As a long-time anime fan, it’s been interesting to see how the characters in anime and dating-sim games change and grow. Over the past decade or so there’s been a huge increase in the genre known as moé (mo-EH), which is written with the kanji character for “sprout” and which could be translated as “the woozy, happy feeling you get when contemplating your favorite female anime character.” It also seems that every character can be categorized neatly into one archetype or another, no matter how original the character might seem. Some of the most common types of anime/game characters include meganekko (meh-gan-NEH-ko), or Girl With Glasses, the often related dojikko (doh-JI-ko), or Clumsy-in-a-Cute-Way Girl, and osana-najimi (oh-sa-na na-ji-mee), the Childhood Friend that comes to wake you up every morning and who is secretly in love with you. One of the most common recent genres of anime characters is tsundere (TSOON-deh-reh), which comes from tsun tsun (angry) and dere dere (soft and tender) and which describes characters that give everyone the cold shoulder yet are actually very vulnerable inside (like Haruhi or Shana). There’s just no end to these cute character categories. Some others include Rich Girl who is the Daughter of a Wealthy Zaibatsu Family; Girl Who Talks in the Third Person; Girl Who Works at her Family’s Shinto Shrine as a Shrine Maiden, and a recent trend, Girl Who Is So Jealous She’d Kill Her Boyfriend Rather Than Let Him Go With Someone Else (known as yandere). Which anime character type is your favorite? (I’m fond of the Class Representative myself — they’re so organized, so concerned about everyone else, I just love them.)
