Types A and B: Tsundere

Are these two sub-types pre-existing terms? Or were they just made up by someone who wrote the description page?

If it is the latter, I think we don't need them, they are confusing, and heavily arguable.

As a reminder, Type A are "Tsuntsun (harsh) by default. It takes something special to trigger their deredere side"

Type B are "Deredere (sweet) by default. Their temper is almost always triggered by someone or something else, usually the male Love Interest."

The problem: For most tsundere characters, "being on screen", and "being close to their love interest" are the same thing, so many Type A-s get this classification because we mostly see them after their harshness is triggered by the protagonist. Also, most of these being romantic stories, even Type B-s who are supposed to be harsh with their love interest, will eventually "soften up", even though that's supposed to be a Type A process.

On the page, there are multiple examples of secondary indents noting how "actually this is more like a type A/B, if you consider the prequel/source material/flashbacks/etc.

If it is some pre-existing classification, and we have to keep it, at least merge the examples and on the description page, decrease it's importance into something like a sidenote, so it won't obstruct the examples' organization.

edited 2nd Oct '10 3:02:39 PM by EternalSeptember

Tsun Tsun and Dere Dere are preexisting words, Tsundere the word is a combination of the terms Tsun Tsun, meaning to turn away in disgust, and Dere Dere meaning to become 'lovey dovey'.

I have seen the terms used elsewhere before I knew T Vtropes existed.

I do agree that there are really those 2 types of Tsundere though but the line can blur on some examples (due to them being harsh to some and nice to others like Akane and to character interpretation.

Biggest examples of Type A I can think of would be anyone played by Rie Kugimiya especially Taiga her default mode is Kick the Dog to everyone till romance kicks in and she starts to go sweet (somewhat). And Type B would be Ran Mouri who is nice to everyone mostly and kind of to Kudo (and her father) till she snaps and becomes really scary.

I suppose you can call Type A and Type B inversions of each other but still defined by the same word.

edited 2nd Oct '10 3:24:04 PM by Raso

Pretty sure they're preexisting distinctions, yes. Even if not,it's a useful way to keep the page from getting too bulky. If there are problems with the examples, I'd suggest that's because people added them to the wrong section rather than being genuinely poor categories.

I'm the person who added the split into types. About 2... 3 years ago? I think it was 2.

This was because the description was written entirely about type A, and there was a huge argument going on about examples that didn't fit the type A format.

This despite the fact that many of the non-type A examples were historically referred to as Tsundere. (You'll notice that Type A tends to be most prominent in newer works - first Naru from Love Hina and then again with Shana from Shakugan No Shana created a new popularity for this type of Tsundere).

So basically anime watchers here were heavily divided between the newer fans who wanted to limit Tsundere to only Shana clones, and the older fans who pointed out that this would mean eliminating from the examples major milestones in development of the Tsundere archetype, including characters such as Shinobu Miyake (one of the earliest appearances of tsundere in anime) and Madoka Ayukawa who is commonly cited as one of the more complex tsundere and a good example of how to make one more than just a flat character- both of whom are pretty solidly tagged as tsundere.

Splitting them created peace as fans (and haters) of the newer versions of Tsundere could more exactly identify what kind of character they were talking about.

I also think it added much to the trope description by showing how the Tsundere archetype can be (and is) played many different ways.

Also, I think there are clearly some major examples of modern type B Tsundere (Hinagiku?) and they clearly play out differently then Type A Tsundere during the development of the story.

PS: Also, I had seen the "types" division used elsewhere before (can't remember where though), which is how I got the idea to split it on the page. So it wasn't entirely my idea.

edited 2nd Oct '10 5:16:06 PM by Sackett

I've often seen the term "Deretsun" being used to refer to the type B Tsundere. Here, it's redirected to Yandere, but that's really something different. I think it's because the page was originally named that, but it was renamed to the proper term.

Shana Clone, definitely understandable I think.

I'm actually going hiatus from watching anime in 2000-2004 interval (living in a small country helps), and then I found TV Tropes at 2006. As You Know, TV Tropes makes all of us Genre Savvy, especially those who knew about older as well as newer media form.

And then I found that anime is evolving with the time difference, I remember that Magical girl type, for example, evolving from total feminine to tomboy type (mostly). And the change over 5 years course was totally drastic, and in this context i want to talk about Tsundere.

Yes, Shana is, on this sense, role model of so-called Type A (Tsun-Tsun). Her archetype exported, altered, deconstructed, reconstructed...and YET all these character still embrace Shana as 'Goddess of Tsundere' (Rie Kugimiya, I look at you). No wonder, people who mostly more familiar with new millenium Anime saw 'Shana-clones' as the ONLY type of tsundere these days.

But wait, there are far more variation of Tsundere in old days, and even in 2000s (although they're overshadowed with Shana-expies). Ran from Meitantei Conan is the easiest and simplest example of B-type Tsundere, she's sweet and kind, even to his Love Interest (unless he doing something made her angry). No 'urusai-urusai-urusai' whatsoever, she's honest and emotionally stable. Asuka Langley from Evangelion is a Deconstruction example, whilist not only her Type-A seen as a charm point, but indicate the Disfunction Junction in the series. Akane in Ranma One Half is Flanderized type-B > Type-A, few even saw it as Character Derailment, but most simply dismiss it and go with the flow.

TL;DR. DIFFERENT categories is NEEDED, we can do the research (again) then categorize it based on actual fact, and no, someone can't just accuse a Type-B as a Type-A just because the main character is a stupid (or a lucky bastard). We should see her/his interaction with OTHER character with different personality/ traits than Main Character/ Love Interest, no series actually staring only two character.

Urgh. More Gratuitous Japanese. Seriously if we are going to look at the structure of this trope, can we also look at the name? This is, as far as I can tell, a Portmanteau of two Japanese terms (not even just words but terms for pity's sake!) for a trope that is far from ubiquitously Japanese. I found this trope (and this thread) by luck mere moments before I intended to put up a YKTTW for this trope as I thought it was absent. How are names based on works going down when names based on a foreign language are so durable? /rant  ^*

edited 19th Oct '10 12:58:45 AM by RegShoe

It's a Japanese neologism invented by the Japanese equivalent of tropers to describe a common trope that they had noticed. It's popular enough to show up in their mass media, although generally in sort of a tongue-in-cheek way. Because of that popularity, it leaked over to English speaking anime fandoms, where it's a very well known term. The choice in this case is between using a term that's very well known among a specific subgroup or making up something that's not well known by anyone, but might have the benefit of being more intuitive to English speakers. And, well, we made that choice a long time ago, regardless of it was the correct choice or not.

Personally I'm against in-trope "type 1, 2, 3..." categorization. By the same logic, we could just name every trope after a number and be done with it.

If we really have to make a distinction, we should call them "Tsun type" and "Dere type" or some such.

edited 19th Oct '10 2:33:20 AM by TripleElation

^ I think I agree with that, since that is their default mode.

^^ Add to that there are specific shows that are built around the trope and its the main draw (I know lots of anime fans who watch a show just for the Tsundere). Most subs and quite a few official manga translations don't translate the word (they leave it as is with a small note), and the closest literal translation of the word (Lovestruck) is very broad and means alot of other things. (Hell all the current redirects are very lacking in describing the trope.)

On a whole its alot better than a Character Named Trope because it is literally used everywhere in Anime, Manga and Fanspeak. (and as for Japanese titles for tropes this is by far the biggest one.)

edited 19th Oct '10 3:33:40 AM by Raso

You know...

part of the reason it's so hard to find an English term is because Tsundere has both of these "types" included under it.

Might it be possible to leave Tsundere as covering both types and create two sub-type pages that would use English terms as the name? Thus allowing both Tsundere fans and non-anime fans to locate the tropes?

Except for the types are very very subjective, many can fall under both, and non-anime fans seem to find the trope well enough as is as well.

I say leave as is.

Main/Tsundere found in: 3040 articles, excluding discussions.

This title has brought 25,021 people to the wiki from non-search engine links since 20th FEB '09.

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edited 19th Oct '10 8:30:39 AM by Raso

^^ See the original post.

You could give an english title to "Type B", and I could say that every example under it could be sort of considered a type A as well, so it should be under the Tsundere trope.

?

How so?

How is sweet on the outside, angry on the inside a subtrope of angry on the outside, sweet on the inside?

Let's look at some specific examples.

• Tohsaka Rin, the page image, and one of the most famous Type A's. She is violent for most of the story, and only goes deredere in a few romantic scenes with the protagonist.
  • Except that the whole story is told from the protagonist's POV, and in one scene, it is mentioned that everyone else knows her as a sweet, popular class rep. Blink and you miss it, but if you take it into account, it implies that she is a deredere girl who went tsuntsun only for the few days she was around the protagonist, and the story happens to consists of these days.

• Currently classified as a "Type B", Hermione Granger. She is usually a nice, normal girl, but she can be really vicious at Ron.
  • Except that eventually they get together, making their relationship a process of from Vitriolic Best Buds warming up to each other and becoming lovers.

These are just two examples, but the same logic could be applied to almost anything I recognize there. Most of these girls are either normal or deredere by default, before the plot begins, act unusually tsuntsun with the protagonist, and eventually fall in love with him.

So you can either label her in the context of her first introduction, making her a type B, or in the context of their relationship development, making her a type A.

edited 19th Oct '10 10:18:28 AM by EternalSeptember

I now fully expect someone to suggest that if a Tsundere can be classified under either, we call her a type AB, and if she can be classified under neither, we call her a type O.

^ Now waiting for the Personality Blood Types joke.

Anyway, renaming a trope with 3,000+ wicks and 25,000+ inbound links is out of the question; the name's just too deeply ingrained for a rename to work well. That said, we should probably split this page, even if only by medium, just due to length. Description could afford some shortening, too.

EDIT: Correcting a number.  ^*

edited 19th Oct '10 3:42:33 PM by G-Mon

If we split them by type, the most obvious names would be Tsun Tsundere and Dere Tsundere, with Tsundere itself being an example-free definition+disambig page of the likes of Unwinnable.

As for the "portrayed as type A but could be type B In-Universe", we could restrict classification by what appears on-screen... not that elegant, but it's just one idea.

edited 19th Oct '10 3:37:32 PM by billybobfred

Well there are some that are both on screen, Naru from Love Hina in the manga starts out a Type B then moves into Type A after the first book and slowly goes to a very polar Type B, the Anime though she is Type A almost the whole time. Kaere Kimura from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is a literal split personality Tsundere who is Type A or Type B depending on what personality she is in at the start (the Dere personality disappears later on). Akane in Ranma Starts as a Type B and transforms into Type A and the anime sticks her squarely in Type A and Fanon takes that Up To Eleven.

edited 19th Oct '10 7:54:43 PM by Raso

There is always a need to make Master of the Mixed Message a better known related trope, because just showing conflicting emotions doesn't equate to a Tsundere. That's just having a personality more complicated than being default 'HAPPY' or default 'ANGRY'. The trope is a character trope (so one or two incidences showing this behavior doesn't count) and it's about the extremes.

That's the basic reasons we kicked Katara off the page and I see kind of the same thing with Hermoine. Asuka and Akane are certainly the archetypical examples but I think Helga Pataki is the best to illustrate the trope. She has a shrine devoted to Arnold but can only bully him in public.

I think these types are causing a misconception. 'Tsundere' is not someone who is 'sweet inside and harsh outside' or 'harsh inside and sweet outside'. It is someone who floats from sweet to harsh wit a considerable frequency (usually due to a romantic interest).

Lets take Akane, for example. She is 'tsuntsun' by default when dealing with people like Kuno, Nabiki and Happousai (i.e. people who regularly piss her off). However she is 'deredere' when dealing with Ryouga, Kasumi and her nameless female friends (people who are generally nice with her). This is not what makes her a Tsundere. She is one because she acts both way toward Ranma frequently. Pretty much all her interactions with him involves her changing from tsuntsun to deredere or vice versa. She usually starts as 'tsuntsun' to him, making her 'type A', but that is not a fixed rule either. Sometimes she starts with 'deredere' and it is Ranma who trigger the change.

The same can be said about most (if not all) 'classical' tsunderes. 'Tsundere' is more like a relationship Trope then a character one. The tsundere, regardless of what is her 'default' state (if she has such thing) just act 'tsundere' toward a specific person. Examples of what I am saying include Akane, Naru and Shana, to just citate to most 'unambiguous' ones (since these are who more or less defined the word).

I think the romantic component is actually necessary to the trope. Someone who just switches from a sweet personality to an extremely angry person on a regular basis is more bipolarism or just a person with a temper issue.

edited 22nd Oct '10 6:43:08 PM by Deboss

^ Word's used for non-romantic stuff often. Well, it used for many things, really.

We do have Mood-Swinger.

Yeah I do agree that this trope requires it to be at or because of a love interest or at a single person (who could be a love interest)