Energetic and Soft-Spoken Duo

One's called Whisper the wolf, the other is sadly not called Indoor-Voice the Lemur.

Nora: Ooh! We should come up with some sort of plan, to make sure we end up on the same team together! What if we bribe the headmaster? No, that won't work, he has the school. I know! We'll have some sort of signal. Like a distress signal, or secret signal so we can find each other in the forest. Can you imitate a sloth?
Ren: Nora?
Nora: Yes, Ren?
Ren: I don't think sloths make a lot of noise.

— RWBY

A character's speech patterns, especially how much and how loud they speak, are often the most apparent indicator of their personality. This trope is by pairing two ends of this spectrum into a duo.

A common variation of Red Oni, Blue Oni, the Energetic and Soft-Spoken Duo is a duo consisting a character who is loud, talkative, and/or with tons of energy as the "Red" and a soft-spoken and reserved, but not necessarily shy, character as the "Blue".

Like in Red Oni, Blue Oni, the energetic partner is often the character who gives the impetus to act and the energy to move forward, while the soft-spoken partner is usually more introspective and savvy, and acts as the energetic partner's level-headed counterweight.

Compare to Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl for the gendered version of this, Ham and Deadpan Duo for when a loud character is paired up with The Stoic, and Uptight Loves Wild for a conservative, often boring character and an energetic character. May overlap with Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling in the case of siblings. A Technician/Performer Team-Up often breaks down like this, with the "technician" as soft-spoken and the "performer" as energetic.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Mira and Ao, the main duo of Asteroid in Love, follow this dynamic. Mira is a Genki Girl with No Indoor Voice who has endless enthusiasm for just about everything, while Ao is a more intellectual person who is uncomfortable speaking to others, except Mira.
• Ayakashi Triangle: Yayo and Lu are usually shown together, the former being loud and very expressive, while the latter talks quietly and hardly emotes at all. Despite contrasting temperaments, their actions and trains of thought tend to be highly synchronized.
• In Black Clover, Nero is the aloof, calm Soft-Spoken to Asta's boisterous, cheerful Energetic. Despite their differences in temperament, Nero is very loyal to Asta after spending time with him throughout his journey, helping as a dutiful companion.
• Odagiri from Clean Freak! Aoyama-kun is the bright and dynamic one whereas Aoyama is her opposite, a detached and taciturn guy.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, as a couple, Ruka is depicted as being wise, gentle and graceful, the opposite to her husband Shinjuro's loud personality.
• In Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro, Takao is energetic, and Hino is soft-spoken.
• Excel♡Saga: Excel is a hyperactive Genki Girl with no concept of subtlety whatsoever. Her partner Hyatt is a quiet, polite girl with a bad habit of randomly dying then coming back to life.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers: America and Canada, twin brothers, qualify. America is boisterous, energetic and loud, while Canada is timid, shy and quiet to the point where most of the others can't see him or remember his name most of the time except for rare occasions where they mistake him for America. The only time we see Canada raise his voice is a three-hour rant about his brother.
• In Is the Order a Rabbit?, Megu is reserved, soft-spoken, and delicate, while Maya is energetic, loud, and rough.
• K-On! has unlikely Childhood Friends Ritsu Tainaka and Mio Akiyama, with Ritsu being apologetically boisterous and all to willing to take on the role as the Light Music Club's leader, while Mio is the complete antithesis to Ritsu, being quiet and insecure, which causes problems for her when she becomes the band's most popular member in school.
• The main duo in Laid-Back Camp. Nadeshiko is a very excitable Genki Girl who often shouts, while Rin is a loner who is mostly dry and laconic.
• Lupin III: While Lupin can at times be a merry chatterbox, Goemon is much more quiet and reserved.
• Makina and Reina, the resident Yuri girls in Macross Delta exhibit this dynamic. Makina is the cutesy, outgoing, and bodacious engineer with a high-pitched and childish-sounding voice, while Reina is the reserved and introverted Playful Hacker whose voice tends to be soft even during singing.
• Mob Psycho 100: Mob is mostly calm even while exorcising spirits. Reigen, however, has a way with words, so he can easily bring people under his sway to sell his Phony Psychic act.
• My Hero Academia: Tamaki has this relationship when paired with Mirio, Nejire, Kirishima, or Fatgum. It might be easier to show who he doesn't have this dynamic with.
• Naruto:
  • The main Official Couple consists of the loud, Idiot Hero Naruto and the Shrinking Violet Hinata. By adulthood (as shown in the sequel Boruto and to an extent The Last: Naruto the Movie) Naruto has matured into a less energetic man than he was originally while Hinata has traded her awkward shyness for simple, quiet level-headedness, however they still fit to a degree.
  • Sasuke and Sakura are this combined with Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl. Sakura is energetic and spunky while Sasuke is stoic and quiet. Sakura has had a crush on Sasuke since before the series began. The two end up Happily Married.
  • Future couple Ino and Sai are another wholesome partnership. Ino was (and still to a degree) a passionate young woman, with a sensitive nature. While introspective, Sai who had trouble with social methods managed to win her heart, through what he believes is kindness.
• The Kashiwagi twins in Pani Poni Dash!. Yuma is energetic and outgoing, in contrast to the introverted and reserved Yuna.
• Very common in the Pretty Cure franchise:
  • Futari wa Pretty Cure: The main duo, Nagisa and Honoka, fit the bill. Nagisa is an energetic jock, while Honoka is a more thoughtful and introspective scientist.
  • Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star: Saki and Mai start out as expies of the above, but Saki is far more of a Genki Girl than Nagisa, without as many of the former's Deadpan Snarker and Determined Defeatist tendencies, and Mai is a sensitive artist.
  • HeartCatch Pretty Cure! broke the trend by making Tsubomi, the pink Cure, a Shrinking Violet, while her partner Erika was a hyperactive extrovert with No Indoor Voice.
  • HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!: A variation. The two leads, Megumi and Hime, are both rather energetic characters in the right circumstances, but Hime has No Social Skills at first, and is extremely reluctant to open up to anyone else.
  • Maho Girls Pretty Cure!: Mirai is the cheerful, exciteable Genki Girl and Riko is a Tsundere.
  • Star★Twinkle Pretty Cure has several of these. Adventurous, dorky Pink Heroine Hikaru and calm, rational Human Alien Lala; sunny, sporty Elena and prim Yamato Nadeshiko Madoka; tomboyish Aiwarn and her Battle Butler Bakenyan (actually Yuni, The Mole).
  • Tropical-Rouge! Pretty Cure: Manatsu is a major Genki Girl full of energy, and Sango is a more relaxed, soft-spoken girl.
  • Hirogaru Sky! Pretty Cure: Sora is athletic and impulsive, while Mashiro is gentle and soft-spoken.
• The main duo in Shadows House: Emilico is loud and excitable, in contrast to Kate who is more reserved and talks quietly most of the time.
• In Slow Loop, whereas Hiyori is quiet and reserved, Koharu is positively brimming with energy.
• The main duo of Stardust Telepath involves Yuu, who lives in a state of perpetual excitement, and Umika, who is so bad at speaking that she considers completing a full sentencing with lots of stuttering an achievement. Umika's growing out of her issue drives a wedge between the two.
• Tweeny Witches: Arusu and Lennon are a pair of "mirrors" in the latter's words, but they're actually half-siblings. The former is a boisterous Genki Girl, while the latter is a quiet, reserved person.

Comic Books

• The other speedster that hyperactive Motor Mouth Impulse is closest to is and is most likely to show up at a crisis alongside is Max Mercury, who is the most zen of the speedsters. The Flash points out that the entire reason Max was saddled with Imp is because he's the only speedster the Flash family thought could live with and teach Imp without kicking him out.
• The third Runaways series pairs Motor Mouth Molly with Shrinking Violet Klara.
• Quiet Raven and spunky Beast Boy started out platonically in the 1980s Teen Titans comics. In the early 2000s, they were given a Relationship Upgrade and have stayed on-and-off love interests ever since.
• The Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) comics has Tangle the Lemur, who is loud, excitable and energetic, paired with Whisper the Wolf, who is quiet, reserved, and calm. This dynamic is explored frequently since these two are often working together in various story arcs, where Tangle gradually allows Whisper to open up and become more expressive, though the wolf remains reserved and quiet.

Fan Works

• Do You Believe in Fairies?:
  • Deconstructed, along with Loving Bully. In canon, Shrinking Violet Candace is paired with the campy Julius, but the story explores their relationship more and depicts them as not actually good for one another. Julius doesn't mean to be rude, but he's still a jerk who invades Candace's personal space and critiques her. Julius' traumatic behavior as children led to Candace becoming cripplingly shy and gaining a Speech Impediment.
  • Played straight with Candace and Luke, the resident Hot-Blooded Genki Boy. Luke may be loud but he has a gentle nature which mixes well with Candace's shy and sweet personality.
• Infinity Train: Knight of the Orange Lily has Specter with his lightning bolt denizen partner Easter. Easter, befitting a lightning bolt, is an energetic ball of exciteness. Specter is...Specter and thus stoic, aloof and rarely raises his voice.
• Shino and his girlfriend Fu fit into this dynamic perfectly in Son of the Sannin. He's just as quiet as his canon counterpart, while she is pretty much incapable of shutting up. After meeting his Motor Mouth Genjutsu World counterpart during her jinchuriki training, she complains how it throws off their whole dynamic.
• The Story of Apollo, Daphne and Luca: An Italian Tragedy: Platonic Life-Partners Carlos and Bianca, with the former being cheeky, outgoing and gossipy and the latter reserved, aloof and cool-headed.
  • Alberto and Luca are a romantic example.

Films — Animation

• Cats Don't Dance has a villainous pair: The Prima Donna Darla Dimple does most of the talking, since maintaining her facade as "lover of children and animals" requires being the Genki Girl under scrutiny. Max is Darla's Mighty Glacier manservant, who rarely says more than, "Yes, Miss Dimple." Together, everyone at Mammoth Studios walks on eggshells around this Alpha Bitch and her bone-crunching enforcer.

Files — Live-Action

• Aftersun has a parent-child case: Sophie is bright, outgoing, and energetic, while her father Calum is reserved, inward, and sensitive.
• In Nope, Em is an energetic, charismatic, talkative woman who aspires to fame while OJ is a quiet, collected, somewhat socially awkward man who wants to keep running the family ranch.

Literature

• Durarara!!: Deliberately invoked by Mairu and Kururi Orihara. They literally flipped a coin to decide which one would be which. In this case, Mairu the Genki Girl and an absolute chatterbox, while Kururi is laconic and typically inexpressive. They behave the opposite on the chatroom, though.
• Isaac Asimov's "Feminine Intuition": Dr Calvin invokes this trope, recognizing that people would appreciate having an ebullient extrovert after decades of her being an indomitable introvert. He replaces her as Chief Robopsychologist in this story.
• The two main females in My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU are Yukino Yukinoshita, an Aloof Dark-Haired Ice Queen with a Brutal Honesty, and Yui Yukinoshita, a Rose-Haired Genki Girl. Both meet in the Service Club and since then they become good friends and eventually rivals for Hachiman's heart.
• Overlord: Aura is brash, confident and tomboyish, while Mare is shy, insecure and dresses like a girl.
• "Beast Princess" Seness and her second-in-command Eirotte from Scrapped Princess. Seness is a rude, violent, and headstrong fighter, while Eirotte is her soft-spoken but strong-willed Girl Friday.
• Sword Art Online: The Integrity Knights duo, Fizel comes off as more tomboyish and excitable, while Linel appears more soft-spoken and calm.

Live-Action TV

• The Addams Family Gomez and Morticia Addams, in all their incarnations. Gomez is outgoing, expressive, and energetic, while Morticia is quiet, aloof, and reserved.
• Downplayed for the titular characters in Laverne & Shirley. Laverne is very loud and Shirley is normally pretty demure, although she's still energetic and can be quite a drama queen.
• Biff and Sully on Sesame Street. Biff is loud and abrasive, preventing Sully from speaking at every opportunity.
• The Scottish miniseries, Takin' Over the Asylum gives us the adorable, bouncy, hypomaniac, Campbell Bain and his very quiet, withdrawn schizophrenic best friend, Fergus McKinnon. Same is also true when Campbell is paired with the sad-sack alcoholic main protagonist, Eddie McKenna.

Toys

• Among the Assault Lily case, the chatty, energetic, extroverted, and joyful Riri is usually paired with the cool, quiet, aloof, and introverted Yuyu.
• Transformers: Generation 1: Siren is an exuberant Autobot with No Indoor Voice. His Headmaster partner Quig is a very quiet former librarian who jumps whenever Siren begins to speak in his ear-splittingly loud voice.

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: Ann is a calm, reserved, Action Girl who knows plenty of martial arts. Her best friend, Ayane, is an energetic skilled hacker who enjoys getting too intimacy with Ann.
• Eastward: Alva is a genki genius and a Rose-Haired Sweetie alongside her close partner Isabel, who's The Stoic and rarely gets flustered.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak: Shahina's a happy-go-lucky dancer, while her sister Sarah is more on the quite and calm side.
• Project SEKAI:
  • Kohane Azusawa serves as the 'shy' one to two different characters; the most prominent one being her fellow partner An Shiraishi, who was responsible for encouraging her to come out of her shell in the first place, with the other one being fellow classmate and budding performer Minori Hanasato, an endlessly bubbly and cheery Genki Girl.
  • The two girls from the group Wonderland*Showtime are this in spades. Emu Otori is the energetic one with her endless source of childlike enthusiasm and cheer, while Nene Kusanagi is on the complete other end of the spectrum, being the most logical and reserved member of the group.
• The change of voice actors in the Telltale Games installments in the Sam & Max series turned the titular duo into this, with Sam as the soft-spoken and Max as the energetic.
• Splatoon:
  • Each of the idol groups who host the newscasts in each game consist of an energetic (Callie, Pearl, Frye) with a soft-spoken (Marie, Marina, Shiver).
  • Pearl and Marina from Splatoon 2 are an Odd Friendship example. Loud and short Inkling Pearl is best friends and music partners with a shy, lanky Octarian woman named Marina. This is most seen in their Japanese dialogue as the English translation made Marina a more assertive character, however it still shines through in the English versions too.
• Story of Seasons: In Tree of Tranquility and Animal Parade, Candace and Julius form a rival couple. Candace is a Shy Blue-Haired Girl who likes knitting while Julius is a loud, flamboyant Camp Straight fashionista. The two can end up married with kids.
• Super Mario Bros.: Daisy's boisterous voice makes her the "Energetic" in this dynamic while Peach's soft and dainty voice makes her the "Soft-Spoken".
• Undertale: Sans and Papyrus. Papyrus is very bombastic and consistently speaks in ALL CAPS, while Sans is chill and lazy and generally has no capitalization in his speech at all.

Web Comics

• The main couple in She Is Still Cute Today: while Qi Lin has No Indoor Voice and refuses to be quiet, Cang Shu rarely raises her voice or loses her temper.
• Trying Human: Guinea is a chatty, quippy guy with a lot of panache who wears his heart on his sleeve and can't quite hide his anger when evil occurs. Pig is an Emotionless Girl who can only communicate telepathically and with no emotional inflection.

Western Animation

• Hanna-Barbera's series 2 Stupid Dogs are composed of the excitable but loopy Little Dog, who comes up with hare-brained ideas explained by Insane Troll Logic; and The Stoic but dim Big Dog, who goes along quietly with his companion's lunacy because he can't think of anything better to do.
• Classic Disney Shorts: Demure and quiet Minnie Mouse happens to be best friends with the loud and bombastic Daisy Duck.
• In Goof Troop, the unassertive, introverted PJ is the older brother of the excitable Motor Mouth, Pistol. In the movies, Pistol is no longer present, but PJ instead shares this dynamic with Max's other friend, Bobby, a rambunctious party animal.
• Kaeloo: Stumpy, who is loud, hyperactive, and energetic, is best friends with Quack-Quack, who is introverted, passive and only talks in quacks.
• Among the Looney Tunes, there are the cartoons featuring Foghorn Leghorn paired with Egghead Jr. Foghorn is an Affectionate Parody of Senator Claghorn: loud, boisterous, pompous, physically cannot shut up. Egghead Jr. is a meganekko Child Prodigy that's The Speechless, who uses his smarts to completely outwit and outmatch Foghorn at every turn.
• The Loud House: Goth girl Lucy Loud is so quiet she startles people by speaking near them. Compare against screaming Bratty Half-Pint Lola, baby Lily when she cries, Lisa's mad science explosions, Luna's amplified rocking out, Luan's comedy, Lynn Jr's sporting superstitions. The other siblings are also loud but mostly when arguing.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Fluttershy is the soft-spoken one as compared to literally everypony else. But she is particularly contrasted with Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie, who are the most energetic.
  • Rarity is also soft-spoken in comparison with Pinkie and Dash, unless she's throwing a dramatic crying fit or tantrum.
• The Owl House: Eda is the wild witch to her composed sister Lilith.
• In Over the Garden Wall, Wirt is the shy Socially Awkward Hero to Greg's exuberant Cheerful Child.
• The titular Phineas and Ferb are step-brothers, Phineas is an overly enthusiastic Genki Boy and Ferb is The Quiet One who speaks about Once an Episode, but they make a great team.
• Steven Universe: Blue Diamond is a soft-spoken, reserved diplomat who is often quite lethargic and unmotivated these days due to her Excessive Mourning from losing a beloved family member, while Yellow Diamond is a dynamic and assertive military general who rarely speaks below a commanding tone and buries herself into her work to try heavily and forget the pain of losing Pink Diamond.
• Raven and Beast Boy from Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go! are best friends in the original 2003 cartoon and love interests in the Go series. Raven is a reserved goth-ish girl who was taught from a young age to avoid excessive excitement, while Beast Boy is an energetic keet of a boy who likes fun.
• In Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race, MacArthur is the gung-ho "take no prisoners" type, while Sanders is more calm and reserved.

Real Life

• Taken to the logical extreme with Penn & Teller. On stage, Penn basically never shuts up, while Teller never says a word. Teller is, however, very sarcastic and expressive with his body language.

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