Dere Types

Dere types are the family of anime character archetypes built on deredere (デレデレ), the Japanese word for lovestruck, gooey, visibly smitten. Each name welds dere to a different mask: tsun for prickly, kuu for cool, dan for silent, yan for unwell. The affection stays constant. Only the surface changes.

Dere Types Compared

Eighteen attested types, what each one hides behind, and the characters fans reach for first. If you would rather find out which one you are before reading, take the dere type quiz and come back. Fans write these archetypes in text too, and the kaomoji picker has the tsundere pout and the deredere blush ready to copy.

Two rows carry only one name for a reason. Shundere and bocchandere are thin coinages with no second character fandom agrees on, and padding them out would mean inventing a consensus that does not exist.

Where the Suffix Comes From

Deredere started life as ordinary Japanese, an onomatopoeic word for someone melting with infatuation. A man who goes deredere around a woman is grinning stupidly, agreeing with everything, useless for the rest of the afternoon.

The archetype vocabulary grew out of fan discussion in Japanese online communities in the late 1990s and early 2000s, especially on 2channel and in the visual novel scene. Players kept noticing the same emotional structures across different games and needed shorthand. Once tsundere caught on and went mainstream in the mid 2000s, the -dere slot became productive. Anyone could coin a new one by attaching a mask to the front.

Some of the results are genuinely useful critical tools. Others are jokes fans repeat because they are funny. Both live in the same lists, which is worth remembering before treating any of this as an official taxonomy.

The mechanism is what matters. Every dere type describes a gap: the distance between what a character shows and what a character feels. Closing that gap is the plot.

Tsundere (ツンデレ)

The famous one. Tsun-tsun means aloof and prickly, so a tsundere is sharp on the outside and warm underneath, insulting you while walking you home. The classic pattern is denial under pressure: she made you lunch, she will not admit she made you lunch, and she will be irritated that you noticed.

Taiga Aisaka from Toradora! is the example most fans reach for.

Full breakdown: the tsundere meaning page covers the four-phase tsun-and-dere cycle, the 2002 coinage, thirty-three named characters across two tables, and the “I’m not a dere” meme.

Yandere (ヤンデレ)

From yanderu (病んでる), to be sick or mentally unwell, plus dere. A yandere loves you and that love has stopped having limits.

This is the type that requires honesty. Yandere characters are written as possessive, obsessive, jealous, and frequently violent toward anyone they see as a rival. The archetype trades on horror, not romance. Its appeal comes from the reversal of the standard romance promise: being wanted absolutely is presented as thrilling for a scene and then revealed as a trap.

Yuno Gasai from Future Diary is the face of the type, to the point that her pink hair and axe function as visual shorthand for the whole archetype. She presents as a model student and kills without hesitation to keep Yukiteru Amano beside her.

Worth naming plainly: yandere behavior modeled on real relationships describes abuse. The fiction is enjoyable precisely because it is fiction, and the better series treat the obsession as a threat rather than a compliment.

Famous Yandere Characters

These are the names fan discussion returns to whenever the type comes up. As with every list on this page, they are commonly cited fan examples rather than official labels. Descriptions below stay at the level of pattern rather than plot, so the column on the right flags what kind of story you are walking into without spoiling how it resolves.

A few things are visible only when the examples are lined up. The yandere is disproportionately introduced as the harmless one, which is the reveal the whole type is built for. It skews female in casting but is not inherently gendered, as Rolo and Toma show. And the register swings enormously: Baka and Test and Love Tyrant use the same behavioural pattern as Happy Sugar Life and get laughs from it, because the tell is not the obsession itself but whether the series lets you see the cost.

Kuudere (クーデレ)

Kuu comes from the English word “cool.” A kuudere is calm, flat, and seemingly emotionless, and everything warm arrives in very small doses. Where a tsundere argues, a kuudere simply does not react, so the single unguarded moment lands enormously against a baseline that level.

Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion is the proto-kuudere and still the cleanest example.

Full breakdown: the kuudere meaning page covers the pronunciation, the trait checklist, the three-way comparison with tsundere and dandere, and thirty-two named characters across two tables.

Dandere (ダンデレ)

From danmari (黙り), silence. A dandere is shy nearly to the point of muteness, speaking in fragments and going still when addressed by a stranger. The distinction from kuudere is the reason for the quiet: a kuudere sees no need to speak, a dandere is frightened to.

Hinata Hyuga from Naruto is the example almost everyone reaches for.

Full breakdown: the dandere meaning page covers the behavioural tells, the shape of a dandere arc, and how the archetype compares with real social anxiety.

Deredere (デレデレ)

The base form, and the one people forget is a type at all. A deredere character is openly sweet all the time, with no cold mask, no defensive layer, no gap to close.

They are the sunny protagonist who hugs first and asks questions later. In ensemble stories they usually act as the solvent, the one warm enough to crack the tsundere and coax out the dandere. Their arcs tend to be about whether unguarded kindness can survive contact with a hard world.

Ochaco Uraraka from My Hero Academia is a good working example: cheerful, forthright, quick to say the encouraging thing out loud, and given a genuine test of whether that openness holds up when the stakes turn lethal.

Himedere (姫デレ)

Hime (姫) is princess. A himedere expects to be treated as royalty, whether or not she actually is any.

The tone is comic entitlement. Demands, decrees, a servant assigned on day one. The affection surfaces when the crown slips and it becomes clear the performance was covering loneliness, or simply an upbringing where nobody ever said no.

Erina Nakiri from Food Wars! is the standard example. She is the heir to a culinary dynasty, refers to herself as possessing the God Tongue, and treats most of the cast as staff. The softening, when it comes, is slow and grudging and tied directly to the abandonment underneath the arrogance.

Oujidere (王子デレ)

Ouji (王子) is prince, so an oujidere is the male counterpart to the himedere. He wants to be treated as royalty first and turns into an actual gentleman second.

The arc is specific: the posturing comes before the devotion, and the devotion is what proves the posturing was hollow. Where a himedere’s crown slips, an oujidere’s crown gets earned.

Tamaki Suoh from Ouran High School Host Club is the definitive case. He runs the host club on pure theatrical princeliness, all sweeping declarations and rose petals, and the series keeps quietly demonstrating that underneath the performance is someone who genuinely will not let anybody in the room feel unwanted.

Kamidere (神デレ)

Kami (神) is god. A kamidere believes they are superior to everyone in the room and behaves accordingly, with a god complex worn as a personality.

This one is usually reserved for antagonists, where the fun lies in watching absolute self-certainty meet a limit. The dere is genuinely present but conditional: they may love you, from a great height, as a favor.

Lelouch Lamperouge from Code Geass is the cleanest fit, because he has both halves. He crowns himself the architect of a new world and treats everyone as a piece on a board, and he is also visibly, ruinously devoted to his sister. Light Yagami from Death Note gets cited constantly and is worth an asterisk: purists argue he is a god complex with no dere attached at all, which is a fair reading.

Somewhere between the two extremes of the taxonomy sits your own answer, and the dere type quiz will tell you which one in about two minutes.

Sadodere (サドデレ)

From sadist plus dere. A sadodere shows affection by teasing, cornering, and enjoying the other person’s discomfort.

The distinction from yandere is intent. A sadodere wants a reaction, not possession. They will humiliate you cheerfully and then get quietly furious if somebody else does it.

Hayase Nagatoro from Don’t Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro is the current standard-bearer, an underclassman who spends every scene needling her senpai into a puddle and every other scene defending him. Overlapping fan slang includes dorodere for characters whose sweetness hides something rotten, and the wider ijirare dynamic of playful torment.

Bakadere (バカデレ)

Baka means fool. A bakadere is cheerfully, hopelessly dense, and their affection is completely obvious to everyone except themselves.

They rush into things, forget the important detail, and produce an embarrassing situation roughly every four minutes. What keeps the type from being cruel is sincerity: the goofiness is never a strategy, and their feelings are genuine even when they cannot name them.

Yoshiko Hanabatake from Aho-Girl is the type taken to its absolute limit, a girl whose entire personality is bananas and enthusiasm, aimed with unwavering force at a childhood friend who wants nothing to do with it. Tohru Honda from Fruits Basket is a gentler version of the same wiring.

Mayadere (マヤデレ)

A mayadere starts out as an enemy, usually one actively trying to kill the protagonist, and switches sides after falling for them. The jokes about murder do not entirely stop afterwards.

The type is dramatically efficient because the conversion is the arc. Every fight doubles as a courtship, and the audience gets to watch a threat slowly become an ally without the story having to invent a redemption subplot from scratch.

Android 18 from Dragon Ball Z is one of the earliest and clearest cases, introduced as a killing machine and eventually married to the man she was designed to outclass. Esdeath from Akame ga Kill! runs the same setup and refuses to complete the turn, which is its own kind of interesting.

Hinedere (ヒネデレ)

From hinekureru (捻くれる), to become warped or contrarian. A hinedere has a genuinely cynical worldview, treats optimism as a category error, and is affectionate anyway once somebody gets through.

The difference from kuudere is that a hinedere has opinions. They are not blank, they are bitter, usually because something in the past taught them that people are disappointing. The softening never turns them sunny. It just narrows the cynicism to exclude one person.

Hachiman Hikigaya from My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU is the archetype in its purest form, a narrator who has built an entire philosophy out of expecting nothing from anyone and who keeps quietly destroying himself to protect two people he claims not to care about. Naofumi Iwatani from The Rising of the Shield Hero gets there by a harsher route.

Shundere (シュンデレ)

From shun (しゅん), the onomatopoeia for looking crestfallen. A shundere wears visible melancholy, gets openly sad when their person is not paying attention, and lights up the moment they are.

It is a lighter register than actual depression. The sadness is pouty rather than tragic, and much of the appeal is that the sad face is difficult to say no to. They hate being alone and they are not subtle about it.

Crona from Soul Eater is the example fans reach for, a character whose default state is anxious apology and who visibly brightens around the small number of people who treat them gently.

Utsudere (ウツデレ)

From utsu (鬱), depression. An utsudere is genuinely gloomy, usually because of a specific injury in their past, and their affection is inseparable from the process of recovering.

This is the heavier version of the shundere. Where a shundere pouts, an utsudere has closed their heart, often after bullying, abuse, or loss. The romance is the reopening, which is why these characters tend to anchor slower and sadder shows.

Haruka Kotoura from Kotoura-san is the standard example, a girl whose mind-reading drove away everyone she ever loved and who has decided, reasonably, that isolation hurts less.

Byoukidere (病気デレ)

From byouki (病気), illness. A byoukidere is warm, gentle, and openly loving, and also seriously unwell.

There is no mask in the usual sense here, which is why some fans argue it is a situation rather than a personality. What it does provide is a specific structure: the affection has a clock on it, and the love interest becomes the person who stays. The type usually appears as a tragic romance or a sickly younger sibling.

Kaori Miyazono from Your Lie in April is the best known example, a violinist whose energy and insistence on living loudly are set directly against a body that is failing.

Undere (ウンデレ)

From un (うん), the casual Japanese “yeah.” An undere agrees with almost everything their love interest says, in a doting rather than servile way, because disagreement risks the closeness.

Fans are split on whether this is sweet or alarming, which is exactly what makes it interesting. Taken lightly it is devotion. Taken seriously it describes someone who has stopped having preferences.

Misa Amane from Death Note is the usual citation. She says yes to Light Yagami on every question that matters, up to and including things that cost her years of her life, and the series is entirely aware of what that costs her.

Kanedere (金デレ)

From kane (金), money. A kanedere is drawn to wealth and status first, and the arc is about discovering that the person underneath the bank balance is worth more.

Fans most often reach for Nami from One Piece, who is introduced robbing the protagonist and whose relationship with money is treated by the story as a symptom rather than a flaw. Ami Kawashima from Toradora! gets cited too. Worth flagging that neither character is written as a kanedere by their creators, and that the label is applied from outside by fandom rather than earned in the text.

Bocchandere (坊ちゃんデレ)

From bocchan (坊ちゃん), the term servants use for the young master of a wealthy house. A bocchandere is a spoiled, entitled rich boy who eventually turns his money and status toward the person he has fallen for.

This one comes with a caveat. Bocchandere is a coinage from English-speaking fandom rather than Japanese fan discussion, it is barely used, and there is no character the community agrees on as the canonical case. It is included here for completeness, not because it has settled into real critical use. If you want the same energy with an actual pedigree, use oujidere.

Why the Taxonomy Exists

It is tempting to read all this as fandom over-labeling. It is closer to the opposite: a vocabulary built by an audience that got very precise about a specific emotional response.

The response is moe, the protective tenderness a character can trigger through vulnerability or sincerity. Fans noticed that certain configurations produced it reliably, and that the most reliable configuration of all was a gap between surface and interior. Gap moe (ギャップ萌え) is the load-bearing idea underneath every dere type here.

Naming the configurations had practical consequences. Studios use the shorthand in pitches and character sheets. Voice casting leans on it, since the same actresses get called for the same registers. And the labels give fans of a favorite character, an oshi, a fast way to explain the appeal.

Not every archetype in that vocabulary is a dere, though. Some are identified by one line of delivery instead of a suffix, which is how the onee-san (お姉さん) older-sister type became recognisable from a single drawn-out ara ara long before anyone tried to fit her into a list like this one.

Every dere type is the same promise told with a different accent: the warmth is already there, and you are going to have to earn the sight of it.

How the Types Play Against Each Other

The archetypes are most interesting in combination, because each mask fails against a different pressure.

A tsundere and a deredere make comedy. The tsundere’s defenses are designed for opponents who push, and a deredere does not push, only beams. Nothing in the arsenal works.

A kuudere and a dandere make quiet. Two characters with no small talk between them, gradually finding out that silence can be shared rather than endured.

A yandere against anyone raises the stakes immediately, which is why the type functions less as a love interest than as a plot engine. Introduce one and the story stops being about whether feelings will be admitted and starts being about whether everybody survives them.

A hinedere against a deredere is the most common prestige pairing in modern romance anime, because the cynic has an argument prepared for every attack except unearned kindness.

Ensemble casts are assembled with this in mind. A typical harem or club-anime roster mixes one prickly character, one silent one, one flatly cool one, and one relentlessly warm one, so that every scene has at least one wall and at least one hammer.

Where the Labels Break Down

Two honest caveats before you use any of this in an argument.

First, good characters overflow their categories. Asuka is more than a tsundere and Rei is more than a kuudere, which is exactly why fans have argued about both for thirty years. Yuki Nagato from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya gets filed under kuudere and dandere by different halves of the internet, and both readings are defensible. The label is a starting point, not a verdict.

Second, only a few of these terms are in common Japanese use. Tsundere and yandere are widely understood in Japan, including by people who watch no anime at all. Kuudere and dandere are known within fandom. The rest are largely internet coinages, several more popular in English-speaking fandom than in Japanese. Using bakadere in Tokyo will mostly get you a blank look, and bocchandere will get you nothing at all.

What travels intact is not really about anime. People hide affection behind whatever mask they have available, and the mask usually tells you something true about what they are protecting. If you want to know which one you default to, the dere type quiz sorts you into one of the seven main types in twelve questions.

FAQ

What are the dere types?

The dere types are anime character archetypes formed by attaching a surface attitude to dere, from deredere (デレデレ), meaning lovestruck. The major ones are tsundere (prickly), yandere (obsessive), kuudere (cool and flat), dandere (silent and shy), and deredere (openly affectionate). Secondary types include himedere, oujidere, kamidere, sadodere, bakadere, mayadere and hinedere. Each name describes a different mask worn over the same underlying warmth.

How many dere types are there?

There is no official number, because the suffix is productive and anyone can coin a new one. This page covers eighteen that are genuinely attested in fan usage. Fan wikis list thirty or more, many of them jokes or one-off blends that never caught on. Realistically about seven see regular use: tsundere, yandere, kuudere, dandere, deredere, himedere and kamidere.

What is the most popular dere type?

Tsundere by a wide margin. It is the type that broke out of fandom into mainstream Japanese vocabulary in the mid 2000s, it appears in the largest number of series, and it draws by far the most search interest. Yandere is a clear second, driven by horror-adjacent series and internet culture. Kuudere and dandere follow, both well known inside anime fandom but rarely used outside it.

What does dere mean?

Dere is clipped from deredere (デレデレ), a Japanese onomatopoeic word describing someone visibly infatuated, soft, or fawning. On its own it functions as a suffix meaning “but secretly affectionate.” Attach a mask to the front and you get the archetype: tsun plus dere, kuu plus dere, yan plus dere. The dere half is the part that never varies.

What is the difference between tsundere and yandere?

Both pair hidden affection with a difficult surface, but they run in opposite directions. A tsundere hides real warmth behind coldness and gradually softens as trust builds, so the arc moves toward openness. A yandere begins loving and spirals into obsession, jealousy, and often violence, so the arc moves toward danger. Tsundere is about guarding love. Yandere is about love losing its boundaries.

What is a deredere?

A deredere is a character who is openly, consistently affectionate with no cold mask at all, which makes them the base case of the whole system. They hug first, say what they feel, and treat warmth as the default setting. In group casts they usually act as the catalyst who draws out the guarded characters, and their own stories tend to test whether that openness can survive being hurt.