Who is Chibita's Uncle?

This is an article about the anime series Osomatsu-kun.

The man of the hour.

I regret to inform you that I have just lied. This is, in fact, not a blog article about the anime series Osomatsu-kun, but instead about modern television and entertainment culture. I lied to you, dear reader, so I can preface a greater threat to storytelling and plot structure in visual and written media: the essence of "lore".

What is lore? You could sum it up as "the acquired or implied rules/knowledge of a fictional universe that cannot be broken, and if so, will be seen as blasphemous in the fictional universe". The example of Chibita's uncle is just that: only an example. Seen throughout the show are multiple instances of Chibita not having biological relatives to care for him or help him in spots that he might need it most. Chibita's uncle, however, exists in only a few situations in the show where he is very obviously a biological relative to Chibita. He's a contradiction to Osomatsu-kun's established concepts of Chibita being an orphaned kid living on the streets. And, by pointing this out, there's something uniquely sad about all of it.

This doesn't matter, and
you're stupid for caring.

Think about the Season 9 episode of The Simpsons, "The Principal and the Pauper", in which Principal Skinner is discovered to be impersonating the assumed-to-have-been-dead Seymour Skinner, and is outed as a man named Armin Tamzarian. For the last 8 seasons, viewers learned about Skinner's home life, his relationship with his mother, his military service, and his responsibility as principal of Springfield Elementary. To throw away everything we know about this character under the guise of him being "not the real Seymour Skinner" pissed off a LOT of fans, some of whom say it's the worst episode they ever did because of that.

And that's the point: it's supposed to be jarring and wasteful to the time you've spent getting to know him. It's supposed to piss you off and make you feel weird. It doesn't matter, and you're stupid for caring.

But, caring about how a world operates can be fun. You can joke about the convoluted nature of things that have happened and joke about the contradictions. I love the Lupin III: Part 2 episodes that introduce some of the weirdest stuff into the Lupin universe: vampires, dragons, ghosts, zombies, Mussolini's possessed boots, guns that shoot purple beams that make you want to kill yourself...but you also have stories to tell that don't involve the occult and are convoluted because the execution is ridiculous.

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Additionally, I've fallen in love with the r/Marioverse subreddit because it's doing something deliberately impossible: categorize the Mario universe into what's canon and what's not. The post that made me feel this way has to be "How do we know that Blue Toad isn't Toad?", which starts with a simple thesis: is Toad from Super Mario 3D World Blue Toad from New Super Mario Bros. Wii? If so, what are the signifiers and distinctions that cause them to be named as such? Is "Blue Toad" a title, a descriptor, or a meta naming convention to describe the Blue Toad in the game? Is Toad "Toad" regardless of his color?

This turned into a very long and borderline hilarious argument that resulted in a few bans, an account deletion, and an explanation that felt more like a handwave than anything explainable in the Mario universe with in-universe sources: Blue Toad and Toad both show up in Luigi's Mansion 3, therefore, they are not the same character.

Of course, lore isn't a bad thing if it's necessary to tell a story. The Lord of the Rings, Gravity Falls, Danny Phantom, The Sopranos...all of these series tell their stories in a way that makes it necessary to understand their established lore in order to understand them entirely. Sometimes even little backstories count as lore, and that's okay! Lore should be used where it needs to, or for reasons that benefit the artistic merit, the narrative structure, or the worldbuilding, if you so choose.

There's a really good ToughPigs article from a few years back that explains this phenomenon of lore and fictional universe categorization using Cookie Monster saying his real name is Sid. Of course, this isn't true, and was only done so to rhyme with "kid" in the song "The First Time Me Eat Cookie". As such, people got worked up about it, and catalogued it in the lore center of their brains as something that is irrevocably true because it came from Cookie Monster's own. To elaborate on the article's main point: these things don't matter because they don't need to matter.

I'm sure you know
the quote.

Chibita having an uncle doesn't matter because it moves the plot of shrinking the sextuplets along. Iyami could have served in the uncle role with some science stuff, but he's running the flea circus. It's almost like Dekapan being God for an episode or two or Chibita being the vengeful ghost of a samurai who attacks Iyami in his dreams doesn't matter, and is only done for the sake of the story. There is no such thing as lore in Osomatsu-kun the same way there's no such lore in The Simpsons, Lupin III, Mario, and Sesame Street, because, at the end of the day, none of this matters.

The Simpsons wants to tell a funny story about American society. Lupin III wants to tell a story about whatever Lupin's got himself into this time. Mario games want to focus on the fun of playing them. Sesame Street exists in an ensemble world where things come and go for the sake of teaching a lesson. You can compare, at the least, the Mario philosophy to golden-age American cartoons: here's some characters, here's a story, let's see something happen. Miyamoto confirmed this himself not too long ago.

So think about it like this: don't care. Refuse to care, and watch shows that tell their stories in an episodic way with very low expectations and absolutely no lore center storage. You can analyze how a characters acts, feels, does the things they do...but don't care, because ultimately, it was never about the lore. It was just to have fun, and it's okay to keep it that way.