Yuno Gasai from the Anime/Manga Mirai Nikki aka Future Diary is the single most well known Yandere, or at least she was when I fully joined the Anime Community in the mid to late 2010s, so much so that Gigguk’s Yandere video could make a Joke out of pretending she’s the only one who matters.
But unlike most characters who have become virtually synonymous with their Archetype she is not the first or even the first really popular one, or even really among the first. I would dare say by the time of her creation the Yandere was already becoming an overplayed Cliche.
Now when I started researching this thesis I was shocked how much older Mirai Nikki’s source material is, I’m not used to popular Manga taking over 5 years to get an Anime. But it was still not old enough to destroy this premise. It started publication on January 26th 2006.
Now I’m someone who is fairly strict in how I even define a Yandere, I talked about elements of it in a post I made earlier this year. So for example the character from Shuffle who some call a Yandere (I’ve heard she’s more of one in the Anime then in the original VN) I’m iffy on counting. But if we count her then Shuffle’s Anime ended on January 6th 2006.
Amelie Doree has a video on the 2003 Visual Novel Cross Channel, from it I can conclude it has a character who can be considered a Yandere.
Most of Higurashi was released by the end of 2005 including the two most Yandere relevant chapters. Getting back to the relative strictness with how I define a Yandere, Sonozaki I consider a Yandere even if atypical in some ways, while Ryugu is not a Yandere, when she acts Crazy it has nothing to do with romance, apparently she's considered a Yangire a term I know less about.
The original School Days Visual Novel released in 2005. And in my opinion Kotonoha is still the best Yandere.
The first Durarara Light Novel came out in 2004 and the second came out in 2005. They feature even by my strictest definition multiple Yanderes. And if you loosen the definition it might just be possible to argue this is a saga where everyone is a Yandere.
And that’s the key to my thesis really, it is particularly the role Yanderes plays in Durarara that even in these early novels makes it feel like it’s already a cliche, like the author is on a Meta level trying to say something about how overused this cliche is.
All that and I still have a hunch none of these is where the Yandere trend began. It’s difficult to research because characters who technically qualify have always existed, with some even suggesting the first Anime Yandere was a character from Uresei Yatsura or something like that. And Gaijin Goomba of course wants to connect it to some pre-modern Japanese Folk Tale.
But when I ask who the first Yandere is I mean the beginning of this trend in Otaku oriented Visual Novels and Light Novels of the early 2000s which may have actually began in the 90s. There may not be a definitive single first one, but I get the sense that even the oldest of the ones I’ve discussed above were already part of a trend.
But let’s return to the mystery of why Yuno Gasai was able to steal the spotlight from all these predecessors. Is it because she’s the best? I already said I consider someone else the best. But this is one of those tropes where so many people want to argue why the one they like is the only one who was written with a complex Psychological profile that makes their insanity not truly only about the person they are romantically fixated on, but the truth is they were all written with depth.
Maybe why Yuno overshadows the rest is because of the Anime adaptation, because of how well she was performed by Tomosa Murata and later in the English Dub Brina Palencia? Glass Reflection I remember said in his Future Diary review that he didn’t like Brina as Yuno and that ticked me off. One of Brina’s unique talents is to sound vocally more "normal" then most Anime characters even while still having an eccentric personality. And for the Bipolar quality that a good Yandere is supposed to have that kind of voice is actually perfect.
Cross Channel still doesn’t have an Anime, but besides that all those Pre-Yuno Yandere also made their Anime debut before her.
Mirai Nikki started airing in the Fall of 2011. School Days technically was an Anime in its source material but got its TV Anime in 2007. Higurashi had its Yandere Arcs in its first season in 2006. And both of the first two Durarara LNs were covered in the first season of its Anime in the first half of 2010.
And they all had good VAs who did a great job bringing their character's Insanity to life.
It honestly might be more that Yuno was the LAST notable Yandere as far as actual Japanese media goes. The shows that copy everything else about Future Diary make their female lead very much not a Yandere. Instead for the terminally online the Yandere has been kept alive by a perpetually in-development American Indie Video Game and ASMR videos. And maybe there's some V-Tubers who's gimmick is that they're a Yandere I wouldn't know.
So when Anitube as we currently know it started Yuno was the freshest Yandere in everyone’s memory. And for plenty of newer Anime fans she was the only Yandere recent enough for them to have seen in action.
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