I’m pretty usual among modern people interested in Ancient Stoic Philosophy in that I’m mainly interested in their Metaphysics and in the Political Philosophy of Zeno’s Republic (which later Roman Stoics disowned) rather than what it means to live like a Stoic.
But as is often the case with me, the thoughts I do have on the subject relate to Anime.
First however I need to comment on how the casual understanding of a Stoic Demeanor causes Stoicism to be misunderstood. Stoicism isn’t about having no emotions or suppressing them. It’s simply about having them under control, trying not to make emotionally impulsive decisions, or in debates to not make arguments that are emotional rather than logical.
The Roman Stoics I don’t like probably would agree with what Ben Shapiro means by “fact don’t care about your feelings”, but Zeno Stoics would not, they would understand that Gender is based on more than just your sex organs, as would Paul based on Galatians 3.
One of the articles in Stoicism in Early Christianity argues that the very Emotional Characterization of Jesus in The Fourth Gospel doesn’t conflict with a Stoic reading of The New Testament but supports it.
And so in that context we come to my thesis that some Kuudere Anime characters are the true Stoics of modern popular fiction.
Kuudere is mainly a description of a character’s demeanor (which is where the Stoic comparison begins, all Kuudere are Stoic in that casual sense) and so can refer to a variety of different kinds of characters. Some I suppose are the bad misunderstanding of Stoicism I referred to above, some are really Rei Ayanami clones, and some just come off this way because they’re Introverts. And like Tsundere it seems to have originally referred more to the specific character journey of some Visual Novel Love Interests, being at first cold and seemingly indifferent to the protagonist as opposed to the hostility of the Tsundere.
But the Kuudere characters I’m thinking of when I refer to myself as a real life Kuudere are ones who are not unemotional or suppressing their emotions but are in fact entirely motivated by their emotional desires, just in a particularly calculated way. For some their Tragic Flaw is their tendency to place the emotional needs of their loved ones ahead of their own.
To be trendy I think I’ll mention first the most recent addition to the Anime Kuudere canon, Misuzu Gondou of Tomo-chan is A Girl. She’s the reason I watched the show, the actual main couple bugs me. She’s the smartest character in the show, but spends much of the latter part questioning herself. She’s also just really fun to watch.
Shizuku Sangou from Kampfer is fun in how she’s perhaps the least susceptible to the Tragic Flaw I mentioned above. She decides she wants the protagonist pretty quickly and does not hesitate to act on it. But she’s also the one most motivated to advance the plot because of her past girlfriend who died.
Ayase Kishimoto from Chaos;HEad is perhaps the closest Anime character to my Christian Stoicism thesis. She is a fan of a fantasy novel that seems like this world’s version of Narnia so she’s constantly interpreting the show’s Sci-Fi concept in religious sounding ways while talking almost like a Prophetess. Unfortunately what the Sci-Fi premise of the Chaos: shows is can be interpreted as Platonist, though I feel Steins;Gate in the same universe has an ultimately Stoic take on Fate. So maybe there is a Stoic impetration of what's going on in Chaso;HEad and Chaos;Child?? I don't know.
And that brings me to the culmination of this post, Setsuna Kiyoura of School Days. Like most School Days characters she is better handled in the original Visual Novel than in the infamous 2007 Anime, but for the most part she is still essentially the same character. She’s the smartest character in the story and is principally motivated by her loyalty to Sekai but that is complicated by her own feelings for Makoto. The circumstances under which Makoto has sex with Setsuna in the VN are very different from the Anime, in the VN it’s a very unique premise for a love scene that I find very emotionally moving.
She is my Avatar on most websites because she is the best.
Update: April 13th:
I didn't originally plan for this be one of those posts I'd come back to adding new sections later, I really felt that Tetrad would be sufficient to convey the idea I was trying to get across. But I've since watched the first 5 episodes of Re:Creators and already I find Meteroa Osterreich to be possibly even more of a Classic Stoic.
It's interesting how her not the male nominal protagonist or the Asuna looking deuteragonist is basically serving as the leader of the group, the one figuring things out and doing most of the talking when they have to negotiate with the SDF and the Government. She does it all with a very calm and cool demeanor but she does have emotional motivation for her role in all of this.
Update May 2024: I have decided Miyu from Prisma Illya is also relevant to this thesis. However that Anime is one of the difficult to get into if you're not used to certain.... aspects of Anime.
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