator. He wears Akio's ring and tie, not just because he likes him, but because Anthy likes him. He wants to be like him, just like King Lewis from the jungle book (God I love that song) wants to be a human. There's a lot of plays where the shadow girls act as monkeys. Everyone is trying to be a prince, and the way they try to achieve it is by imitation.
But what we see is an impostor.
There's a saying for that in Spanish: "aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona se queda"/ 'even if the monkey dresses up with silk clothes, she stays a monkey'
Finally, Chu-chu is an alien: yes, you heard me right, he is not from this world. In the episode Nanami's precious egg, we see Nanami taking care of an egg that is very heavily implied to be Chuchu. In that episode we see Anthy and Utena talk about reincarnation, in an episode where Chu-chu is mysteriously absent. He only appears once the egg is broken. Nanami is afraid of being considered an alien for having laid an egg. Being an alien means being different, being impossible to categorize. By this definition Chu-chu, just like Anthy, is an alien. Because they are not normal (Wakaba, Nanami and Kanae agree).
I love Chu-chu, even if I dislike his humour (I'm a Nanami person, what can I say) and I love the fact that his identity can be so tied to the central themes of the series.


















