Tsundere / Literature

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Harsh (Tsun)

• Aria H. Kanzaki of Aria the Scarlet Ammo is a full-blown Harsh type towards the main character.
• The Asterisk War: Julis Riessfeld is hot-headed, stubborn, and can be cold-hearted to those she is unfamiliar with. However, underneath that harsh, unfriendly facade, is a sweet girl who would do just about anything for a friend.
• Cecilia Tallis from Atonement towards Robbie. She isn't quite sure of her feelings towards him and convinces herself that she'll be happy when he leaves for medical school. Robbie himself is actually Sweet towards her, mostly playing the part of the nice guy. But then he writes her a very rude letter in a fit of passion that she accidentally reads. Ironically that helps them confirm their feelings for each other. Cecilia's younger sister Briony is a Yandere towards Robbie.
• In Bakemonogatari, Hitagi Senjōgahara calls herself a Tsundere, although main character Koyomi Araragi thinks to himself that she's more like a "tundra" (ie a Sugar-and-Ice Personality), considering that she wouldn't know deredere if it slapped her upside the head, which makes her come across as more of an Ice Queen. Additionally, it's pretty clear that she has a traumatic past driving her actions. Suggesting that she's more Cute and Psycho who has designated herself a tsundere as a way to justify her rather irrational and violent behavior. She does seem to be getting better though. She also seems to alternate between demonstrating her affection towards Araragi in mean or discomforting ways, and being mean to him in ways that demonstrate her affection for him.
• Ce'Nedra from David Eddings' Belgariad is apparently generally regarded by Japanese readers as one of the clearest Western examples of the trope.
• Shakuntala of Belisarius Series is a wilful, charismatic princess, that is nice enough, but clearly not one whom you wish to make angry.
• Zhou Qi from Jin Yong's The Book and The Sword. While she is somewhat abrasive to anyone, with the possible exception of her father, she reserves most of her wrath for Xu Tianhong: constantly berating and insulting him in front of others, only to break down crying when she realizes that he's left out of respect for her chastity.
• Book Girl: Kotobuki Nanase is a typical Harsh tsundere. She is harsh towards her classmate Konoha Inoue but eventually shows her dere side (in the third OVA and book).
• Bridget Jones from Bridget Jones's Diary is Harsh thanks to the way she expresses herself in her diary (being annoyed.) She, however, is lovestruck with Daniel Cleaver even though she's being sarcastic to him at times.
• A Certain Magical Index:
  • Mikoto Misaka can be classified as a Harsh tsundere when it comes to Touma. She follows him around with the excuse of challenging him to a fight. Lampshaded and practically outright called one in Railgun:
    Harumi: You uh... You like him?
    Mikoto: W-What?
    Harumi: You know, when a girl behaves all cold towards the guy she likes. It was popular a while back... Tsun... Tsun... Tsundara? No... Tsunjire?
    Mikoto: Not a chance!
  • Accelerator is a male example, being rude and merciless to any who cross him, but also hiding a sweet deredere side that is (mostly) reserved for Last Order.
  • Misaka Worst is this towards none other than Accelerator himself. When she's with him, Worst acts like a Jerkass Alpha Bitch and tries to seduce him (most likely to annoy him), but Worst has confessed when she's not with him, she loses the will to fight. Again, Tsuntsun to Accelerator's face, Deredere when he's not around.
  • The titular Index also show traits of this, seeing as she usually bites Touma if he's (to her own perspective) flirting with other girls, or if he forgets to feed her. However, it is noted that Touma is the only one she bites, implying that it is a sign of affection towards him, and can show traits of her deredere side (well, at least in the light novels, anyway.)
• Chivalry of a Failed Knight plays with this. At the beginning, it seems like Fiery Redhead Stella will play the role of the Harsh Tsundere trope straight, given her earlier interactions with Ikki (including telling him to kill himself and saying that he's not allowed to breathe the same air as her). However, it's subverted once Ikki declares his love for Stella early on the story, which marks a turn for Stella from "tsun" to "dere" around Ikki for the remainder of the work once they start dating.
• Chrome Shelled Regios has Felli in a rare combination with The Stoic: capable of kicking dents into a refrigerator, but genuinely cares for "Fon-Fon," when he's not a target. Doesn't care much for the competition.
• Skeeter Traps from Chronicles Of Magic is Harsh and tends to be brash, violent, and rude most of the time; only to show her softer, more compassionate side when everyone least expects it. She also follows the tsundere way of totally denying her feelings for the boy she loves (even to herself), believing him to be an idiot. However, she is a ten year old girl trained by spies and outlaws, so maybe she should be cut some slack.
• Dedicate Rosethorn from the Circle of Magic series is this with a hint of Sugar-and-Ice Personality. A particularly cute example can be found in Sandry's Book when after terrifying the four children for the first half of the book, Briar hugs her and she blushes.
• Heleth, from the Col Sec Trilogy, is a compact, quick-tempered Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette who's always bickering with or getting needled by the resident Keet (when she's not bickering with someone else). Every so often, you get the impression that she doesn't outright hate him.
• Eugénie Danglars from The Count of Monte Cristo is a pretty extreme example, being cold, aloof, and unfriendly to her family, her friends, her acquaintances, and her fiancé(s) and even telling her father that she loves no one and nothing except her studies of music and art. Yet the second she's alone with her vocal coach/friend/lover Louise d'Armilly, she's warm, playful, and affectionate, even calling Louise things like "my sweet" and gently teasing her for being unable to close an over-packed suitcase.
• Karrin Murphy in The Dresden Files keeps calling Harry names, even beats him to a pulp on a few occasions, but mellows at the moment's notice whenever he hurts himself badly or saves her life (again). Pointing that out to her, however, is likely to earn you another beating. This only holds true for the first two books or so. Afterwards, they still bicker, but they're a lot sweeter to each other.
• Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte: Lieselotte has a kind heart, but it is well hidden behind a very harsh front. Siegwald was led to believe she disliked him and that is why he drifts away from her in the Magikoi canon. Then Endo and Kobayashi come into the scene and explain Lieselotte's behavior to him, and Siegwald starts to understand and find it endearing, as does Fiene and everybody else.
• The Familiar of Zero: Louise Francoise le Blanc de la Valliere routinely whips and insults her love interest, Saito Hiiraga, but would occasionally show moments of adorable sweetness, which increases more as she learns to get over her insecurities.
• Full Metal Panic!:
  • Kaname Chidori's dominant 'tsun' side is mostly because Sousuke is more commonly detonating parts of the school building and traumatizing her fellow students than doing anything worth going 'dere' over. She's also ONLY 'tsun' towards Sousuke, though she will speak up against jerks/bullies (which actually gets her into trouble several times in Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu). To everyone else, she's pretty balanced. Her backstory suggests this is due to her American upbringing which made her too outspoken and aggressive to fit into Japanese culture.
  • In the novels, Nami is tsun-tsun with everyone else, but pure dere-dere when with Sousuke. Originally shown as exceedingly rude and hot-tempered, he manages to get her to fall for him and become completely dere-dere by being extremely polite and respectful to her (something no one else had really done).
• Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi: Jiang Cheng cares deeply about his family members, but expresses it with sharp barbs and anger. The only person that he's actually nice to is his older sister. After he loses his home and entire family except for his infant nephew, he becomes bitter and doubles down on his Harsh personality traits. Jin Ling, Jiang Cheng's nephew, becomes a tsundere as well (no surprise, considering that Jiang Cheng had a hand in raising him).
• Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World: Sherry. While she does love Michio, and her fellow haremettes, she hides it very, very deeply. Her "dere" side only comes out when she's drunk, and that is in no way easy.
• Haruhi Suzumiya:
  • The title character starts as a Jerkass. Although she has had some character development, the degree to which she's moved from Jerkass to Jerk with a Heart of Gold, are up for debate. Not yet seen in the anime, but by the fourth book, she's spouting some classic tsundere lines. Although maybe this is just a case of her Genre Savvy nature causing her to deliberately act this way.
    • Haruhi is probably the poster child for tactic 4 (bossy), although 2 and 3 come up sometimes. She's fairly non-violent by the standards of this trope however (mostly because the series doesn't use comic violence). Most, she just drags people around.
    • Haruhi is also a Deconstruction: What would happen if a Tsundere acted that way toward everyone they knew, rather than just love interests? It's slightly more pronounced toward Kyon (she doesn't make excuses as much with the others), but not by much.
  • Kyon has some tsundere tendencies towards Haruhi. Tsundere tactics 1 and 3 come into play often, and on at least one occasion he has almost resorted to violence.
    • For both of them, the inverse (dere) side rarely comes out and for both, it's restricted to their actions. Haruhi stayed by Kyon for 3 days while he was in a coma and helps him with his schoolwork. Kyon chose to undo the Disappearance verse and tried to save her in the Surprise finale.
• Heaven Official’s Blessing: Tian Guan Ci Fu: Hua Cheng is and has only ever been nice to one person: Xie Lian. He's snarky, rude, and irreverent to everybody else.
• Aravis Tarkheena from C. S. Lewis's The Horse and His Boy. Her Tsundere-ness is lampshaded at the end of the book, when it's mentioned that she and Shasta/Prince Cor got married because they were so used to their Slap-Slap-Kiss that they wanted to be comfier while fighting and then making out.
• Eve Dallas in the In Death series is very much this, due to an astoundingly Dark and Troubled Past. However, she gives and gets Undying Loyalty with her division, and works hard to draw the very best out of relative newbies like Peabody and Trueheart. Dere moments are often caused by her husband Roarke (who was the only one to unlock an otherwise strongly repressed sexuality), and Dr. Mira's husband Dennis, who simply turns her into a big pile of deredere mush.
• In INVADERS of the ROKUJYOUMA!?, Theia is harsh and haughty to Koutarou from the moment they meet, although she has been becoming more open in declaring her affection for him.
• Is This A Zombie?: Practically all the main girls, but the most stand-out are Seraphim and Sarasvati. Not only are they both vampire-ninjas, but they both have long, black hair, often wear maid outfits, and are in a love-hate relationship with Ayumu's butt. Sarasvati has even gone so far as to open an entire cosplay cafe staffed by vampire-ninjas (all of which are beautiful women), along with the occasional magical garment girl or Necromancer, with the main theme being verbal and occasional physical abuse toward the patrons, which they all pay for, happily.
• Jinsei has Rino, who is a prime example for Tsundere.
• Journey to Chaos: Tiza has become this by the time of Looming Shadow. While generally a prickly sourpuss she's softer around her love interest, Nolien. She also calls him "Tenderfoot" as an Insult of Endearment and punches his arm when he makes her worry.
• Kaze no Stigma has Ayano. She does not realize what she wants, she calls Kazuma a jerk, but tries to hold his hand at an amusement park, blushes all the time, and flies into a towering rage if Kazuma makes a move on her or if she sees him with another woman.
• Kyo Kara Maoh!: Wolfram complains about Yuuri about as much as he's grouchily possessive of him, and despite being quasi-'dominant', looks more girly than him. In one OVA episode, another character actually uses the word tsundere to describe him. He mellows down later on... unless, of course, Yuuri has done something wrong.
• Library War: Dojo is a textbook example of a Harsh Tsundere, utilizing mostly tactics 2 and 3. He's gruff and businesslike towards everyone, but he takes it to an extreme when he's around Kasahara. At the beginning of the series she complains that he works her hardest during training. He protects her because he secretly does care, but then he brushes it off as just part of his job and often shouts at her. Their flirting begins as awkward shouting matches and snide comments, but towards the end of the series Dojo makes some sweet gestures that he then ruins like trying to comfort Kasahara by patting her on the head, and then getting angry because he can't reach and demanding to know why she is wearing high heels. Total mood killer.
• Light And Dark The Awakening Of The Mageknight: Instead of the 'ultra-violent mood swinging' of the modern tsundere, Sabrina is more like the classic tsundere. Her 'civilian mask' is friendly and sweet but she's actually aloof and focused on knight training. When she develops feelings for Danny she stubbornly refuses to acknowledge them yet still shows tantalizing displays of affection.
• The rose from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. The book turns a tsundere flower into a commentary on the pain that love can cause so hauntingly beautiful that it will drive you insane.
• The Locked Tomb: Gideon the Ninth: Harrow. Just look at how often she calls Gideon an idiot, while becoming a flustered mess when Gideon hugs her. Deconstructed in that her treatment of Gideon has created a lot of emotional baggage between them and is a huge roadblock to Gideon trusting her. Reconstructed after they have a long, honest conversation; Harrow is still this trope, but now that their relationship is in a better place, their back-and-forth is less loaded and tense, and more affectionate.
• Sophie from the French novel Malheurs de Sophie seems to fit to this trope. She's always fighting with her cousin Paul, but also really loves him.
• Touko Matsudaira of Maria Watches Over Us is a bit of Playing Against Type and Deconstruction: she's a teenage Harsh type whose Alpha Bitch facade stems from her fear that all help she will receive may stem purely out of pity for her situation as an adopted orphan, as well as her inability to show gratitude for her adoptive family.
• Holly Jones from the Robert A. Heinlein short story The Menace From Earth. Generally bossy demeanor, repressed attraction to love interest which is constantly denied, with her softening at the end.
• Vin from Mistborn. Being abused by Reen for most of her life in order to help her survive did… not help her emotional stability. Neither did having a Hemalurgic spike that let Ruin talk to her. But she's Harsh around the crew, and especially Elend, once she starts to warm up. Toward the end of the trilogy, she's moving toward Sweet.
• Susana Cabeza de Vaca from Mount Dragon. Replace baka with pendejo and hijo de puta, make her dark-skinned, and you have a Mexican tsundere! Insanely proud of her royal heritage and her genius, she almost immediately shows dislike for the main character, who dislikes her right back, and most of the sideplot are the two slowly growing closer and closer, grudgingly respecting each other and, of course, slowly growing attracted.
• Only the Ring Finger Knows: Yuichi Kazuki is kind, polite, and friendly to everyone he meets... except to Wataru Fujii, the guy he likes, because he doesn't know how to deal with his feelings for another male. His uncharacteristically cold and snarky (The Cold Shoulder tactic) behavior towards Wataru provokes the latter into employing his own type of Tsundere tactic (The Violent Approach) upon him out of frustration. Yuichi grows out of this somewhat in the sequel novels following their Relationship Upgrade, but still has occasional bouts of Tsundere-ness (and it's actually implied that his kind demeanor to everyone else was actually a mask he put on to please them and that his teasing behavior toward Wataru is reflective of his true personality, which makes him an odd mix of both Tsundere types).
• Oreshura: Fuyuumi Ai is generally a bossy jerk, but putting her in Eita's presence is like giving her a massive overdose of Love Potion. When she finds out he's in the same summer class as her, she screams "I'm the winner!" at the top of her lungs, then immediately tries to deny that her out-of-character overenthusiastic response meant anything. She claims to have a boyfriend, but the falseness of this is given away by, among other things, the fact that she stays in Tsun mode when talking about him.
• Alia of An Outcast in Another World slowly transforms into this after she mellows out. She definitely remains on the prickly side, though.
• Annabeth from Percy Jackson and the Olympians is a typical tsundere character.
  • The Demigod Files basically make it canon. Annabeth's questions include, What is Percy Jackson's most annoying quality? Her response could have been taken right out of any Japanese anime, including the hilarious-to-a-troper line…
    Annabeth: He doesn't see really obvious stuff, like the way people feel, even when you're giving him hints and being totally blatant. What? No I'm not talking about anyone or anything in particular.
  • In The Demigod Files, when Beckendorf tells Percy that Annabeth likes him, his response is: "Yeah, she likes me… for target practice." Beckendorf retorts that at Camp Halfblood if a girl keeps trying to kill you it means she's into you.
  • She acts mostly tsun in the first book (The Lightning Thief) and has clear traits of both sides in The Battle of the Labyrinth (book four).
  • Clarrise takes the "fight through life" portion of this to heart, (since she's the daughter of Ares) and we only see her kind side after she saves Chris Rodriguez from the Labyrinth and attempts to nurse him back to sanity.
• Galadriel 'El' Higgins from The Scholomance tends to be short-tempered, sarcastic, rude, and at least vaguely hostile towards the bulk of her Wizarding School classmates when she speaks to them at all. She usually treats her first actual friend aside from her mum and eventual love interest Orion Lake more or less like this, with additional screaming tirades castigating his shortfalls in self-care and self-worth. She is slightly softer with the circle of friends that wind up her core Alliance along with the freshmen she sort of adopts against her better judgment in The Last Graduate, but can be described as prickly at her best.
• In Sandy Mitchell's Warhammer 40,000 novel Scourge the Heretic, Keira's normally not personable manner is considerably worse toward Mordecai Horst, being blind to it herself. It doesn't help that she was raised in a Sex Is Evil cult. But when she accuses Danuld of wanting to sin with her, and he says it's obvious that he has no chance because of Mordecai, she reacts badly but later returns to question him about what he meant, and then, with obvious difficulty, attempts to temper her behavior toward Horst. (And she resolves to consult another woman in the Inquisitor's retinue about whether sex really is so evil.)
• The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System: Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong: Liu Qingge is a Hot-Blooded warrior and the Bai Zhan Peak Lord. He's also really, really bad with emotions. He develops a massive crush on Shen Qingqiu after the latter saves him from death by qi deviation, but can't for the life of him admit it. Instead, Liu Qingge brings Shen Qingqiu dead monster carcasses like a cat.
• Marcia Overstrand in Septimus Heap. While normally being easily irritable and bossy, she can become very caring at times of trouble.
• In Shadow of the Conqueror, Daylen is a male Tsundere, but only towards Lyrah. (To everyone else, he's a Mood Swinging Jerk with a Heart of Gold.) He's initially very uncomfortable around her, getting angry and shouting at her over minor things. After many apologies (from him) and her pushing his Kindness Button, he acts “like the perfect gentleman,” opens doors for her, goes into his playful moods, and thinks about her in distinctly affectionate terms.
• Shana of Shakugan no Shana, who is frequently abrasive towards her love interest, Yuuji Sakai, but eventually defrosts to him as she learns to be more social. Interestingly, Shana actually bears more resemblance to the classic Tsundere (that is, someone with a harsh personality who softens and shows a loving side over time) than her even more aggressive and violent expies. Ironically enough for the Goddess of Tsundere, as the series progresses, she's not even really a Tsundere anymore.
• Slayers: Lina shows signs of being a Harsh type towards Gourry, especially when she blushes and stammers when Gourry calls her out and mentions his Bodyguard Crush on her and later when she has a brief but very intense breakdown after he's kidnapped by Phibrizzo.
• So, I Can't Play H!: Initially, Lisara is dismissive towards Ryosuke's attempts to hit on her, because all he really cared about was her body. So she usually berates him, sometimes violently, when he annoys her. But as his feelings gradually change to genuine affection, it causes her opinion of him to change as well, though she stubbornly refuses to admit it. The first clear indication is seen in episode 4:
  Lisara: (blushing, with her hand on her breast) "He prefers my breasts to Ilia's...."
• Song at Dawn: Oddly enough, Estela is not this to either Arnauld or Dragonetz but to Nici, her pet. She calls him 'useless', the name she gave him means 'big idiot' and yet she is the only one to pet him, and she feeds him under the table. In the end, he's described as 'a dog that thinks he belongs with her'. In other words, Harsh.
• A Song of Ice and Fire gives us a rare male version: Sandor Clegane. Cuddly he most certainly isn't: he's of the titanically, emotionally screwed-up and repressed variety of Tsun thanks to his absolutely horrendous childhood. As a result, he's no stranger to using frustration and rage to lash out and kill or maim others with under a Straw Nihilist, The Stoic exterior — when not going that far, he restricts himself to extreme Brutal Honesty as a means of both caring and making a point. But, that he could still find it in himself to care about two specific others? Actually knocked him for six. Granted, he could no more express how to care healthily than fly thanks to acute lack of practice (neither Sansa nor Arya left unscathed by his worry over them—for all they both would have wound up in far worse shape without him). However, it's still both his triumph and tragedy that he could care: despite his father's best efforts to turn him into a dehumanised attack dog like his brother; the little boy who could care for his little sister is still somewhere in Sandor's built-up defences, despite everything. This has probably always made his anger and disappointment with world that much hotter, in fact. Sadly, it also added fuel to his anger at himself and others for not living up to ideals he always denied could exist.
• Sorcerer Stabber Orphen:
  • Cleao Everlasting, starting out extremely tsun-tsun and childish but showing quite the strength and gentleness when she reaches her peaks of dere-dere, specially towards the end of the first series and the second half of the Revenge series, when she takes the Licorice under her wing.
  • In the Revenge series, Eris also fits in the Tsundere archetype, going all googly-eyed for her best friend Majik and yet acting very snarky and tsuntsun towards her Bunny-Ears Lawyer instructor Hartia, specially when they go in their... very "special" exploits as super heroes (sorta).
• Star Wars: Mara Jade. She's a Harsh Mama Bear; baiting her is hideously risky at best, and suicidal at worst.
• Midori, the teenage main character of Higuchi Ichiyō's Takekurabe, is very much this towards Shinnyo (a timid and taciturn future monk). She calls him names and rants about how she doesn't want to have anything to do with him, but can't quite bring herself to admit that she has feelings for him (and she never does explicitly even at the end). It doesn't help that Shinnyo's attempts to be "nice" to her early in the story all end up being awkward and rather offensive.
• Toradora!: Taiga Aisaka is a highly irritable girl, more so towards Ryuuji Takasu after a bad first impression. She also deconstructs this trope: her violent emotional mood swings and stature complex stem more from having a broken family than romantic issues, making her a borderline Broken Bird.
• Trinity Blood: Astharoshe "Asta" Asran. Her relationship with Abel Nightroad, though not romantic (at least, not in canon), has strong elements of this. At first she violently threatens him (and does so again each time they meet), but comes to see him as one of her closest comrades. And that word is extremely meaningful to Asta.
• Holly from Varjak Paw is implied to have a Dark and Troubled Past considering she's not even full-grown and is already a street-savvy cat. After one of her two friends, Lukas, Vanished she's grown colder and more adverse to friendship. She is mean to Varjak at first and doesn't want to admit they're becoming friends, but eventually she softens up.
• Venus to Mamoru!: Ayako displays the most explosive temper towards just about anyone who pisses her off, but is absolutely dere-dere towards her beloved Mamoru. Though her confession of her feelings towards Mamoru at the very start of the series was rather tsun-tsunish in approach (and it was perhaps the only time he was intimidated by her).
• Warrior Cats:
  • Specifically in Bluestar's Prophecy, Bluestar was seen as Harsh towards her mate Oakheart. She would lose all her patience with him and was quite snappy, especially when she was in denial about her feelings for him since she couldn't be mates with a cat from another Clan. Despite this, Bluestar geniunely loved Oakheart and since their parting, he was the only cat she ever truly loved.
  • Sandstorm is also a tsundere. She was distainful and looked down on Firestar due to his kittypet blood, but when he saves her life during a border fight, she realizes that she misunderstood Firestar and develops a strong bond and friendship with him. Sandstorm fell in love with Firestar at one point and they had a long-standing relationship. Though Sandstorm is regarded as a sharp-tonged, short-tempered, and independent she-cat and Firestar is not spared because of her feelings towards him, he still has healthy respect for her.
  • Sandstorm's daughter, Squirrelflight, became a second generation tsundere, since her mother passed her personality to her. Squirrelflight is the most fitting to this trope since in some ways, she is even worse than Sandstorm. Squirrelflight is proud, independent, incredibly impulsive, very rude and a spitfire of a warrior, making her Harsh, though she arguably had mellowed out with age. Squirrelflight's relationship with her mate Brambleclaw was that of any Main Character/Tsundere couple. She was greatly annoyed with his bossy attitude and hated him. Over the course of The New Prophecy series, Squirrelflight fell deeply in love with Brambleclaw and they got together. However, this didn't stop her from challenging him from time to time.
  • Yellowfang, the prickly medicine cat of both ShadowClan and ThunderClan. She is often characterized as grumpy and obstinate, with a tongue described as "sharp as thorns." However, she holds a surprising amount of inner compassion in her heart despite her rough exterior; her softer side was usually brought out through her relationships with Cinderpelt (her apprentice), Raggedstar (former mate), Brokenstar (son) and Firestar (who she claimed was like a son to her while on the verge of death).
  • A male example of tsundere is Crowfeather. He is usually constantly angry and foul-mouthed but had a hidden side of friendliness with his first love Feathertail and later Leafpool. Crowfeather also showed this with Tawnypelt, Brambleclaw, Squirrelflight, and Stormfur to a lesser degree, who he grew friendship bonds with eventually. However, seeing Crowfeather's nice side is very rare.
  • Fittingly, one of Crowfeather's sons took after his father as a male Tsundere. Jayfeather was very sarcastic, insensitive, and short-tempered, particularly as an apprentice, but mellowed out somewhat when older. He's not the most friendliest cat, but values loyalty and has compassion for others more than even his father. Jayfeather's softer side is more seen with his siblings and Half Moon, the cat he fell in love with.
• The Wheel of Time:
  • Aviendha is extremely rude to Rand before they have sex in book 5, but she slowly softens towards the end.
  • Nynaeve starts out Harsh but marriage softens her to Sweet.
  • Elayne isn't, although Rand probably thinks she is due to mixed signals in a couple of letters.
  • Egwene is usually a Plucky Girl but turns into a raging Harsh type in the second half of volume 12, especially when confronted with her Love Interest.
  • Siuane is Harsh, but that's to be expected from a Spanish Iron Lady.

Sweet (Dere)

• In The Brothers Karamazov, Lise acts rather tsundere to Alyosha, teasing him in order to get his attention and then blushing. Father Zosima calls her out on it.
• Princess Eilonwy from Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain says "Taran, I'm not speaking to you" about five times a novel, and as the last line of at least the first three.
• Mel from Crown Duel is Sweet to such an extent that Shevraeth has to resort to wooing her through anonymous letters.
• In the Night World book Daughters of Darkness, Mary-Lynnette is dere dere, but when Ash is around her automatic reaction at first is to kick him in the shins. Doesn't help that he's sexist and speciesist.
• Demons: Marya Ignatyevna is also an example of tsundere. She spends most of the chapter A Woman Traveller verbally abusing Ivan Shatov but by the end becomes extremely clingy.
• Durarara!!: Celty Sturlusen is a relatively minor example that is perfectly willing to admit her attraction to Shinra Kishitani. However, sometimes she can't help but find his more annoying habits (like making ill-timed comments about their sex-life) extremely irritating and lets him know this. Physically. Fortunately, Shinra's something of a kinky little bugger, so he's all for it.
• Hermione Granger from Harry Potter. She's a good friend who is sensible and restrained a lot of the time, but DO NOT tick her off. She will show no mercy. Just ask Rita Skeeter, Draco Malfoy, Dolores Umbridge, Marietta Edgecombe or Ronald Weasley.
  • Definitely this with Ron Weasley. While the Golden Trio all have their insecurities, Ron's and Hermione's insecurities end up influencing one another, especially with how they feel with one another. Hermione often becomes annoyed or upset with Ron, yet becomes jealous when another girl shows interest in him. The sixth book definitely plays this up.
  • While not fully known (due to being post-mortem characters), this seems to be how Lily Evans was with her future husband, James Potter. Initially, she did not like him very much, thinking of him as a showoff while also not liking him because of the fights he had with her friend Severus Snape. Yet, there were some hints of this. Harry sees a memory of back when they were at Hogwarts; with James winning a Quidditch game and being tossed in the air, all while Lily looks at the spectacle rolling her eyes yet smiling as well. It would also explain how she went from disliking him in fifth year to dating in seventh year.
• Aglaya from Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot. Not only does the girl spend half the novel telling her love interest how stupid he is, the whole thing actually ends with a big girl fight-out over the guy.
• Kämpfer: Mishima Akane is Sweet in her default/original form. She transforms to an Ax-Crazy gun nut Harsh type.
• No Game No Life: Stephanie Dola is an odd justified example. She lost a game with Sora where the winner can make the loser listen to any request. Sora told her to fall in love with him, as such her emotions were manipulated to make her fall in love with him (hilariously portrayed with her Steph-O-Scope). She fights against her twisted emotions at first, but eventually something genuine starts up.
• Mai Sakurajima in Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai is definitely a Nice Girl, being very caring, calm and a very kindhearted person who would do anything for her loved ones. She's not naturally harsh by any means; however, despite teasing him at times as well, in her own eyes Sakuta goes a bit too far at times, making her emotionally sensitive and slightly snappy side come out.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Pete Reston is an unusual example, being a Sex Shifting "reversi" with an Ambiguous Gender Identity: he uses male pronouns but has experienced some dysphoric episodes, suggesting a true gender identity closer to demiboy. His confusion about his own sexuality after his reversi trait manifests causes him to develop low-key Belligerent Sexual Tension with his cis-male roommate Oliver: the normally calm and collected Pete has a tendency to lash out physically when he gets embarrassed at Oliver's efforts to comfort him (which are born out of purely platonic affection).
• Rangi the firebender is this in The Rise of Kyoshi. While she is often seen as prickly and angry to outsiders, she is almost always sweet to Kyoshi.
• Warrior Cats:
  • Leafpool became a Sweet tsundere over time. She was originally, while an apprentice, a very meek and soft-spoken individual with a calm and controlled profile, much different from both her mother Sandstorm and sister Squirrelflight. As she got older, Leafpool became more bossy and ill-tempered, becoming a full-blown Sweet Tsundere in The Power of Three. Leafpool still is usually very gentle and kind despite a slight temper. She is both a romantic and non-romantic example. Leafpool was annoyed by her former mate Crowfeather's prickly attitude, but realized that she actually loved him when he confessed his love after saving her. The non-romantic example of this is her relationship with Jayfeather. Leafpool loves her son dearly and is protective of him, though they often got into arguments since her son had inherited Crowfeather's personality. This was especially seen when Jayfeather was her apprentice, her patience always being a short fuse with him particularly.
  • Silverstream is shown to be incredibly kind and affectionate, but she is also rebellious and spunky.

Unsorted

• In Date A Live, Kotori Itsuka is Harsh as the Commander (Black Ribbons) and Sweet as Shido's cute little sister (White Ribbons). She has more of an extreme role segregation rather than a true Split Personality , so it's interesting that her way of dealing with Shido changes also.
• Shira in The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio. As there is a heroine like this in several of Lloyd Alexander's other novels, one gets the impression that he has something of a fondness for this trope.
• Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi: Lan Wangji is mostly a kuudere, but he exhibited tsundere-like traits towards Wei Wuxian pre-timeskip. He enforced the rules more harshly than necessary during his time in Cloud Recesses, coldly rebuffing all his attempts to befriend him, which all turned out to be because he'd fallen in Love at First Sight with him and had no idea how to properly deal with it due to a buttload of issues. Unfortunately, this backfired horribly, since it lead everyone around him including Wei Wuxian to believe he hated him, which made it near impossible to help him when the rest of the cultivation world turned on him after he became the Yiling Patriarch. By the time Wei Wuxian returns in the present day, he's completely abandoned the tsundere traits and has gone full kuudere, but he still has difficulty verbally communicating his feelings, so it still takes the whole book for the misunderstandings to fully clear up.
• INVADERS of the ROKUJYOUMA!?: Clan starts becoming more haughty towards Koutarou once Theia grows out of it.
• Kanade in Mayo Chiki! pulls a tsundere act towards the computer club, possibly as a preemptive reward for her somewhat unreasonable request. It's effective.
• My Mental Choices Are...: Furano usually acts cold towards Kanade, but this is due to her shyness, and she really wants to tell him how much she likes him.
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: Ginger treats Catarina with outward disdain and annoyance, but still tries to help her when she needs it (while claiming she just wanted Catarina to stop moaning about her studies).
• Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!: Mahiro Yasaka is an odd example. By nature, he's a very Nice Guy; it's just that his Unwanted Harem is constantly being loud, zany and disruptive, never giving him a moment's peace, which grates on his nerves quickly and leads to Slapstick violence (yes, even on the girls). However, in the rare moments where they tone it down a notch, it's blatantly obvious that he likes them, and sees Cuuko and Hasta as surrogate siblings. As for his main Love Interest Nyarko, in addition to the above bullet point, he's outright said that she's too manic and he doesn't know if he can believe her statements of love; the times where she turns down her "volume" (such as having a pleasant date with him, or hand-knitting him a scarf for Christmas) are the ones where you can see that despite his protests he really does have feelings for her. He even admits (to himself) that he'd probably have returned her feelings a long time ago if she could just act normal more often.
• Rebuild World: Akira for Sheryl, tragic past type mentioned in Analysis. What do you get when you mix Unscrupulous Hero and tsundere? Well, when Akira first talks to Sheryl, he threatens her in a rage. And then he takes her home, lets her clean up in his bathroom, and then hands her his meal when he sees she’s hungry. And then he tells her that her body is completely useless to him even for use a disposable pawn after she offers herself to him. And then he helps her anyway. While the death threats and treating her almost like a slave continues for a while, things mellow out, Akira easily gives in to her requests to let her cuddle him, and he has moments of shock where he almost seems like a Hero-Worshipper over Sheryl's Guile Hero talents for things like setting up a Snacksploitation scheme, beating a game he struggled with, or securing information about Drankam. And then he goes back to his distant and cold normal behavior.
  Akira: It’s not like I saved you because I like you or anything.
• The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System: Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong: Shen Yuan/Shen Qingqiu is an scathingly snarky Unreliable Narrator that wouldn't notice romantic feelings (his own AND that of others) if it bit him. This means that he seems to blow hot and cold unpredictably and with abandon to an outside observer, especially to his admirers.
• Shairn in Leigh Brackett's The Starmen of Llyrdis. At the end, she straight-up tells Trehairne that she hates him for what he's done, but then she tells him that she loves him, and asks whether he'll have her on those grounds. He realizes that they will never have a peaceful life together, but he says yes.
• An interesting Tsundere mix occurs in Sukisho, where Sunao is Harsh, but split personality Ran is Sweet.
• Xanth features a few examples.
  • Princess Irene is this to Dor early in the series.
  • Dor's mother, Chameleon, actually has this as a plot point; her magic talent is that she slowly switches between a very sweet (but dumb as a brick) beautiful woman, and a very sharp tempered (but brilliant) ugly woman over the course of a month. Her husband, Bink, prefers her somewhere in the middle.
  • Tandy is very Sweet, but her magic talent is "throwing tantrums" which have the impact of a grenade going off, so when she gets mad you know it. But her husband, Smash, is an ogre and finds this adorable.
  • Threnody is Harsh to Jordan in Crewel Lye.

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Leaving to Tsundere already? Well, then, go and fail for not studying enough. Thank you for studying with me, a-at least.

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