(or, Fun with Tsundere)

During my trip to Japan last year, I walked by the convenience store and had to stop and laugh when I saw one of the gachapon (capsule toy) machines. The machine was merrily selling “tsundere voice keychains,” which, I seem to recall, spent a lot of time sounding blustery and embarrassed about holding your keys for you.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a brief overview of tsundere for those who aren’t willing to click on the overly informative wikipedia link. Tsundere is a type of sprouting-moe which involves a character who starts off being combative, argumentative, and sometimes outright hostile to the main character (the tsun), but finally gives in to the overwhelming feelings of love that have been just under the surface the whole time (the dere). Well-known examples of tsundere include Kyou in Fruits Basket, Rukia in Bleach, and (this is my favorite example, for some reason) Vegita in Dragon Ball Z.

The tsundere archetype has become crazily popular since around 2005 or so - otaku have really latched onto the concept that all those people who have thrown spiteful comments and hateful looks their way over the years are secretly in love with them. And, as you may have guessed, various enterprising companies have tried capitalizing on this popularity with hilarious results.

Aside from the keychains I mentioned above, there’s Tomy’s SEGNITY, a portable TV which spends a lot of time complaining at you whenever you turn the volume too high or the brightness too low, but when you get tired of it and try to turn it off, starts acting sad and lonely (a great video of it in action is on youtube).

Another personal favorite is the tsundere cafe, a variant of the maid cafe where the waitresses have to act like they don’t want to serve you (again, awesome youtube video available). Japanese otaku eagerly gobble up cute girls telling them “God, you’re always late, just sit down and don’t bother me,” and “hurry up, drink, and go home, okay? Sheesh…” because as soon as they head for the door, that same girl will show her ‘true colors’ and eagerly ask “You’ll be back soon, right? Because I’ll be waiting for you.”

Tsundere isn’t slowing down very noticeably, even in the face of its rival Yandere (more on this in a later column); there’s a lot of amusing merchandise still coming out, including tsundere karuta which plays a CD full of tsundere lines at you while you and your friends have to find the card that matches the overly cutesy dialogue.

I could go on for hours about all the stupid things the Japanese have created around the tsundere concept, but I’ll save that for another time - in the meantime, I’m curious. How many of you actually like the tsundere thing, and how many people find it annoying and wish it would just go away?

Share This

Stumble it!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 3:29 am and is filed under Random, Win-Myun Kim, moe, Sprouting, geek love, anime. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.