[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAtaLTDrHXM[/youtube]
I’ve been holding off on this post for quite a while, simply because I don’t particularly want to throw a fit about something as stupid as this and just make a big elitist ass out of myself, but I just can’t fucking take it anymore. For fuck’s sake, everyone, please stop using the phrase ‘tsundere’ altogether. It no longer fucking means anything. The phrase is completely and utterly dead.
As you ought to know, ‘tsundere’ was originally meant to describe a character who starts off being somewhat of a bitch to the main character and eventually warms up to them and loves them. I don’t even need to say anything else about what happened to it, it’s right there in the fucking video. You heard it from SHIRAISHI FUCKING MINOURU — TWO FUCKING YEARS AGO!!! And I know you fucking saw it! Everyone and their god damn fucking grandma watched Lucky fucking Star! And think about it – this is a fucking Japanese show, meaning that this phrase has been getting destroyed not only by dumbass Western bloggers but by goddamn dumbass Japanese bloggers/2channellers/whatthefuckever. The phrase has not meant anything for over 2 years, but people are still using the shit!
I wouldn’t be bothered by this if the phrase didn’t come with such massive negative connotations. When people hear ‘tsundere’ it almost always gets coupled with ‘ornery bitch’ and ‘generic character archetype.’ And yet, most of the fucking characters who are referred to as tsundere have no fucking similarities between them beyond surface level! Let’s take the most commonly attacked group of so-called tsundere, the Kugimiya 4.
Shana – Not a tsundere by conventional definition. She finds herself falling in love with the main character by the sixth fucking episode but never manages to completely ‘understand’ her emotions and then even after confessing to him still doesn’t know how to act around him. Not a progression from hate to love.
Louise – Not a tsundere – she flips constantly between loving and hating the guy, never settling on one.
Nagi – Not even remotely a tsundere. She loves Hayate from the beginning of Hayate no Gotoku and she is never really a bitch to him, just really difficult about expressing her emotions to him and easily gets into misunderstandings.
Taiga – Taiga is actually the only thing close to the original definition! She didn’t like Ryuuji at first and (not so) slowly falls in love with him! However, the only reason she didn’t chase him from the start was because she was busy being dere for Kitamura. Not sure how that is considered.
So we have four characters who not only don’t meet the original definition of tsundere, but aren’t alike enough that calling all of them tsundere would give you a clear new definition. The only thing connecting them is their character designs and voice actress – not a goddamn aligned personality trait.
People actually had the nerve – nay, the GALL to call Kagami from Lucky Star a tsundere? Are you fucking serious? Who does she even love? Who does she become dere for? I have another phrase for you dumbasses – it’s called ‘tsukkomi.’ In Japanese comedy there is often a ‘boke’ and ‘tsukkomi’ – the roles you see played by Konata and Kagami respectively, as well as by literally hundred of other characters in shit tons of other anime. Konata says something silly, Kagami plays straight-man to her setup. It’s totally obvious, down to Kagami’s deadpan expression and tendency to flick her wrist at the air or give Konata a slap when she reacts, super easy-to-spot tsukkomi trademarks. What the hell about that equals a tsundere?
The shit is getting out of hand. I honestly thought that it would start to die down and I wouldn’t have to hear the phrase anymore before long, but it’s gotten so fucking ingrained into the anime fan lexicon that it shows no sign of stopping – no one even knows what it means anymore! I’m willing to bet that if I asked someone I didn’t know who uses the term to define it for me, they’d say ‘a character who is sometimes a bitch’ and it just pisses me off!
Of course, I wouldn’t be ranting like this without a reason. Erin Finnegan, the relatively new author of the Shelf Life column at ANN, showed a lot of potential at first, but has slowly been disappointing more and more every week. This week, though, she really screwed the pooch in her review of Spice and Wolf. In it, she repeatedly calls Horo a tsundere, and mentions how she ‘doesn’t usually like tsundere characters’ with the exception of Haruhi Fucking Suzumiya of all things. (Who is bewilderingly not a fucking tsundere, nor really any kind of tsun or dere depending on how you go about dissecting her personality, which is literally impossible to do definitively because of the series’ purposeful ambiguity – I digress.) It might not have even been so bad if she hadn’t considered one of the show’s qualities as ‘for people who like tsunderes.’ Which of course implies to a reader, whose misconceptions about tsunderes are probably all the fuck over the place, that if they don’t like tsundere then they won’t like the show.
Well fuck my ass. Horo. A Tsundere. That’s probably the craziest shit I’ve heard all damn week. Horo is never once ‘tsun’ in the entirety of Spice and Wolf. She is immediately quite kind to Lawrance, and she shows signs of romance fairly early on. She’s a bit of a tease – but she is never mean. She is never hateful. She is never a bitch. And what’s more, the term ‘tsundere’ carries a HEAVY connotation that the character is generic, which is the absolute fucking opposite of true for Horo, considering that she’s been widely credited as one of the most multi-faceted characters in modern anime.
Erin tries to fix her mistake in the forum discussion, saying this: “but my take on it is kind of like… you can be a little bit of a tsundere. Holo isn’t a one-stroke character, she’s not just a “type,” she has a lot of depth. I think of her as part-tsundere.” Right. You can be a little bit of a definitive progressive attitude. You can be ‘part’ a direct movement from one emotion to another. That’s what it means to say that – oh, you want to use the ‘other’ definition? The one it’s evolved into? Well, that one has no fucking meaning. So if we use that one, than I simply have no fucking idea what you are talking about.
Later in the discussion she says this: “I think we can probably all agree on a few tsundere characters: Taiga Aisaka, Haruhi Suzumiya, and Naru Narusegawa (Love Hina). Those girls are 100% true tsundere. Maybe what I ought to have said about Holo was, “I think that sometimes she acts like a tsundere.” It’s not a cut-and-dry case, that’s why there’s so much debate here.” I’m just embarrassed now. Let’s just stop, please.
Everyone. Please. Stop using the fucking term tsundere. Just stop. Let the fucking shit die and let’s move on to real fucking character discussion instead of bullshit, weak-ass generalizing character definitions with absolutely no fucking meaning.
By the way, if you support the idea of abolishing the word tsundere, by all means spread the word. It would be awesome if you could link any offenders to this post. I certainly will where appropriate.
“this is a fucking Japanese show, meaning that this phrase has been getting destroyed”
Its fucking called fucking evolution of the fucking language, is that such a fucking hard concept ? Fucking relax and let fucking people do as they fucking please. Shall we call so called fucking “American English” a crippled version of fucking ENGLISH ? Why dont you fucking take fucking steps to fucking clean English of that fucking shit ?
You must have missed my fucking point about how there IS NO FUCKING EVOLUTION beause the term has evolved to mean ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING. Don’t be a stupid dumb-shit pulling ass-backwards stock blanket arguments that add nothing to the discussion and moreover ignore it’s points.
LOL get a grip man, and stop being so tsundere.
http://knowyourmeme.com/i/29315/original/10230_161137581201_614166201_3498101_6510903_n.jpg?1259986582
…don’t ask me why this immediately came to mind when I read that comment.
I… won’t…
That’s laugh out funny, dude!! LOL
I’m only somewhat agree with you here. So, can you give an example of a true good old tsudere? On the top of my head, looking at the comment above I think Mikoto come pretty closed, but that’s still a “1-3 novels/with two months” time frame. A closer one maybe Matsudaira Touko in Marimitte (despite it’s a yuri). It was about six months I think before she warm up to Yumi.
I do agree with you that the term is so badly used now though.
Honestly, I don’t know who any true tsundere are. The term came to be in 02 long before I was watching anime and I’m pretty sure that it was originally made to refer to visual novel characters moreso than anime characters (this before there were so many anime adaptions of visual novels). You’d have to probably ask a purist, somewhat oldfag Japanese dude.
And it’s sad. Because I actually do enjoy Tsundere characters. =/ I can’t honestly say I’ve ever watched any anime with true Tsundere characters, but the concept behind it entertains me a great deal. Taiga, for instance. Yes, she loved Kitamura at first, but that doesn’t change the way she acted around Takasu that much.
Tsundere in the classic sense can and should be applied retroactively. The nomenclature was invented to describe something that already existed. With that in mind, my vote goes to Tendo Akane. And if you’re willing to squint just a little, Hayase Misa.
I agree. Wholescale abandonment of terms because some people are too stupid to use them correctly isn’t a terribly useful response; instead, it would probably make sense more to attempt a shift of usage toward the more proper definition. People misuse words all the time, but no on says we should get rid of them, because that just wouldn’t make sense. Its kind of like ceasing to use airplanes for travel because some people like to blow them up – you’re letting other people dictate the terms of engagement, essentially. To cease usage altogether is admitting defeat.
As for Taiga, I somewhat challenge the assertion that the entire reason for her not going after Ryuuji was due to her having a crush on Kitamura; unlike all those idiot characters who’re like, “zomg! what is this fuzzy feeling?!”, she basically gets it when it happens, but she knows Minori likes him, too, so she doesn’t want to fuck with that since they’re friends. Not that this entire bit matters in the grand scheme of the post; I just happen to be a hair-splitter.
The reason I want to wholesale abandon it is that, say you are using it correctly – your audience doesn’t know that. It’s kind of like people using the words ‘ecchi’ and ‘hentai’ incorrectly – if I were going to talk about something pornographic, I would probably call it ‘H’ or ‘ecchi’ but people will be confused because they know ‘ecchi’ as being ‘fanservice’. If I am using ‘tsundere’ correctly, people will assume I mean whatever their fucked-up definition is, and will therefor misread my post.
You could make note of the correct definition, however. You probably have a better chance of getting people to use the term correctly rather than having them just not use it at all.
Tsundere Elimination Game, anyone?
I seriously considered.
I second the motion.
Make that thirded.
I found it amusing that you censored “fucking” but not “asshole” xD.
But hey, let the people do whatever they want with the term, not as if it would impact a vast majority of the people around the internet anyway…
Tsundere Elimination Game? Oh, c’mon.
That’s Digital Boy for you. He enjoys him some cussing.
But he gave an example right now if why it could affect a lot of people that people don’t know what they’re talking about. And how the hell is Haruhi EVER a Tsundere, anyway…
I’m bigger on the idea for a Tsundere Elimination Game than I am for the Otaku one. Narutards and other nooblets who have no idea what they’re talking about don’t give us a bad name, they just annoy us. But again, he already mentioned one reason why people NOT UNDERSTANDING WHAT TSUNDERE MEANS IN THE SLIGHTEST could be detrimental.
I had to censor ‘fucking’ because Anime Nano doesn’t let you have ‘fuck’ in your post titles.
Y’know. I got about halfway through the post, completely agreeing with everything you said, but not understanding why it was such a big deal.
Then I remembered how a friend of mine told me to ‘stay away from Tsunderes’ when I mentioned that I, uh…like tomboys. >.>
EMBARRASSING CONFESSION ASIDE. I promptly smacked him upside the head and yelled at him for the next five minutes.
I’ll be off to spread the good word then.
I think he actually said ‘two years ago’ that the term had evolved from it’s original meaning, and in his opinion, he didn’t like it, because in his opinion, it was ‘misused’. Although you may think that it was westerners who ‘misused’ it, it was the Japanese. When they stop using it, we will.
This is their world, they make the rules, we just dub it into English.
lol its like i’m reading a ‘tsundere’ version of OEG. But yeah, I guess you does have a right to be pissed. I’m pissed when people said Kagami is a tsundere. I was like… WTF? hence why I don’t like her. And Horo is definitely NOT a tsundere *facepalm*
Isn’t the modern tsundere as simple as a girl who, usually because she’s very shy, can’t be honest about falling in love? It has a bit of that playground “boys tease the girls they like” appeal. With that in mind, three of the “Rie Four” fit rather well. (I admit I can’t speak for Nagi, not having seen much of Hayate no Gotoku.) The earliest character I can think of in this mold is Narusegawa Naru from Love Hina.
Horo, though, a tsundere… You’re right, that’s a pretty terrible judgment of her character.
Do people often say “well fuck my ass” where you’re from? Because it has just the right sort of sassy twang to work, but I don’t think I could ever say it with a straight face.
Once again, if your definition there was clear-cut and exactly how everyone was using the word, I’d be fine with it perhaps. However, it isn’t just used like that, which is why it’s lost it’s meaning.
ROFLMAO you know I don’t think I’ve heard anyone use the phrase ‘well fuck my ass’ in conversation before, except maybe myself. I know I picked it up from some kind of movie.
I hope you realize that this Lucky Channel clip is making fun of exactly the sort of holier-than-thou fundamentalism that you display in this post. As Shiraishi says, nowadays, tsundere refers to a character with a tsuntsun side and a deredere side (the former generally being a facade), the gap between which constitutes a charm point. And that’s a considerably more useful definition, as it corresponds to a well-identified character archetype that has become quite prevalent (which doesn’t mean all tsundere are one and the same, of course).
In today’s sense, Louise is more of a tsundere than Taiga (although I do agree with your point that the Kugi-four are very different from one another).
Regardless of what the video means, it’s message is still true. And it once again wouldn’t bother me if we all agreed that what Louise is = tsundere, but that’s not the only way the phrase is being used.
I’d say everyone agrees that Louise (or, say, Tousaka Rin) is a tsundere, except for a small number of anal-retentive jerks who only ever heard the word in its newer sense but insist to keep the former meaning which they only read about on Wikipedia. </troll-bait>
OK, can we agree that the gal in School Days, gah, what’s her friggin name, Kotonohana or something, is yandere? If we can, then let’s define tsundere as the opposite of kotonowookie or whatever her name is, and we’re done..That said, I can’t think of any real tsunderes offhand…
To be fair, I don’t think people would’ve called Kagamin a tsundere if Konata herself hadn’t made multiple references to it.
It’s true. I would not have parodied it otherwise.
I do enjoy Kagami’s look in that picture.
I read more a desperate cry for “stop using a word i no longer know what it means, and raping what it might mean something to nothing” than an attempt to try to correct it. it’s like someone is trying to stop a leak in his house, but doesn’t know how.
also
>> She is never a bitch.
but…but how else do you call the female sex of a domestic canine?!
ROFL
I don’t know what ‘raping what it might mean something to nothing’ translates to from Omo-language, but anyway, yes, this is a desperate cry to get people to use a phrase I no longer know what it means. For no reason other than I’m tired of hearing it.
raping the meaning of the word. you get the idea.
Hmm…. so part of being tsundere is being a bitch… does this mean Inukami’s Yoko is a tsundere?
And, actually, no, not everyone watched Lucky Star, thank you.
You didn’t watch Lucky Star? Fuck you are out of the loop.
No, I just don’t enjoy watching crappy shows.
In that case you really dropped the ball here. Seeing as Lucky Star is great.
You’re not as gayyyyy as I thought.
I’m only gay for you, Baka-Raptor. I’m pretty sure being gay for you means I could never enjoy something like Lucky Star, or that I’d have to weep bitterly to my Jigoku Shoujo body pillow before then accessing the Jigoku Tsuushin so I could send you to hell, and thereby instantly become a lost episode for the third season of that show. Or, y’know, something like that.
I always thought Blue was the best bitch in anime ever.
I guess my perverted nature just led me to think of an Inukami character first.
Oh boy, digiboy, you’re so tsundere for alternate usage of ‘tsundere.’
It’s kind of cute, but also disturbing, that you would rage so long and so hard. I agree completely with everything Omo says in the comment above.
>>considering that she’s been widely credited as one of the most multi-faceted characters in modern anime.
Anyone who thinks that needs to watch Honey & Clover and realize that these glowy moe moe shows have shit for characters once and for all. Horo is no better than fucking Mio from K-ON!: she displays lots of different character traits, each of them signifying nothing.
You could understand what Omo said above? Lol, but seriously, I think I agreed with him, so whatever.
As for the second part of your comment, really? Honey and Clover? Whatever, man.
Also I feel the need to point out that Shiraishi gets beat the fuck down in the embedded video…
I never knew about the term “tsukommi” before. The way you describe it, it really does fit Kagami better than “tsundere.” Wish I had known about it sooner. I saw that Shelf Life too and I was thinking the same thing. Horo a tsundere…no way.
I wouldn’t mind if the word “tsundere” died out. But could it really, even though so many anime feature characters who have attributes of the term? (foul-tempered violent girls who are abusive to a guy at first then eventually get dere over him) Fans would want to come up with an easy way to describe such an archetype…perhaps a new term besides “tsundere” is in order? Or is a term for such a character unnecessary?
Have you ever visited the Tsundere Club on MAL? They have a good (I think) definition of “tsundere” on their main page, at least the definition that most people follow.
I’m pissed that people call me a paedophile.
You’d rather they spell it without the extraneous letter a?
this
AMERIKKAN IMPERIALISM!
if those 4 can make you piss offf that much i wonder what do you think about senjougahara from bakemongatari being called tsundere-chan ?
To quote the 6-fingered man, ‘that has got to be the worst thing I’ve ever heard!’
Eh, words evolve. No point trying to stop it IMO.
I kinda agree with Omisyth here. Not only Japanese words have evolved over time. Gay use to mean happy but now is widely referred to the sexual preferences of males liking males. Or it’s a slang term for not liking something “oh that’s so gay”.
then again some people just don’t know how to use words properly or care to make sure they are using them in the right way especially if a word has evolved so much into slang territory and no one even agrees anymore on what it really means.
“Tsundere” is not necessarily a character description as much as it is a way for a character to act towards another character.
There is no such thing as a “tsundere” character, as that would indicate the character is mad at everyone in the beginning, only to warm up to everyone in the end. The concept of “tsundere” is a vector; there has to be a direction at the emotion.
You know those arrow diagrams they use in manga sometimes in order to designate love and hate? That’s “tsundere”. Taiga Aisaka isn’t “tsundere”; she acts in a “tsundere” way towards Ryuuji. If she was “all-tsundere”, as indicated by the example above, she wouldn’t have been in love with Kitamura.
I’m all for abolishing the term’s use for describing characters, but not for its use in describing the emotions a character has towards another character.
But Kagami is definitely a “tsukkomi” to her twin sister’s “boke”. Those are more character descriptions than actual emotional vectors.
Very, very good point here. I’ll keep this in mind int he future.
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b269/MetalSonic700/Picture1-1.png
I’d like to thank everyone who made this possible. And yes, that’s more than my 200+ shows post got.
Tsundere is HERESY.
*rams the Battle Barges The Litany of Litany’s Litany and MAXIMUM FUCK into EVERYONE EVER.
Tsundere is just some otaku cancer. That’s why I hate it so much. Also, why so tsundere?
This ones for you Digital Boy.
http://animewriter.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/tsundere-girls-training-motivator.jpg
Hard Outer Shell, Gooey Center.
Funny you should say that while I’m chewing on this Trident Burst, which is perfectly described by that exact phrase…
I agree with you that the meaning of tsundere has been warped into something different, but I don’t see that as something necessarily negative. This was a term popularized by anime fandom to describe a personality and so if the fans decide to change the meaning, I am fine with that.
Anyway, I think mt-i from the comments is pretty spot on.
It wasn’t just the fans, I’m afraid. Dengeki Bunko promoted the crap out of Zero no Tsukaima by calling Louise a tsundere. And even if fandom as a whole had some say in the matter, I wonder how the early adapters of the word feel about the way it’s used today? Instead they get called purists or elitists because they stick to what they believe. Perhaps dropping the word completely really is our best option. Take moe for example; it’s pretty much a dead term out of practically the same reasons tsundere is.
Oh, it was Media Factory, my bad.
Interesting facts, and I’m totally in agreement.
Actually, Louise from ZnT adheres to the original definition, she just hasn’t gotten all the way to the deredere side yet. (And probably never will as long as they keep the series going, or at least leave it open, since that would likely mark the end. See: Ranma 1/2, Love Hina) She flips back and forth between love and hate, sure, but throughout the three seasons the amount of love has slowly increased.
Also, I agree with GT’s comment that being tsundere requires a target and isn’t a general description of the character’s personality. When describing a character as tsundere, I think of it as just what they’re primarily known for, not the character as a whole.
[...] 12, 2010, 8:35 am Filed under: Anime, Chu-Bra | Tags: Anime, Chu-Bra, episode 2 I wonder how DigitalBoy would react if I said I was ‘tsundere’ for Chu-Bra. At least it’s in a classical sense, [...]
[...] is Nyx, the best character ever. She’s basically a yandere take on the neo-tsundere. As neo-tsunderes frequently alternate between timid and bitchy, Nyx frequently alternates between [...]
[...] kuitenkaan kovinkaan täydellisesti yksittäisiä hahmoja, kuten jo pitkään käynnissä ollut tsundere-sota osoittaa). Hahmo on moe, kun sillä on valtavat silmät ja viaton sokerikuorrutus ja se ääntelee [...]
this was hilarious but:
by now a tsundere is defined as someone who can’t express him/herself well enough. i.e a girl can’t express how much she loves the protagonist for example, is tagged a tsundere.
also i agree with debresko who also agrees with ‘GT’s comment that being tsundere requires a target and isn’t a general description of the character’s personality. When describing a character as tsundere, I think of it as just what they’re primarily known for, not the character as a whole.’
each character you mentioned had a problem in showing their feelings to the main protagonist at some (and/or most) points of the story and for Senjougahara, how she expresses herself left a tsun impression, leading to the tsundere tag.
By all means, tsundere is just one representation of a characteristic of a character. As wise people say,”Don’t be so fucking narrow-minded.”, everytime someone says Tsundere, Taiga and Mio are the first characters to pop up (due to truth and moe respectively) but it has a broad meaning so I shake that off in a couple of milliseconds and my brain says ‘a character that has difficulty expressing whatever he/she actually wants to show”
other examples: a shy person who wants to speak up but can’t is sometimes described tsundere. A person who really wants to be sincere but ends up blushing is usually ‘tsundere’. A person who tries to tell someone I love you or express love but blushes and fails miserably is also ‘tsundere’. For a textbook example that’s probably overboard of what the modern definition of tsundere is, Mayoi Neko Overrun.
There is no ‘true tsundere’ anymore, to be honest.
You are the first person to retro-comment on this post that I didn’t have to delete, haha. I almost did to when I read the name you used, but luckily I read the rest of the comment.
“By all means, tsundere is just one representation of a characteristic of a character.”
You know, if you put it that way, I am more than willing to accept that. I will accept that if we use the word tsundere universally to describe a character’s difficulty of self-expression, but do not let that define their entire character, then that’s cool. I only really get mad when a character is described as a ‘tsundere’ as if that was the only word needed to define them, because it doesn’t show respect for their character and makes them look like nothing but a cliche. That’s what inspired this post when, way back, Erin F. described Horo as a tsundere, which felt utterly wrong to me. But I can’t say I even fully grasp my perspective at the time of writing this since it was very much a one-off burst of energy and emotion, and I got right back to not giving a fuck about the word, but in any case, I am currently willing to accept what you have said here, regardless of if I was when I made this post.
Incidentally, I can’t believe I ever wrote something this angry-sounding before LOL
At the moment I think the most commonly used definition is “acting cold/indifferent towards something because they cannot honestly express how they feel about it” or something along the lines of that [like a representation of their attitude towards something..?] I do understand the original definition of being cold towards someone you like and eventually warm up to them [or whatever it is] but I’m going to use my definition for the rest of my post since I want to explain my views =D.
“By all means, tsundere is just one representation of a characteristic of a character.”
I actually think it’s quite true that tsundere is a representation of ‘a’ characteristic of a character. This means that a character does not only have the tsundere characteristic, but a whole bunch of other traits as well. Which is why characters called tsunderes are very different since tsundere isn’t their one and only trait. Take Mio for example, she has many different traits such as being very girly [lol at her lyrics], serious, mature, scardy cat etc. Sure, she may be considered as a tsundere, but it’s the other characters that also makes up the character Mio and makes her different to other characters.
“When describing a character as tsundere, I think of it as just what they’re primarily known for, not the character as a whole”
Agreed. I believe that characters are called tsundere because they’re either known for that trait and are liked due to it. [Since it's a major moe trait apparently] So if a character is liked due to their tsundere characteristic, they’re most likely gona be called a tsundere.
Just my two cents ;D Sorry if I repeated myself or you already know all this, but I just want to say what I feel about this topic xD
Jyang
[...] J’ai ce qu’il faut pour ça. Allez, plus que 2 contrôles… >,< Oui bon, d’accord c’est une Tsukkomi. Je m’excuse. Enfin [...]
TSUN TSUN DERE TSUN DERE TSUN TSUN
If HORO isn’t tsundere, well… fuck me.
Tsundere = snotty/blushy. GET OVER IT.
Language changes over time, that is just the way things work.
Tsunderes don’t exist.
Although, I love to watch “tsundere” animes. :D