Dere

Sweetness! That is basically what dere is all about, but in the otaku community, it has become a suffix of terms to describe particular female character archetypes.

I swear I've talked about this before.

Checking my meager past posts, I see that I haven't leaving me to rant about these things at length.

According to my research, there are four main types of the -dere archetype:

1. Tsundere (Sweet hidden by hostility)
2. Dandere (Sweet hidden by shyness/antisocial tendencies)
3. Kuudere (Sweet hidden by coldness/lack of emotion)
4. Yandere (Sweet not hidden. Too sweet, in fact. Psychotic Sweet.)

Tsundere is by far the most common (and popular) of these archetypes, followed by Yandere. In fact, that's why the image above shows these two. It's not surprising, really. Tsundere is by far the easiest archetype to squeeze out cheap drama and shallow slapstick. Tsundere can be done well, but it's easy to do a 'good enough' mediocre attempt. Yandere is second as it provides an effective foil to the tsundere, especially as the romantic false lead, only to reveal her possessive tendencies.

I hope my opinion about tsunderes didn't show that much in my description, because I don't want the impact of the next sentence to be lessened in any way. I HATE tsunderes. They always struck me as idiotic and immature. I am fully aware that that reaction is not dissimilar to how a tsundere might act (ho ho irony), but really, I dislike the fact that they have, in my vain and overstated opinion, over-saturated the market and overshadowed the other -dere archetypes, which are more interesting and appealing. the dere (sweet) is supposed to be enhanced by the tsun (rough), but any dere is tainted by the tsun in the bland, cookie-cutter tsunderes that are out there. It may be because of Naru from Love Hina (one of the first anime I ever watched) being such a bitch, but there you go.

It really should come with no surprise that Danderes and Kuuderes are my favourites. Before, I would have had Danderes as my very favourites, but with, well;

• Ai (Amagami)
• Lain (Serial Experiments Lain)
• Rei (Neon Genesis Evangelion)
• Eriko (Kimikiss)
• Yue (Negima)
• Chane and Ennis (Baccano)
• Angel (Angel Beats!)
• And, of course, the queen of my heart, Yuki (Suzumiya Haruhi series)

...as my favourite characters from their respective series, its pretty clear that I have a serious Kuudere bias. Yes, some of these are cookie cutter (Angel, anyone?) but I love them all the same.

Kuudere; tsunderes with much-needed sanity.