Tsundere News

Note: I am not trying to elicit sympathy or advice. I am just trying to share some ideas on something I have realized, which happens to be related to anime. Also, I am a guy, not a girl.

Tsundere is a Japanese term used to describe a character. It is mostly used to describe a female character who is initially cold or hostile toward others. But after a while they show a warmer, more caring side. It is derived from the terms “tsuntsun”, meaning to turn away in disgust and “deredere” meaning lovey dovey. Such characters appear frequently in dating sims and visual novels, but have recently become more popular in anime and other mediums.

I think what ties together most tsundere characters is the fear of being left alone. In other words, what is the point of investing all these feelings for another person if they’re just going to leave me, or I’ll have to leave them? The tsundere continues to be wary of interacting with other people and being sure to not show anything that could be mistaken as a show of love. Or at least being sure not to show too much. Then eventually they meet someone that they fall in love with. Usually the tsundere is passive throughout the falling-in-love process, as he/she is approached by the other person on multiple occasions as the relationship develops. Then they live happily together because finally the tsundere can count on someone to be there for them and never leave them

Now I just want to look at 3 characters that exhibit tsundere traits. Squall from the video game Final Fantasy 8: You meet Squall when he’s 17 years old. He grew up in an orphanage before being transferred to Balamb Garden to train to become a mercenary. When living at the orphanage he looked up to a girl named Ellone. But she leaves the orphanage before he does. There are flashbacks that show a young Squall standing at the entrance of the orphanage saying stuff like, “Sis, I’m gonna be alright.” At Balamb Garden he gains the reputation of being something of a lone wolf, never relying on others and keeping to himself. Once he becomes a mercenary and goes out to do missions across the world, he begins to open up to his party members and learns to care for others.

In particular he falls in love with Rinoa. Rinoa keeps teasing Squall and giving hints to him. It takes a lot for Squall to eventually open up to Rinoa and the others, but I can’t really blame him for being cold at first. I first played this when I was around 9 years old. After playing this game, I had a really strong liking for Rinoa or girls like Rinoa.

Mio Aoyama from The World God Only Knows: For those that don’t know, Keima has to help his demon friend, Elsie, capture loose souls. Loose souls take refuge in hearts that aren’t full of love. Since a loose soul has resided in Mio’s heart Keima, the protagonist, has to make Mio fall in love with him in order to push out the loose soul so Elsie can capture it.

Mio is seen as the rich girl, however she lives in a run down apartment since her father died a few years ago. Keeping with a tsundere’s cold passiveness, Mio gives Keima the cold shoulder and never compliments Keima’s actions, sometimes even ridiculing him. An example of this is when Keima picks Mio up to go to school each morning in a carriage that he drags himself. Mio who grew up in high-society, where people are often quickly judged by how much money they have, has learned to become wary of others. Especially those that are nice to them. The best way to not lose anything is by not giving anything in the first place. Eventually though, she does fall in love with Keima, someone she can trust, the loose soul is ousted and captured. Those that have watched TWGOK, will realize that the happy conclusion of each arc is ambiguous. Here I just want to draw attention to how Mio is almost entirely passive throughout the relationship.

Lastly, Victorique de Blois, the protagonist from Gosick: Victorique is a small teenage girl, with long blonde hair and dresses in frilly dresses. She spends most of her in the garden at the very top of a large library reading books and eating snacks. She is also extremely good at solving mysteries and has a sharp tongue. Early on the relationship between Kujo and her is established. However, Victorique goes out of her way to be cold toward Kujo, calling him an idiot and hardly ever showing gratitude to him when bringing her snacks or trying to help her down from a tree.

It is revealed later in the story that Victorique was abandoned by her parents when she was very little. This helps explain her cold nature. As Victorique and Kujo experience more together, learn more about the mystery cases that they are involved in, and ultimately learn more about her past, she eventually opens up to Kujo and truly cares for him. By watching the series the viewer begins to realize that Kujo is here to stay and no matter how bone-headed it may seem, he’ll do almost anything for Victorique.

Even though Victorique is great at solving mysteries, she is still very passive in terms of her relations with other people, including Kujo. In one case, when she is effectively a kidnapped damsel in distress, instead of leaving behind a “help me” note for Kujo she leaves a note saying, “idiot”.

For whatever reason, I have recently realized that I am something of a tsundere. This helps explain why I don’t really like watching tsundere characters in anime, because it reminds me of me. I try to keep to myself and not let others know what I am thinking. A part of me thinks that if I let others in on my thoughts, this might be something that can be used against me in the future. The only person I can really rely on is myself, why rely on others when they just leave eventually?

But there’s a whole other part of me (the “dere” part, if you will) that realizes how important it is interact with others. That wants to fall in love and have lasting friendships. That believes you only get out of something as much as you put into it. Which means I can’t be passive my whole life, or else I won’t get anything out of it. Even so, I still have a hard time expressing this side of me.

In games or anime it’s different because the characters are completely scripted. They’re not real, and are only an artist’s representation of real characters and real actions. The game/anime can end on a happy note, but in real life there’s always a tomorrow until it ultimately ends in death.

Like always there’s isn’t really an easy answer. But I’ve gotten a few things from thinking about this and writing this blog post. I have a better appreciation for tsundere characters (especially Victorique, who I disliked throughout most of the series). I have realized something about myself from a new perspective. Maybe this will help me make decisions on how to act in the future.

Thank you for reading the entirety of this post.

For a long time I had a bias against Tsunderes, because most of them, honestly, are annoying. Plus, you had to add the moe factor. Most anime/manga nowadays have moe tsundere characters, which make us swirl in a huge downward spiral to moeblobland, a place where there are no original stories, plotlines are linear and characters have to be pigtailed tsunderes/ meganekkos/ over or underdeveloped lolis. But thank God there are always exceptions.
 
Good stories and well written charactes always shine in a world in which uniformity reigns supreme. Tora Dora! is a good example.
 
I was quite reluctant to watch the series, so I tried with the manga first (which are based in a series of light novels). The story is very common indeed: the petite uber bad-tempered Taiga delivers a love letter to the wrong person, Ryuuji, which due to his facial features looks like a yakuza. Both find out they have crushes on their respective BFF's, Minori (a really hyperactive wackjob) and  Yuusaku (the perfect, too-good-to-be-true boy), and they decide to become allies to win the hearts of their respective love interests. We can guess how everything will end. Same goes with the anime, with slight differences.
 
But what is most attractive are the characters. Taiga is not a tsundere just because she likes it. She knows her flaws and weaknesses. She has a horrible, almost non-existent relationship with their parents (partly due to her temper), and hates being mocked for her size (I totally understand that; I'm barely 5ft. high) but stil, she tries to get along with people. She tries to go against her nature; same with Ryuuji, that all his life has struggled to be the opposite of what people may think he is: he is neat, responsible for himself and his super wacky mom, and a good student too. The entire cast fight against their flaws, imperfections and quirks in order to be better people.  These characters progressively evolve in surprising ways along the way, and dare to show their soft spots, not being afraid of wat people will say. Because it's good to let people see you just as you are. Even if you reveal yourself as a tender tsundere.
 
Why do I think it's so good? Because it's real.

(Thanks Void for pointing this out to me btw)
 
I knew when the Saber Portraits art book came out that this was an inevitability, but it's finally out!
 
I am sooooo getting one of these.
(pictures courtesy of akiba blog)

 Yandere 101:

When obsession wins over love and you've got yourself an immensely affectionate stalker instead of a girlfriend, you have a yandere on your hands. These are the kind of girls that break into your house while you’re away, hide under your bed while you’re at home, schlick directly under you while you sleep, come out when you’re gone again, schlick again in your bed while licking and humping your pillows, and then proceed to check your messages to see if you’re involved with another girl. They usually don't have any kind of higher ideal or ethical policy; they sometimes don't even view themselves as people so much as an entity made out of the impulse or desire to be with their man. A yandere is awesome because it’s outwardly impossible to tell that the girl is completely insane; she has just enough presence of mind left over to maintain a convincing façade, and God help everyone around her if she decides to drop it. If you don’t react well, things could get messy, so in the off chance you don’t want to enjoy the fruits of your yandere‘s darker exploits, here’s several things you need to take into account.
 
 1. Remember your objectives:
-Survive.
-Her mental integrity should be kept at a reasonable level and maintained.
-She should still love you unconditionally.

2. Be sure to remind her how much you love her and basically compliment her as you would any women. Be careful about criticism, though, because she’ll probably go a little over the top in attempting to fix this problem, and if she can‘t, she‘ll try to fix your perceptions of this problem instead. When prompted, re-affirm your hatred of those other skanky, dirty whores. Putting down other people is fun anyway, right?

3. When she starts talking nonsense, she is being put under stress. This stress is based on the belief that you are being unfaithful or planning on leaving her. Pacify her with constant, unadulterated attention and sex. Remember that one of the best things about yandere is that they’re completely devoted to you, so why shouldn’t you return at least some of the favor? This entire fiasco can be summed up in a single line: “It’d be great if he was nice and looked only at me. Yes, only at me… He can’t look at any other girls. I’d look only at him, so he should look only at me. It‘s only fair, right?”
 
 4. Contact with the opposite sex in public should be kept to a bare minimum -- the assumption should be that she IS watching. When she’s with you and you talk to other women, she’ll either flaunt you in front of them or discourage prolonged conversation. In either situation you should play along, expressing your undying love for your yandere all the way. In the latter one you should cut off contact as soon as she gives a prompt to do so. Occasionally she’ll become openly hostile to women she finds you speaking with, so diffuse that bomb before it explodes. Female relatives may or may not be accepted by the yandere, though for the sake of her façade she‘ll usually ignore them.

5. The yandere likes to do things for you, so keep her busy doing chores that make her feel she is strengthening the relationship. This is one of the best parts about the yandere since she’ll spoon feed you if you ask her to and she won’t even see it as strange.
 
 Now that you’ve won the affections of one of these very, very insane women, you surely want to know how this benefits you, right? Well…

LOYAL: She will never --- NEVER --- betray you. Even when you're dead.

LOVING: She knows the meaning of true love like no other girl, or even you, will ever know. Some of the love is for your own good.

CARING: She takes her entire budget of caring and places it all on you. Other people are... irrelevant.

PROTECTIVE: No bad fortune, villian, or evil conniving cheap slut will be allowed to have their ways with you for long.

HATRED: For other girls as pure as the darkness between the stars.

DETERMINED: She will never --- NEVER --- give up. Even if you end up hating her for it. She’ll never let you down, either.

OBSESSIVE: There is pretty much no limit to how far she'll go just to get your attention. Once you go yandere, you can’t go back.

BRUTAL: Why should she go easy on those who threaten to steal you away from her?

PROACTIVE: Friends? Family? Better get rid of them before they start taking up precious time you could be spending with her.

DETESTING: Everyone that isn't you.
 
 Besides a very, very affectionate partner, there are plenty of ways to have fun using her unique features. For example, pick some girl you know likes you, give her your phone number and ask her to call you. Put yourself in a position in which you are with your yandere and open to being approached by this girl. Then confide in your yandere how this girl won't leave you alone. Count the days until this girl disappears or stops communicating with you entirely. If the yandere decides to kill her “rival” right in front of you, marry her as soon as rationally possible.

One of the few potential cons that I can see is that intellectual conversations are nearly impossible with your yandere. She can't comprehend anything outside of the context of your relationship with her. War in Iraq? You are saying you think she's too clingy and so therefore some cheap slut is poisoning your mind against her. The nature of the universe? You are trying to break up with her so therefore some cheap slut is poisoning your mind against her. It's okay to participate in activities that don't involve her, by all means, please do, but it's very, very difficult to get your yandere involved in anything that doesn't directly have to do with her loving you. It's not impossible, but I prefer to keep mine in the kitchen baking or knitting and would rather not provoke her.
 
 The problem with continuing this practice is that you can't out yan the yandere. It would only drive her to a higher state of mental instability. Think about it - you're stalking her everyday. She realizes it's YOU who's the third person walking by her to the grocer's, or getting her car fixed, or chatting with the neighbors as people jog by. She starts wondering, "does he think me unfaithful? But... but that's impossible. It's just him I care for - only him!"

Then the attempts to reassure herself begin. More painful, scarring sex play, just to let you know "this body is only for you." No matter how violent or messy, she does it with a broken smile. The meals become dull as she starts going out less and ordering in more. Minor things she can pick up from faceless stores to show you that she doesn't NEED other people, so long as she has you. The artwork of herself she leaves in your desk at work (should you bother to show, as you're so busy being full of her and dumping bodies of the ones who'd dare even glance...). The jagged crying night sessions - tears spilling down her face as she smiles delightfully, her voice full of laughter as she takes on any abuse, just for you.

The moment of broken screaming when she realizes despite all this devotion, you STILL don't trust her.
 
 And then you walk in one day and find that she's jammed the biggest kitchen knife she could find into her sexual organs. That tearful, joy-filled face saying, “you know, darling, you were right, my thoughts were impure and clouded by other faces, so I punished myself, but now it's fine. I’ve punished those involved, too, those evil people that caught me in my moment of weakness…”

The police will be over in the evening to arrest you both on the collection of bodies in the basement unless you had already prepared an escape route for different but similar reasons. So yeah, you need a cut-off point for being yandere to your yandere.

DOUBLE YANDERE LOVE IS THE TRUEST LOVE.

Ahem. Excuse me.

Point is, give them too much love and they'll begin feeling unworthy of you; it won't matter how many times you reassure them that they're perfect, they'll constantly feel not up to your love. Eventually they'll take for granted that you're betraying them because every other woman is better than them, and shit will degenerate rather quickly. Still, if you treat them badly they will still consider that a gesture of affection, so it's the same shit. Getting them pregnant may possibly be the correct answer. They'll focus their attention on your love's "fruit" and that will wash away many of their insecurities as long as you spend enough time with both them and your child. You'd have to make sure she's not seeing your son as you though, or things may get really hot, if you know what I mean.
 
 Ah, yes, the question of children, a problem with no easy answer. In general, yandere would make poor mothers, and the child would be at constant risk of being targeted by the yandere's psychotic episodes. The yandere may very well reject the child and see it as competition. It's not impossible, however, with enough care from her man. Some yandere object to the idea of children because they see themselves as beings which must not bear new life, but other yandere may be quite open to it, or even feel they would want it as irrefutable proof of your love. Regardless, they will bow to the wishes of their loved one, so it's something that would take some struggling at first, but will probably work out in the end.

Some extra thoughts regarding the psyche of the yandere:
1. Yandere are not opposed to safe sex, but they are opposed to mechanical means of birth control. It's not because they enjoy sex physically more than any other girl, it's because they view sex more as a spiritual ritual in which they become closest to combining with their loved one; she will always demand sex to be as raw as possible. If birth control is desired, they will generally have no problem taking the pill and consider condoms to be a barrier to achieving oneness with you.

2. A yandere will never, ever share you, nor will she accept any kind of rival; to her, other girls are nothing but enemies. Yandere don't feel the kind of isolation some normal girls might, and so will never believe themselves to be different or special to other girls. To a yandere, other girls have the same filthy desires and conniving thoughts as she does, which is why she loathes other girls so much; she firmly believes other girls are out to steal her loved one. If two yandere met over the same guy, they would launch a war that wouldn't end until one of them was dead. No mercy, no surrender.
 
 3. The yandere will almost never rape her loved one if they are still outside of a relationship. The yandere will attempt to attract you using conventional means, as the yandere believes from her own upbringing and education that this is the correct method for getting her man. If she knew she could get you by raping you at gun-point, she would do so immediately.

4. I think that sometimes the attraction to yandere is based on the childish, idealized belief that your love can cure her. PFFT. This is DANGEROUSLY NAIVE. "Cure" her? Why would you want that? Her being an obsessive, potentially-dangerous psychotic is the whole POINT. To say someone finds such a person attractive out of some misguided belief they can "fix" them is like saying a "chubby chaser" finds big women attractive out of some belief that he can get them in shape, when really he just really likes the fatties. In all likelihood the stress of a relationship would make her psychosis even worse. Yandere are crazy and there's no way to make them feel at ease, and if you think you can then you'll end up with either you or her dead, possibly both.
 
 The end. Enjoy reading this useless shit.        
 

Gia reports the sighting of a drama CD in which gives you a tour through Japan. Introducing NaviKare, a GPS-like audio CD that guides you and gives perceptive commentary that varies from characters from anime. Each track consists on commentary to guide you to Comic Market. They only announced the girl version but soon I will hope that they will released it for the guys.

This drama CD seems interesting, in my personal experience. Taking a tour is somewhat boring to me as sometimes, either the tour guide is annoying or doesn't know what he/she or saying. This CD might changed that around and I would really want to have a specific character from an anime to guide me. Especially when it comes to Comiket when its all "hectic" and somewhat confusing that I will forget my Japanese. My question is, will it be accurate like a GPS as I go to various places in Tokyo/Comiket? I would be awkward and hilarious to see what I'm looking at and the CD to comment on where I'm going. Fingers-crossed for a GPS version, to tell me to turn right.

Having an anime character to guide you through Tokyo is awesome but I'm still confused about this sort of thing. But I digress, I would love it!

I would also love it if a tsundere girl bosses me around through my tour. I would totally be too geeked over that I don't know what will happen. I'm just hoping for Revy or Shana. Other than that, I really want Yoko as a navigation guide, she is just awesome and hot! :drools


Original cite.