This week I will be discussing anime tropes instead of animemes. I planned on writing about seasonal anime to compliment my previous post but I had writers block so we will be going over a common trope presented in anime. This trope is the Dere (Der-ray) trope that allows people to easily attach traits to certain characters. These Dere types can be abundant as they are simply the addition of a descriptive word in front of the term dere to show that they feel love for the character in which they are attached to. There are so many types therefore I am only going to be talking about the big four: Tsundere, Kuudere, Dandere, and Yandere .
The Tsundere
The tsundere is very common and continues to be a popular choice among manga and anime writers because, in my opinion, they are fairly easy to design and bring about their relationship arc. The tsundere is a character that is very aggressive and has a lot of anger and even hatred towards their chosen person but over time the person they begin to fall in love with breaks this harsh exterior and causes them to become more loving as the relationship goes on. These character traits are shown in characters like Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion, Aisaka Taiga from Toradora, and Kurisu from the Stein’s Gate series.
The Kuudere
The kuudere is the ice queen of anime/manga. This character is a woman who shows very little emotions and is not very open to others. Unlike the tsundere this girl does not feel aggression towards their love interest. This character doesn’t always have to warm up to the character once they are in a relationship either. They are very caring even though they seem to be a cynic to others. Popular examples of kuudere type characters are Ayanami Rei from Neon Genesis Evangelion, Sucy Manbavaran from Little Witch Academia, and Mashiro Shiina from The Pet Girl of Sakarasou.
The Dandere
The Dandere is a little bit sweeter than the other two, as this person is very in love with their significant other but they have some sort of problem with their social abilities. They are either extremely shy or too socially awkward that they can’t seem to approach their person of interest. However through their important person they are invigorated and begin to break out of their shell. These characters are typically nerdy types or those that haven’t had a lot of social interaction. Good examples of Danderes are Hinata Hyuga from Naruto, Yuri from Doki Doki Literature Club, and Fuuka Yamagishi from Persona 3.
The Yandere
The most polarizing of the bunch, the yandere is a person who is soft and sweet to start off with and slowly becomes more demanding. There are many different yandere types but their main aspect is never refusing their special person, and being devoted to them entirely. This character can become so devoted that they will want to kill either the significant person or them self to satisfy their belief in their enormous love for their significant other. These yandere’s are showcased by shows like Mirai Nikki with Yuno Gasai, Shimoneta with Anna Nishikinomiya, and Shuffle! with Kaede Fuyou.
In Conclusion
The different Dere types can be seen as lazily cobbled together tropes that allow the writers to create characters but I think there is an importance in having characters that a viewer can instantly classify as a specific type. This plays into what Azuma Hiroki brings up in his article Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals. This idea that a character can be made up of materials from other artists has been around for a while in anime and it continues to be a staple of the genre. The Dere tropes play on the database and pull out specific actions, words, attitudes, and character traits that can easily be shown to make a character fit into a certain archetype. I give you all this information about tropes because that’s how memes develop. It is easy to see a character type and make fun of that using memes and corrupting the trope to make others laugh. Because these characters are all so similar and so common, if you have seen them in one anime you have basically seen them in all anime. This leads to these memes being easy to relate to and popular because of this database that Hiroki talks about allowing the development of characters that have similar but interchangeable traits. The author can tone up or down certain aspects of these personalities to better fit the world they live in and change their look to whatever the author believes to be fitting in their eyes but that does not change what they are at their core.
So I hope you all enjoyed my discussion this week and I hope there is some thought into the different trope characters in anime other than taking them at face value because I find it is important to not just focus on how overused they are but really figure out why they are used so much. I know this article is very gendered to focus on female versions of these tropes and that is a personal bias but these character tropes can be either gender and don’t have any barrier that they can’t cross. Thank you all for reading and I hope to talk about Seasonal Animemes next week.
https://myanimelist.net/character/12064/Taiga_Aisaka
https://steins-gate.fandom.com/wiki/Kurisu_Makise
https://myanimelist.net/character/86/Rei_Ayanami
https://little-witch-academia.fandom.com/wiki/Sucy_Manbavaran
https://sakurasounopetnakanojo.fandom.com/wiki/Mashiro_Shiina
https://myanimelist.net/character/1555/Hinata_Hyuuga
https://myanimelist.net/character/9207/Fuuka_Yamagishi
https://doki-doki-literature-club.fandom.com/wiki/Yuri
https://myanimelist.net/character/1482/Kaede_Fuyou
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1395247-shimoneta
https://deathbattlefanon.fandom.com/wiki/Yuno_Gasai
Artist for cover picture – https://www.instagram.com/japanloverme/?hl=en
Cinema Anime 
Nice overview of the major -dere types!
Did you know that the “tsun” in “tsundere” is the “sound effect” of someone turning their head away in apparent distaste?
Taiga Aisaka continues to be my favorite tsundere character–in large part because unlike some other tsundere characters (e.g. Kyou Fujibayashi from Clannad), she doesn’t become a door mat character once she realizes that she’s in love with the male lead. Instead, she continues to have agency as an independent character–she doesn’t become dependent. While following many tropes, they way they’re presented in Tora-dora leads to a fairly complex character. Her voice actress, Kugimiya Rei, often plays tsundere characters (she also voices Pikachu in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, one of those controversial titles where the pokemon can speak–but in this one, just to one another).
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No actually I had no idea that it meant that but that is really cool! I agree, Taiga is also one of my favorite tsunderes and I am glad that she stands up for herself in the show. I also had no idea she and Pikachu had the same VA.
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there are certain types of dere types that i like and the ones i don’t like. the ones I don’t like are the annoying ones and being mean to male character which i like for an example sakura beats up Naruto because of his bad habits or does something bad to sasuke. the ones that I wanna stay clear are the psycho paths that scares me and wants to runaway and hide from them like when i watch criminal minds series.
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I agree, I don’t really like the Tsundere or the Yandere types either. I don’t understand the appeal of watching a relationship where one person is super mean/is trying to hurt the other. Doesn’t seem like fun to me.
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I didn’t know that the Kuudere and Dandere were offical ‘types’ like the Tsundere and the Yandere were. I always assumed that the -dere label meant something negative about the character since I was only familiar with the latter two, so that’s neat to know there’s a wide array of these ‘types’.
I also never picked up on the fact that Tsunderes tend to be brunettes or that Kuuderes had smaller mouths. I think it’s pretty cool that even physical details are important to these ‘types’.
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It is pretty cool that there are so many -dere types because you start to notice traits among different characters and start to categorize them, but I feel like it pigeon-holes some characters. But physical traits aren’t always noticeable and sometimes they change up these stereotypical appearances to subvert expectations.
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