How presumptuous of me.
This article does contain is my vague attempt at relevant inspirational content while studying for Economics.
Now is the time where I scare you off.
If you haven’t noticed it, I’m an anime fan. I shall prove it with a big size picture of my current gravatar, which is a screenshot I took from an anime called Bamboo Blade.
It is a perfect avatar for me because I make that face 99% of the time while browsing Giant In The Playground. Shudder.
Anime fans have a lot of weird character archetypes we’ve developed over the years to classify our favorite characters. Most of these archetypes are a result of stock character personalities constantly recycled in anime. Being an anime fan who DMs for anime fans, I too constantly recycle these archetypes in my games so we can all have a laugh at them when somebody figures them out (which is usually within the first few minutes of interaction). Imagine if you were to use them on people who aren’t anime fans? Why, you’d get hilarity and chaos that’s what. Or something else, I don’t know.
One thing to keep in mind is that, much like terms like New School and Old School here in RPGLand, in the warring kingdoms of Animuland, these terms are constantly debated, applied wrong, redefined and amended to the point that they blur. Here I offer what I think are the basics for these character archetypes. Another thing is that, most of these apply the most, and were originally intended for, female characters. For the sake of the article I’m expanding them beyond the realms they are usually found in.
For a bonus, try actually playing one of these archetypes sometime rather than just sticking them on some NPC in your campaign. Now that would be wild. I know because I’ve been playing tsunderes since Shakugan No Shana first aired.
Tsundere
Oh Tsundere, what a classic archetype. This one has a lot of history which I will not go into because honestly you don’t care. Why are you still reading. A Tsundere is a character who is at first relunctant, defensive and even violent in interactions with other characters, but shows moments of weakness and vulnerability when kindness and compassion are shown to it (or even just at random). Eventually, such moments will eventually get the tsundere character to hold off for longer periods of time before putting up shields (or pulling out weapons). Even more eventually, the character may come to genuinely admire or even love the other character (or characters) in question and become more open and normal.
Then you pull a character reset. Because a tsundere without any tsun is pointless.
The point here is how over-the-top it tends to be. Verbal abuse will generally ensue nigh-immediately to anyone that comes into contact with this character. Non-lethal slapstick will ensue soon after. The key is to show the first moment of weakness somewhat early so players know what they are dealing with (or at least that the person is not an unreasonable savage and only needs a little of the right prodding to be communicated with).
Tsundere make extremely funny “helper NPCs” or hirelings. A Tsundere villain would probably also be hilarious, especially if the hero decides to use The Power of Love to win the day rather than just picking up a sword and slicing throats.
The typical tsundere catchphrase is “Stupid [Thing]…it’s not like I’m [doing something] because I like you or anything! I just [really stupid excuse].”
If you’re still reading, you may actually be interested in learning more about this! Here’s the TVTropes page.
But don’t look at it yet or you’ll never return.
Yandere
A yandere is a character that is outwardly, seemingly, the sweetest, kindest, most compassionate person in the universe, so altruistic, doting, loving, or all of the above, that it seems almost too good to be true. And it is too good to be true, because the Yandere is only waiting for something to trigger its stress explosion before revealing a dark, dark side. Though it began primarily as a romantic trope (a psychotic jealous lover) it has since been expanded to include any character that starts off sweet but has moments of insanity. Yandere characters have a trigger – something that happens that reminds them that yes, they are crazy, and yes, intestines do feel smooth when you remove them from someone’s body.
Yanderes are genuinely nice though, when they are. They aren’t faking it. However, they’re stuck in polar extremes. Either they’re amazingly thoughtful and nice to an almost false point (though it is not false) or they are insane and grizzly in ways no normal, centered human being could ever possibly be. However, this isn’t involuntary either. When the anger is triggered, the person is in full (dis)control and thinking that yes, murder is a perfectly rational choice at the moment. It isn’t a case of possession or multiple unrelated personalities – this person is just insane right now and is capable of rationally justifying violence to itself. This is bipolar disorder on ‘roids, and the roid rage is comin’.
This makes a trite motivation for a villain – equatable to “I had a bad childhood!” most of the time as the reason for the crazy – but if the PCs have a home base and know their villagers well, having one that is a yandere can lead to some fun on them off-days when they’re spending a year making a sword (if you’re playing 3.5 D&D for example) or just hanging out. For fun, give the yandere side a statistical boost that puts it on the level of the PCs when triggered. Seeing a “random 1 hp villageperson” suddenly become a Level 15 Solo Brute would be astonishing. Hit points are circumstantial anyway.
Here’s the TVTropes page.
Kuudere
A kuudere is a character that outwardly shows no emotion. Blank expressions (or perhaps just dismissive ones), few words (most of them probably devoid of emotion, or full of the wrong kind of emotion) and seemingly nary a care about other people. This person may be intimidating or unapproachable in some other way. In reality, the character has a kind inner side that it is hiding for one reason or another. If not kind, it is at least presentable rather than blank. Or at least not crazy. This makes a good personality for a villain’s right-hand kind of character, and depending on the circumstances can make for a tragic villain, but really only if the PCs have some way of looking at the character’s past.
I once had a big bad evil critter where the entire point of the campaign was to retrace the steps it took during its own epic quest to save the world. The PCs were epic level (this was 3.5) and they could’ve fought the big beast whenever they wanted to. But they had a choice of going to these locations and as they discovered more about the person it used to be, they began to sympathize with the monster and with the person the monster used to be (I use monster very loosely – it was still very much humanoid in appearance and mannerisms). This gave them an edge in the final battle, where I allowed each character a Diplomacy check, with bonuses from each adventure, that dealt the check’s result as unhealable damage to the bad guy.
That was pretty awesome and I should do it again.
The TVTropes page for this one is pretty sorry compared to the other two, so I won’t be linking it. This is the least developed of the three terms.
There’s also Darudere and Dorodere, but they’re more obscure. The fact that I know them at all shows how much time I spend on this kind of thing.
Until next time, I got nothing. Back to reading about the Organization of firms and Perfect Competition.
Hahaha~! I wonder how many people in the RPG world would have come across these terms. These are certainly more applicable to me than other character archetypes.
Stupid Questing…i-i-it’s not like I a-appreciate your c-c-comment or anything! I just feel like I should reply as it is a duty of a blog administrator to do so! HMPH!
I don’t know whether to feel proud or ashamed that I knew what tsundere meant before reading this. (Thank you Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture!) At least yandere and kuudere are new to me.
You should be extremely proud of yourself. But don’t feel too 1337, until you manage for yourself to find what Daru and Doro dere mean. Then you’re really 1337.
Why did I think House and Wilson for the first two? I’m applying stupid fan stuff to other stupid fan stuff. How has this happened to me?
I feel empathy for your economics pain. I have to take accounting next year. It’s the only part of my business minor that isn’t going to be a total blast. (Mostly because they like to offer it at 8 am. WTF, business department?)
Do you think of House and Wilson as ambiguously gay for each other? Did you think that when Wilson sawed halfway through House’s cane or took House’s guitar hostage that both inanimate, longer than they are wide objects were metaphors for House’s penis?
No. So I guess I have that going for me. Then again, being a gay girl, I tend not to think about penises.
I do think 13 and Cameron would make a great couple. While 13 is female, she’s also Cameron’s type – dying. (Incidentally, by ‘great’ I mean ‘hot,’ not ‘functional’ or ‘healthy’.)
So that’s why we get along so well. I tend to not think about penises as well.
…
Let’s get this conversation back to the three -deres please.
Wait you don’t like Order of the Stick? :0
Very informative on the anime archetypes… someone should do a compilation of archetypes that varies by culture, because Asian, Eastern European, and Western Archetypes are all very different. (Don’t ask me to go into detail because honestly that’s all I know.)
I used to love OotS and now it goes from “that was pretty good” to “blech”. I love Erfworld.
But GITP is more than just comic strips. It’s also a (generally) pretty bad forum unless you happen to like flavor-of-the-month 3.5 spellcasting “fixes.”
And yes, somebody should. But the anime ones would probably be under-represented. Nobody seems to take it very seriously as a storytelling medium (except for shit from the dawn of man like Akira), so analysis of it would probably be limited.
My one critique of OotS would probably be that Burlew seems to be suffering from “Robert Jordan syndrome” currently in that he’s split up the characters and hasn’t brought them back together for a whole year, which sucks. Though admittedly he hasn’t gone all out with the Robert Jordan thing and introduced a hundred new minor characters that we don’t care about waste the last two books on those stupid characters and then have the nerve to FUCKING DIE leaving the series unfinished.
Heh. I’m not actually that bitter, but I figure that comment will stir the pot some…
I, for one, loved how Jordan’s books devolved into an inventory of dress colour and cup size.
I mean, compared to what happened to the Sword of Truth.
I think a compilation of archetypes would have to differentiate between universal, cultural and niche. For example: wise old man is universal, grizzled cowboy is western (but probably is analogous to other cultural archetypes from other places), and the various stereotypical bishounen are niche to anime. It’s not that it’s less valid, it’s just that it doesn’t necessarily represent the entire culture – there are archetypes in anime that you probably won’t find elsewhere in eastern culture, and I’m sure the same can be said for various genres of western media.
If you guys want a really absurd high fantasy series, I suggest “Apostrophes and Fire Everywhere.” It’s published under the name “The Banned and the Banished” and the first book is “Wit’ch Fire.” (See what I mean?) The series is subtitled “James Clemens lives in the 50s where all foreigners are exotic and all evildoers are S&M fans.” It starts at 11 in terms of badassery, magical shenanigans, and explosions, and just goes up from there. He’s utterly shameless about cliches, obvious plot twists, and total over-the-top-ness. You’ll love (or, if you’re Wyatt, love to hate) it.
It sounds like my kind of book honestly. Most of the fiction I write is, though usually subtle in its sheer absurdity, stupid and derivative genre fiction parody. It’s just what I like. (Though I am writing something moar srs I hope I may be able to sell someday. If I can’t, I’ll publish it through Lulu. Fuck you genre fiction industry.)
So I’m naturally drawn to satire and sheer ridiculousness. The only time I really dislike it is when it takes itself really seriously (as Order of the Stick began to do quite some time ago with Rich Burlews FUCK JOKES I HAVE A PLOTLINE NOW!) or if tries to change gears abruptly (moving from subtle genre parody to SUDDENLY, EXPLOSIONS AND SLAPSTICK.)
It’s not satire. That’s the thing. Sometimes I can’t tell if I love it for the sublime absurdity or think it’s the worst drivel I’ve ever read. (Anything involving Mogweed leans towards drivel, anything involving Mycelle is awesome.) The one thing I can say for him is when he does the obvious plot twists, at least the characters catch on fast. And I’m convinced the only character he will not kill off (I have one book yet to go) is the main character’s pony. And the characters that die, stay dead, except for the ones who don’t.
It gets utterly ridiculous at about the fourth book, during which there is a scene that goes kind of as follows:
“The prophecy says I need to take the shapeshift
Stupid button.
“The prophecy says I need to take the shapeshifter with me.”
“So that’s me, the shapeshifting shapeshifty natural-born shapeshifter of a shapeshifter race, right?”
“No, the other one.”
“So that’s me, the not-shapeshifting-right-now but still a shapeshifter shapeshifty guy and his shapeshifter brother, right?”
“No, the other one.”
“I’m not a shapeshifter.”
“Yes you are.”
My personal rationale for that scene is “Mycelle’s badassery is unbalancing the entire party’s badass allotment, so she needs to go away with some ninjas for a while.”
Well, that still sounds halfway more coherent than some manga I’m reading right now, so I would still check it out.
Let me know if you figure out how to pronounce apostrophes in the middle of consonant clusters. I still haven’t.
Hey Wyatt, if you like Satire and Ridiculousness… have you heard of Warren Ellis?
There’s also Garth Ennis, though he delights more in fisting and over the top stupid sexual depravity.
Ennis sticks with a format for his stories overall. All of his antagonists are sexual deviants. It’s predictable but it works. As for over the top… probably not, the top is very high up there.
Everyone in his stories are sexual deviants.
Um… no. For that to be the case his books would have to be about nothing but sex. However giving you the benefit of the doubt I think that if we assume that by “everyone” you mean more than 50% of the characters in his books, and by “sexual deviants” you mean that there is some reference to them having had sex at some point or the implication thereof. Then yes you are absolutely correct.
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