The Death of the Tsundere | A Retrospective

In other words: the tsundere went from a character that started out hostile but slowly opened up as a love interest to just a love interest that is regularly obnoxious or even abusive and never stops being that. Not surprising that second type of character is often disliked.

8:10 If being interested in a Tsundere is a self-inflicted, hard-mode version of a love interest that is more rewarding because of its difficulty, could Tsunderes be considered the Dark Souls of love interests?

for me the worst part of a tsundere character is how violent they are and how its played off as a joke

I remember Digibro making a video on this some years ago that I really liked. It basically boiled down to the "Tsunderes started as actual characters who acted like this for a believable/possibly understandable reason and were meant to balance out the protagonist, but eventually became flanderized into the dumb, shallow trope that exists solely to tick a box that we all know and hate today." Your whole angle of tying it back into the wider media sphere is certainly interesting and a hell of a lot more depressing than just a bunch of lazy, hack writers.

9:36 If we restrict the date range to around October 30, Google Trends shows us that the searches involving "tsundere" were associated with the terms "tsundere means", "magical love gentleman", and "questionable content". "Questionable Content" turns out to be a webcomic. After some pain trying to figure out which issue released on October 30, it turns out to be #1525, which contains both the words "magical love gentleman" and "tsundere" (the latter being written on a shirt). As such, I conclude that the spike in popularity stems from readers of this specific webcomic trying to figure out what the word means.

You did something very cool: took on a gargantuan subject that deserves its own university module (the death of narrative media) and approached it through a narrow subset of a cultural niche, in a way depriving yourself of additional views. But you did it in such a captivating way that even outsiders could connect to the wider theme. I studied anthropology and work in the media, and definitely miss a good read on the subject of media and symbolism, so, an additional thanks for the tip on 'The Language of New Media' - I'll have to order that!

Excellent essay. It seems all art forms are going through a similar process, becoming "content" although the transformation seems different in different media. As a visual artist I've been struck by how social media has changed what people think art even is, part of opening the door for things like AI image generators.

I don't think Lum counts as a tsundere. Tsundere is never about being abusive, but rather the characters hiding their true feelings. The level of vocal offending commonly seen in anime and manga isn't even considered abusive in most Asian cultures, that is a western concept. Actually, in Takahashi's next long manga series, Ranma 1/2, the two main characters, Ranma and Akane, are both textbook tsundere, in modern definition. They're the real earlist iconic tsundere characters I can think of.

This is something that chapters 47-48-49 of 100 girlfriends were interestingly discussing Since the series deconstructs the tropes of each character and tries to reconstruct them in its own way to see why and how they click These 3 chapters take Karane, a character who's an extreme version of the typical Tsundere and take away her tsundere-ness, to see why these characters even mattered, and things go well for the rest of the girls but not for some who admit that the tsundere characteristics were endearing to them. One of my favorite lines from these chapters is when Rentarou tells karane that he'd be ok with her being a non-tsundere if she likes that, but he won't be ok if she's doing it because she hates being a tsundere. The point made is that so often nowadays in media characters are made one way to fit an archetype, and only there because that's an expectation people have, and a way to spark "best girl" discussions and merch sales, but never was it about writing actually compelling characters, people analyzed these characters as an archetype, not as a character, and Rentarou acknowledging that Karane should be what she wants to be not because she has to fit a specific stereotype but because that personality fits her belief and is very much a part of her, I think that's the point. We see her non-tsundere self to be nothing but a regular old girl with nothing interesting under the surface, and that, if anything, speaks loudly about how stereotypes are the 95% of a character's worth in anime/mangas nowadays Edit: I'm sure no one is reading this considering it's a discussion about 100 girlfriends but hey I'll say what I have to say since no one else did

We could always split the definitions like this Clasic tsundere: a character (often female) who starts off cold and not in love with their crush but slowly warms up to their crush Modern tsundere: a character (often female) that is dere-dere for the MC but doesn't like expressing so instead acts abuses him (often physically) but slowly becomes more comfortable expressing their emotions around their crush. this character calling their crush an idiot (baka) at least once is a requirement.

This is why I love male tsundere’s so much, you can’t have them be violent to their love interest like female ones get to be nowadays cuz people tend to see it for what it is.

I recently talked with a friend of mine about how Taiga in Toradora is “not a real tsundere” I based that idea on her interactions with Kitamura who she supposedly loved, in contrast to her interactions with Ryuji, and then add on that as the story developed she became a lot sweeter on Ryuji, basically when she fell for him. My understanding of tsundere was the modern version of it, where characters treat the person they like coldly. This video kinda blew my mind since now it feels like Taiga is actually more along the lines of the original narrative tsundere.

Worst part of the tsundere is the normalization of abusive behaviours for me. As someone who HAS been physically abused, it makes me really uncomfortable.

This made me realise that I've been subconsciously separating tsundere characters as either 'story-based' or 'traits-based' tsunderes for a very long time now

Although they are not as violent as some others Asuna (SAO) and Kurisu (Steins Gate) are both good examples of 'true tsunderes'

I've been recognizing this for the past decade or more, but I called it "anime disappearing up its own ass." Almost every new anime I watched was like a collection of references to older anime strung together.

One character I'd argue played a huge role in the death of traditional Tsunderes in anime was Louise in Zero no Tsukaima, she's one of the earlier examples of a character who, despite often being referred to as a Tsundere, never really undergoes a change in her attitude towards either the main character, instead staying aggressive and easy to anger, while simultaneously growing closer to Satou. I also think the rise of SoL/CGDCT as genres also helped with this, with people searching for a way to refer to easily irritable characters who are still sweet and nice to those closest to them (such as Kagami in Lucky Star), and while they wouldn't fall into the initial definition of Tsundere, it probably felt like the closest already existing term.

I’ve always been a bigger fan of Chuunibyos and Kuuderes because there is usually that narrative progression with them. For Kuuderes, it’s leading up to the iconic first smile/cry. But for Chuunis, it’s growing to know them as a person and seeing behind the mask

I never realized there was such an interesting evolution on what tsundere means! Honestly, the old-school definition almost seems more similar to what people look for in enemies-to-lovers tropes today. The classic tsundere and her love interest may not be literal enemies, but both classifications have that same "I have no feelings for you, but now you've won me over against the odds" dynamic. I'm not a big fan of the newer tsunderes that misinterpret situations and get mad about it, but maybe the classic version would be more up my alley. Great video! edit: When I made this comment, I thought about mentioning "rivals to lovers" as well, but just didn't bother. Maybe I should've thought twice, that might be the better comparison.

This idea of databasification is in my opinion an extension of earlier ideas in postmodern philosophy and semiotics about hyperreality, and the idea of signs representing other signs. When signs or symbols start to be representations of other signs, without having a basis in reality, they lose all meaning and become purely floating signs, with no connection to anything else. The tsundere is an example, having become disconnected from the very real basis of someone growing to love another, having been distilled down into a set of arbitrary character traits, then reamplified back up into an entire archetype based on nothing but an already artificial idea. A simulacrum, as baudrillard would put it