I'm a yandere. What’s your reaction to this?
Ew, cringey weeb.
What’s that?
… are you okay?
I’m a yandere too! Let’s gush about our love interests!
Please stop promoting unhealthy behaviours.
I'm a yandere too! Let’s talk about how to eliminate our rivals.
You do you, fam.
These are all reactions I’ve seen to yanderes online. This essay is a defence of identifying oneself as a yandere against the less-than-complimentary reactions. To start with, we need to look into what a yandere fundamentally is, which is itself divisive.
The prime disagreement regarding the concept of a yandere is about whether or not violence is an emergent or an inherent trait of the archetype: it is harder to accept a character as a love interest, and so also harder to understand other people’s affection towards that character, if one’s main impression of that character is “violent.” If violence is an emergent trait, it is much easier.
Yandere, like tsundere, kuudere, and so on, is an archetype from media. When someone describes themselves in reference to an archetype, the idea is to use an existent idea to readily evoke an idea of themselves in their audience. In other words, saying, “I am a yandere,” is a way of saying, “Please recognise this aspect of my personality that is like these characters from these shows.”
This would work if the archetype itself was unambiguous, but this is not the case. To understand why, let’s take a look at several popular yanderes and identify their common traits.
Anna Nishikinomiya (Shimoneta)
Yuno Gasai (Mirai Nikki)
Sato Matsuzaka (Happy Sugar Life)
These characters share traits: Possessive, obsessive, violent. Pink hair, fake smiles, delusional. It becomes a question of separating the (not strictly necessary) consequences of being a yandere, from the essential quality of being a yandere. Let’s pretend we don’t know what a yandere is at all and try to infer backwards by being given these three characters and told they are examples of yanderes. We'll analyse a few common traits in turn.
Pink Haired:
Two of these characters have pink hair, but not all. This is an emergent trait. If we didn’t know what a yandere was at all, we might infer that pink hair was a subtrait that enhances the archetype. How?After watching these characters in action, we’d see that the character’s personal stories were focused on a love interest. We conclude that love is important to the character archetype, and pink hair makes the character appear (at least superficially) soft and loveable (especially in contrast to other characters).
Delusional:
Two of these characters are delusional (Yuno and Anna), although to differing degrees. Anna is permanently delusional and has no sense of what her actions mean to her love interest, or what he is trying to say and do. Yuno is selectively delusional, where there are moments where she rewrites her memories, but apart from these is fully aware of what is going on. If we were convinced this trait was essential then we might make a case for Sato being delusional too, but as I understand it she was very aware at all times of how her actions would appear to others.
If delusion is indeed an emergent trait, why does it it emerge? In every case the delusions are always related to the love interest. The essential quality of being a yandere can sometimes give rise to delusions about a love interest. This is an important clue, even if we haven’t figured out what a yandere is.
Obsessive:
All three characters focus most of their energy on their love interest. Yuno’s main goal is Yukki, and she focuses on him to the extent that she has a diary which updates her about his status every ten minutes. All of Sato’s actions are taken ultimately to protect her life with Shio, her (platonic) love interest. Anna is perhaps less obsessed than the others but is still obsessed in the presence of her love interest. This is probably an inherent trait.
And finally,
Violent:
Both Yuno and Sato are violent and Anna is too although not to the same extent. This disparity might be due to the different genres: Shimoneta is fundamentally a comedy, whereas Mirai Nikki is mostly action and Happy Sugar Life is a thriller. In the latter two shows the level of violence these characters exhibit is meant to be shocking, but only so far as it raises the excitement of the show. In Mirai Nikki Yuno is the most violent character, but she is not the only violent character; in fact almost all characters are. She needs to be that violent if her particular level is meant to actually be shocking.
In Happy Sugar Life, Sato is the most violent character but it is still scaled appropriately to the show. Sato’s body count is far lower than Yuno’s although her kills are more disturbing.
In contrast, Anna is only violent for comedic effect. Still this does mean that all three characters are violent, even if it is portrayed differently. This makes a case for violence as an inherent trait. At least, according to the analysis of these three characters.
Case closed? Not quite. Because although violence is pleasant on these three characters, this is a) only three characters, and b) even if it was ubiquitous, that doesn't exclude an understanding of the archetype with violence as emergent. This will be the main discussion of part 2.
Reading yandere characters with violence as emergent is not particularly common, although examples exist. In contrast, most people who talk about yanderes define them by their violence. For an example of this, look at The Anime Man’s videos on the topic. Also most media (including fan art) uses violent imagery to signify a character is a yandere (usually with a bloody weapon) more than any other trait. I believe the above is a consequence of violence being overly focused on even when the characters have other yandere-relevant traits.
It should be said that although I'm building up to a case for yanderes as not inherently violent, I don't mean to disregard the violent interpretation. It's possible to find the violent aspect relatable and even appealing. Seeing a yandere’s violent tendencies and relating to that (in combination potentially with their other traits) also makes sense if you’re someone who has these tendencies or compulsive thoughts. I don’t know that I wouldn’t have latched onto this aspect if I had compulsive thoughts about hurting people. Given how common the trait is, it’s not surprising that so many people interpret yandere characters this way.
So are yanderes violent? Yes, they often are, but the relevant question is "Is violence inherent or emergent?" My personal belief is that no, yanderes are not inherently violent, and one can interpret the characters placed in the archetype this way. I plan to make a more in depth case for this in part two of this essay. With that said, I think something should be said about the larger issue.
The larger issue is that there is a lack of a word for someone who wants to signal to others that they relate to the yandere archetype but without the violence. Simply saying “I’m a nonviolent yandere” isn’t enough because most people conceive yanderes as essentially violent. Removing the violence making the word meaningless to them.
One solution is to distinguish violent and not-necessarily-violent (nnv) yanderes, by calling the nnv yanderes simply yanderes, and the violent ones yangires. But this fails to account for that fact that yangires are typically seen as “violent + love” not “violent because of love”. This is an important distinction and I think it should be kept. Another solution is to make up a completely new word, but the problem then becomes for which interpretation? The violent or nnv yanderes? This doesn’t really eliminate the problem.
Ultimately, any true resolution needs to end up at the point where both nnv and violent yanderes each have their own commonly understood word they can refer to themselves as. As it stands, nnv yanderes don’t have this word, although we have one very close.
