Anime characters are generally organized into basic archetypes, and whenever a new character is introduced, fans are able to categorize them easily, perhaps as a glasses-wearing bookish girl with poor social skills, a dojikko with a pure and endearing personality to go with her clumsiness, and so on. Each new batch of anime series brings in new variations on the characters, like the recent evolution in “traps” (boys pretending to be girls), “reverse traps” (girls pretending to be boys) and characters like Ayase from Guilty Crown, who could kick your butt any day of the week despite being in a wheelchair. The other day my Japanese wife was loudly complaining about various general failings of mine even as she cooked me a delicious meal then asked with bright eyes if it tasted good, and I realized with a start that I’d married a tsundere, a type of character who is tsun tsun (irritated, annoyed) most of the time but dere dere (loving, tender) when all is said and done. Then I thought about her mother for a moment, who is always very helpful and organized. When I asked what club my wife’s mother had been in in high school, my wife said, “She wasn’t in a club. She was the class president every year through junior high and high school.” Like tsundere, class president/class representative is another well established anime character type, and I’d been living under the same roof with both all this time.
My life is looking more like an anime.
