Did you think tsunderes were limited to we Japanese? Even the Americans hate your idiocy, and you know it!
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Harsh (Tsun)
- Spider-Man: This might be a little bit disturbing for newer fans of the comic and the character, but in her earliest appearances, Gwen Stacy fit this trope quite nicely. After her death, all flashbacks have shown Gwen as more of a Girl Next Door. Proof.
◊ - Disney Ducks Comic Universe examples:
- Glittering Goldie and Scrooge McDuck's entire relationship is fueled by cantankerous and even violent interactions, but both with underlying feelings of deep affection and melancholy romance that goes unconfessed for 50 years. The dancehall showgirl Glittering Goldie, being known as the "Ice Queen of Dawson" due to her immense frigidity and kleptomaniacal cunning. She seduces the rough-necked, foul-tempered, stingy sourdough gold miner, Scrooge McDuck, drugs his coffee and steals his giant "Goose Egg Nugget". When he awakens after being clobbered and left in a snow-drift outside of town, he proceeds to storm into the ballroom, kidnaps Goldie and forces her to work his claim in the mountains to show her what it means to work for your keep instead of stealing it. She stays in hopes of stealing the deed for his claim, but over time the two cold hearts begin to thaw for each other, both never confessing their feelings and their love going unspoken long after Scrooge becomes the gazillionaire tycoon we know and love.
- Daisy Duck is an iconic tsundere of Western comics and animation. Her varying between lovey-dovey and cranky is also pretty understandable considering Donald's personality.
- Daisy also has a superhero alter ego, Paperinika (Super Daisy in English-language stories) that eventually reaches this kind of relationship with Paperinik (the Duck Avenger), as she, a borderline (and originally not so borderline) Straw Feminist, despises Paperinik as a symbol of male oppression and he doesn't like her unwarranted hatred, but as they get to know each other they start to respect and even like each other, to the point of Belligerent Sexual Tension they will never act upon due to having a significant other... That just happens to be each other, as Paperinik's Secret Identity is Donald Duck.
- In Paperinik New Adventures Xadhoom is a very Harsh one toward Paperinik.
- Monet St. Croix with Sabretooth in Cullen Bunn's Uncanny X-Men (2016). Bunn recently said they were a torturous love, confirming them as having romantic feelings for each other. However, Monet runs hot & cold when it comes to Creed. We see how she checks him out in chapter five◊, compared to how cold she is in chapter six◊. As the latter shows, she usually doesn't call Creed by his first name and when he points it out, she instantly gets defensive. He briefly loses it and prepares to tear in Callisto during a fight. Monet separates them and Callisto says she could tell Monet was scared seeing what Creed really is, prompting her to dismiss Callisto as getting her psychology degree in the sewers where she lives. Creed gets protective of her when she's spooked by her brother, and tells her there is nothing wrong with it, but she sneers she didn't need him swooping in like a Knight in Tarnished Armor.
- Batman:
- Damian Wayne is mean and jerkish to everyone in general. But he clearly sees Dick Grayson as a Big Brother Mentor and respects him, even standing up to his mother on one occasion when she talked bad about Dick. He also treats Stephanie Brown/Batgirl III, Alfred, and Jon Kent/Superboy like this.
- Batman himself is this. He can be ice cold and detached, but at his core he cares about protecting people, even if it means staying away from relationships.
- Katchoo in Strangers in Paradise, especially where David is concerned.
- Hellion of the X-Men towards X-23.
- Eventually deconstructed. X-23 is a Shrinking Violet, and even after Hellion stops bullying her because of this, he does not quite get that she finds his brashness intimidating. It takes several moments of Break the Haughty before he is even willing to consider the thought that he might be attracted to her, and his Love Confession is marked by a Forceful Kiss that X-23 does not especially enjoy; this is why they don't get together.
- In a non-romantic capacity, his reasons for being tsundere mark Hellion's character arc. Initially, he acted tsun because he was an arrogant Spoiled Brat. This changed as the Trauma Conga Line hit, and he found himself questioning everything he had once taken for granted. He expressed his confusion about life and his fear of abandonment by acting rebellious and defensive—essentially, a more violent variant of the trope. Currently, he has a dere side, but refuses to show it to anyone for fear of getting hurt again.
- Monica (from Brazilian comics Monica's Gang) is at first portrayed as an almost full time tsuntsun kind of character: a hot-tempered little girl with super-strength, self-proclaimed "the boss of the street" and very feared among other kids. She often uses a huge amount of physical violence to get revenge against her colleague/rival Jimmy Five (Cebolinha on the original), especially when he does any kind of conspiring against her. Still she can sport a very soft and girly side, and surprisingly shows it a lot of times to Jimmy himself.
- In the spinoff/sequel of the series Monica's Gang Teen, Monica's personality seems to have melted a bit, as she claims that "has matured with age". As she keeps being Harsh, and beats up (almost) anyone who invoke her rage, now the sentimental deredere side tends to appear more. And, not very surprisingly, she starts a romance with old rival/friend Jimmy Five, showing that all the old quarrels of the past were indeed a form of mutual attraction
- Kim Pine of Scott Pilgrim masks her lingering feelings for the protagonist behind a cold façade, which are brought to the surface in the final volume. When Scott kisses her out of the blue, she initially goes along with it before rejecting him and explaining to him why the method of him breaking up with hernote really hurt. Kim encourages him to fight for Ramona and goes back to her usual, snarky self.
- Transmetropolitan: Yelena Rossini fulfils the trope by helping Spider Jerusalem out routinely despite being adamant that she hates his guts, and also subjects him to a hellride of an emotional rollercoaster love affair throughout the series: She has sex with him; denies that she had sex with him (he was too drunk to remember); when she finally admits it, she of course has to do this in a way that deliberately publicly insults him at his own party; she acts possessively over him when sensing rivals (Vita) but still refuses to admit having feelings for him; and they only end up together when she's one hundred per cent sure (or should we say ninety-nine per cent sure) that he's dying. And even then, nobody else is allowed to know that they're together. Compared to the Yelena issue, being marked for death by the President of the USA must be a minor inconvenience to Spider.
- Pigita from the comic strip Pearls Before Swine:
- Pig: Pigita... you're a good girlfriend, but sometimes you're a little moody.
Pigita: I'm sorry, Piggy Wiggy.
Pig: You don't have to be sorry.
Pigita: I'll be sorry if I want to be sorry. [kicks him over and leaves him lying face-down]
Sweet (Dere)
- Susie Derkins from Calvin and Hobbes is generally a very sweet and mild-mannered girl, but is still perfectly willing to retaliate violently to whatever Calvin (see Harsh) is up to (not that that's not a wise way to deal with Calvin).
- Raven from Teen Titans is a Shrinking Violet example. Boys that she's totally not interested in tend to get her to become snippy.
- Differently from Goldie, Brigitta McBridge, Scrooge's other love interest, is usually very sweet (and even open about her feelings), but whenever Scrooge goes too far in his rejections he's quickly reminded she's really vindictive—and a businesswoman good enough to actually rival him.
Unsorted (May have mixed traits)
- Aquaman: Mera has had a reputation for being strident and hotheaded, but always warm and caring to her loved ones, including Aquaman. Who, ironically, has at times been a source of frustration for varying reasons.
- Spider-Man: This was Gwen Stacy's original personality, flipping between concerned and lovestruck over Peter to hating his guts for a minor transgression like him not responding to Harry Osborn's jokes. After her death, however, she was Flanderized in the minds of most readers and writers into a
Purity Sue.- It may be Fridge Brilliance in that a Purity Sue is how Peter remembers her. Nostalgia and grief can work this way.
- Emma Frost sort of has this personality, toward her Love Interest Scott. To everyone else, she's (mostly) a Rich Bitch, though.
- Superman:
- Many incarnations of Lois Lane over the years could be called tsundere. Superman almost always gets the dere side and everyone else gets mostly tsun, but there's overlap; once she's known Clark for a while, she tends to be about half-and-half with him.
- Teri Hatcher's Lois on Lois & Clark was definitely tsundere.
- Post-Crisis Lois is normally fairly polite and slightly flirty, but Clark Kent seems to always push her buttons. It didn't help that she first met him right after he scooped her on an interview with Superman. Yes, Clark stole a story from Lois by interviewing himself.
- In Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, Clark triggers Lois' harsh side by pretending to be a wimpy, meek coward. She admits to herself that she doesn't hate Clark. He merely drives her mad.
- Now that she's been married to Clark in the comics for decades, he, their son Jonathan—Superboy—her husband's cousin Kara—Supergirl—Perry and Jimmy Olsen have exclusive rights to her dere side while everyone else gets her (genuinely intimidating) tsun side.
- The Internship: River, towards Cooper of all people. Given their respective personalities, River and Cooper come to argue multiple times over the course of the story. That said, River is more like Cooper than they’d care to admit, and deep down, they empathize with his issues, sharing a good number of them with him. At the end of Volume 3, Cooper actually gives River a kiss. River’s actively blushing, but they just say how they don’t plan to “go sweet” on Cooper and work him over for everything that’s happened between them. Cooper, having finally wised up to River’s feelings, sees right through it. And then they have sex the very next day. So much for not being sweet, eh, River?
- Peanuts Lucy van Pelt. As mentioned in a Peanuts Gallery TV special, she can start off very sweet, and then she boils over. And she's especially "dere" to her would-be boyfriend Schroeder, much to his displeasure.
- 99% of Calvin's interactions with the neighbourhood girl Susie Derkins are about him annoying her (and occasionally her violent retaliations, see Sweet). Word of God says it's his way of dealing with his crush on her. The remaining 1% consists of the school baseball arc, during which they were just fine.
- A non-romantic example, Power Girl in Justice League Europe definitely had elements of this. She was generally very irritable, if not outright hostile, toward most of the League, but she was great friends with Captain Atom. Justified in that much of her hostility was provoked by people constantly ogling her, which Cap did not do.
- Miss Ofelia, from Spanish comics Mortadelo y Filemón: she is most of time in a very bad mood due to the (usually) disrespectful stupidities of her colleagues at work (especially her love interest/source of annoyance Mortadelo). But in the rare occasions when she is not provoked by them, she acts in a very fluffy and girly way, which leads readers to wonder what her natural behavior is.
- The World of Lily Wong: Lily Wong would qualify. Even after she marries her gwailo admirer, she's not above the occasional zinger.
- Veronica Lodge is all over the place with this trope. She is usually a Tsun, bitchy, catty, haughty and sometimes downright rude. However, when things are going her way, she becomes a more laid-back Dere. Nicer, albeit still snarky and haughty. When the situation involves Archie, Veronica is more a full on Dere—quiet, complacent and happy so long as he showers her with gifts and attention. If his eyes wander to another girl however, Violent Tsun Veronica shows up and Archie goes home with no nookie and plenty of lumps on his head. Often whether she's a Tsun, a Dere or more simply a Jerk with a Heart of Gold depends on who's writing her that month.
- Fantasio from the comic book series Spirou & Fantasio is this, which becomes especially clear in the spin-off Gaston. On the one hand he is a crazy inventor full of insane ideas to move the market forwards. On the other hand he gets very angry very easily when he gets disturbed and is even shown as having ideas for bringing down retribution and punishment on people he does not like. Whether he is Tsun or a Dere depends however again on the writer.
N-not that... I care if you like the Westerners more. Just... don't forget about me, all right?
