Kun is not a gendered Honorific

This is a fact I was well aware of when I started using it in my Kuudere based Username while also identifying as Fluid.  There was an old TheAnimeMan video about how neither the Chan or Kun Hoonorifics are inherently Gendered.

I choose it over other Honorifics I could have used because I like alliteration.

But to the casual Western Anime fan, Chan seems Girly and Kun seems Boyish.  With every well known example of a male character being called Chan being one who is less then ideally Masculine in some way.

Fortunately I'm now aware of some neat examples of Girls being called Kun.

In Detective Conan Professor Agasa usually calls Haibara Ai "AiKun".

Recently I was watching scenes from the Visual Novel Shiny Days on a website I won't name and noticed that Youko calls Mai "MaiKun".

Neither of those characters are Tomboys or Bifauxnen or Butch or any other kind of masculine woman.  

I've referred to Haibara as a Kuudere before, and Mai is the mother of the Kuudere I use for my Avatar.  So I feel reasonably vindicated in my decision to associate the Kuudere with the Kun honorific.

I also recently discovered that someone on Deviant Art had created a character named KuudereKun years before I independently came up with that for my new Username.  But they don't seem to have become super popular so I think the Username is still fair game for me to use.

Miyu Edelfelt the Supreme Kuudere

I made two prior posts on this blog discussing the Kuudere archetype of Anime and why it’s what I've in recent years chosen to username myself after.  

But in both I completely neglected to mention the character of Miyu Edelfelt from Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya.  That is a massive oversight given how I have another post on this blog proclaiming Prisma Illya to be The Most Anime.

And I can certainly argue she should have qualified for the more specific premise of Kuudere are Stoics.  She is a very emotionally driven character in-spite of her cool and calm Stoic demeanor and very intelligent, both book smart and wise, seemingly very mature for her age.  And episode 9 of 3wei clarifies the Nasuverse's Magic system to be compatible with Stoic Metaphysics. However, since I made that post wanting to share it with people in Normie Stoicism Groups on Facebook it’s probably for the best that I didn't devote much of it to the least Normie Accessible Anime of all time.

She slipped my mind at the time because I hadn’t recently rewatched Prisma Illya and often my over analyzing of Prisma Illya focuses on how Illya works as an archetypical Pink Magical Girl rather than how Miyu works as a Blue.

The Blue is more flexible in terms of her personality type then the Pink (and they aren’t even always literally color coded as Blue), what’s important is that they contrast with the Pink, so a Kuudere certainly can play that role.

In the original Japanese she is voiced by Nazuka Kaori and in the English Dub she is voiced by Caitlyn French, both are excellent, however the English Dub only covered the first season, the Dance at the Sports Festival OVA, 2wei, 2wei Herz! and some of the shorts made with those seasons, so unfortunately the Onsen OVA, 3wei, the movies and Prisma Phantasm remain undubbed.  Caitlyn French also voiced Yakumo Tsukamoto in School Rumble, which isn’t the only other Dub I’ve watched she’s been in but the only time I instantly recognized her as Miyu, that character may also count as a Kuudere but its been awhile since I watched it and my thinking of her as sounding like Miyu may have influenced my perception.  French is also Shiro in No Game No Life who probably does count as a Kuudere but isn’t among who I’m mainly thinking of when I reference the concept.

I keep feeling compelled to reiterate how the main reason for the 3 episode rule is that it can take 3 episodes for a show to fully set up what it even is, and expressing what I mean by that with merely the word “premise” before because that’s the word Trixie used was a mistake, it’s more than just the premise.  Miyu is the reason the three episode rule applies to Prisma Illya, she’s the Deuteragonist, so her not even showing up till the end of episode 2 is narratively necessary but still a reason what the show is actually like isn’t fully apparent from only two episodes.  The third episode is entirely about introducing Miyu and establishing her character and how she contrasts with Illya.

I have said before that I’d like to see someone make Fanart that recreates the Iconic “Don’t worry I’ve got you.”  “But who’s Got You” moment from Superman The Movie with Prisma Illya and Miyu.  The reason why that reference should work for fans of this show is because of episode 4.  

Update: Trekkie Post Script.

Comparing a Trio of main characters to the Kirk/Spock/McCoy dynamic is one of the most generic comparisons nerds make.  But I couldn't stop thinking about how well it works here.

Illya refuses to accept a no win scenario, this is once we reach 3wei the core of her character.  This is what every Magical Girl Protagonist has in common with Kirk.

Miyu from what I said above is obviously the Spock, while Kuro's complete lack of hesitation to say she's sacrifice an entire world she doesn't know to save her friend is very McCoy.

Kuudere are Stoics?

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 concepts 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 Metaphysically in Chaso;HEad and Chaos;Child??  I don't know.  [Occultic;Nine very potentially has a Stoic understanding of The Soul and the Afterlife.]

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 to 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 most difficult to get into if you're not used to certain.... aspects of Anime.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/05/miyu-edelfelt-supreme-kuudere.html

Kuudere list

 Since I’ve started defining myself online as a Kuudere, I figure I better break down this Anime archetype by talking about the ones I’m most into, and try to list them basically in the order they came into existence, though for some their Anime came quite a bit later.

The Tsundere and Yandere are the Dere types most well known and the only ones ever the subjects of any serious Video Essays I know of.  I honestly have no idea if my perspective on who is and isn’t a Kuudere even agrees with most Otaku.  Also I’ve still only seen a small percentage of Anime that exist, it’s perhaps revealing that my Kuudere timeline begins in the 90s.

First is Rei Hino in the Sailor Moon Manga, most casuals don’t know this since the 90s Anime changed her personality completely making her much more of a Tsundere. But Manga/Crystal Rei Hino, as well as PGSM, is very much a classic Kuudere. Some may also count Hotaru during the Infinity Arc as a Kuudere, as well as Rei Ayanami in NGE, but they are a type of Kuudere distinct from what I have in mind when I call myself one.

Second is Kanna Hateno in 1996's YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World.  This early Visual Novel was huge in Japan, one of those classics of Otaku media that western fandom doesn’t fully get the influence of since it didn’t get a proper Anime adaptation till 2019.  Just as Mio was vital to the development of the Tsundere, Kanna is a key genesis point for the Kuudere.

Third is Ai Haibara who was introduced to the Detective Conan Anime in 1998.  She is a cool and collected character, in how this show models itself after the Legacy of Sherlock Holmes she is perhaps in a sense Kudo’s Irene Adler.

Fourth is Mai Kawasumi in the 1999 Visual Novel Kanon, she’s an early example of a Kuudere who’s also a Samurai.  After this point I’m not really gonna number them anymore.

Next is Yumera Kirika in the 2001 Original Anime Noir.  The character of Chole also qualifies in different ways, so this show provides two.

But Chiefly of all is Setsuna Kiyoura from the 2005 Visual Novel School Days.  This is the character I’ve been using as my Avatar since I started calling myself a Kuudere and I've ranked her as my number 1 favorite character on MAL.  So for me personally she is the standard I hold all other Kuudere characters to.

Amazingly there is another Kuudere I really like also named Setsuna in the 2007 Anime Shattered Angels.

Then in April of 2008 came Ayase Kishimoto in the 2008 Visual Novel Chaos;HEad which got an Anime adaptation the same year.

Those 9 are the big ones, plenty of other characters in shows I’ve liked could be argued to count, but these are the core to defining what being a Kuudere means to me personally.

Update: October 2022: Now that I've seen all of Karin (2005-2006) for this Halloween month I want to add Anju Maaka, she's similar to Kiyoura in how she's the Kuudere but also kind the brains of the cast, certainty the smartest member of her family in-spite of being the youngest.

It occurs to me that Humora in Madoka Magica probably qualifies.

Update May 2024: I made a post on Miyu from Prisma Illya who I really should have included from the start.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/05/miyu-edelfelt-supreme-kuudere.html