The Yuribou Guide to Fanservice for animators #5 – Character types Epilogue

Posted on | August 19, 2007 | 6 Comments |

Classical Character types – a Reference

As an epilogue to this section in which I have broken down the character traits from all typical female characters in anime, I thought that I would give a concrete classification system for the most well used character types that you will see again and again in anime from now, probably to the end of time. Be aware that I’ll probably be referring back to this list from now on, so it’s in your best interests to remember it!

| Kaede – You don’t need to be a serial killer to be a type 1a…but it helps

Type 1a – Long term contender

Major: Normal
Minor: Any. Often: Sporty, Tomboy, Easily embarassed/Naive, Sensible/Voice of reason and Unexpectedly kind
Accessory: Related/Osananajimi, unrequited crush
Examples: Ichino Yanagida (BAV), Maika Yoshikano (Magikano), Anya (Negima), Kaede Fuyou (SHUFFLE!)
Description: Subtly different to type 2 – a “Long term Contender” type girl has always carried a torch for the character in question ever since they have known them, but this has never been realised; rather than a girl who has known a character all their life but recent events cause them to realise they like them. Usually related in some way or a childhood friend, they often lose out to other contenders in the long run.

Type 1b – Ara ara girl

Major: Normal
Minor: Ditzy, Younger than she seems (Mothering), Sensible/voice of reason
Accessory: Disproportionately large breasts, Uncanny ability (empathy), Older girl (Neesan, usually)
Examples: Hatsune Arisaka (Tonagura), Chizuru Naba (Negima) Akiko Minase (Kanon)
Description: Mothering girls who seem ditzy but are actually uncannily insightful and usually end up being the unexpected person to solve a personal problem or quell an argument. Needless to say they need large breasts. Cause they’re mothers and mothers have large breasts of course.

Type 1c – Cool fighter girl

Major: Normal
Minor: Fighter, Dominant, Sporty, younger than she seems (tall and cool)
Accessory: Uncanny ability (fighting), [Disproportionally large breasts] – optional bonus!
Examples: Maya Natsume (Tenjyo Tenge), Kanu Unchou (Ikkitousen), Jo (BakuTen)
Description: They’re girls who know how to hold their own in a fight and they know how good they are. You can feel their battle aura half a mile away and all the boys lust after them (usually because of their prolific rack!). However, since they tend to be arrogant about their abilities, they are usually defeatable by protagonists with uncanny abilities.

| Louise – NOT Harry Potter. Much hotter in fact. I know it’s hard to believe…

Type 2 – Violently naive

Major: Tsundere
Minor: Easily Embarassed/Naive, Fighter/Sporty, Unexpectedly Kind, Submissive (secretly), Violent
Accessory: Unrequited crush, Unusual phobia (of falling in love with the protagonist)
Examples: Louise blah blah de la Valliere (ZnT), Kaname Chidori (FMP!), Kirie Kosame (Girls Bravo)
Description: You don’t want to get on the wrong side of these girls, but then again, it’s fairly difficult to stay on their good sides! Usually paired with a clueless protagonist, these girls try their hardest to deny their burgeoning love for the main character by laying the smackdown whenever something vaguely embarassing happens. I don’t know why, but it’s always infinitely amusing.

Type 3a – Genki magical girl

Major: Energetic/Stupid
Minor: Tomboy, Sporty, Unexpectedly embarassable/naive
Accessory: Uncanny ability (magic), Mythical creature (magical girl), moe accessory (magical girl clothes, henshin sequence)
Examples: Sakura Kinomoto (CCS), Nagisa Misumi (Precure), Komugi Nakahara (Nurse witch Komugi-chan Magikarte)
Description: The most common kind of magical girl – the generic genki girl (usually not that great at her studies, therefore allowing as much identification with schoolgirls as possible) who randomly gains magical powers and has to use them for saving the world.

Type 3b – Eccentric Girl

Major: Energetic/Stupid
Minor: Eccentric/Random, Ditzy +/- Tomboy/sporty
Accessory: Uncanny ability (often mechanical but also insightful), Regional accent/informal speech.
Examples: Kaolla Su (Love Hina), Tsuruya-san (SHnY), Orihime Inoue (Bleach)
Description: Mostly these girls provide us with comedy but they can also provide us with insightful comments, surprising empathy or occasionally a love of smoked cheese

| Takako – Prim and proper girls are always the best to wind up because everyone knows that under that hard surface they just want some hot yuri lovin…

Type 4a – Iincho

Major: Ojou
Minor: Younger than she seems, Gloating, Sporty, Dominant, Eccentric/Random, Easily embarassed/naive
Accessory: Rich, Distinctive speech (formal)/regional accent, [Foreigner/Half] – optional
Examples: Ayaka Yukihiro (Negima!), Takako Itsukushima (Otoboku), Kuriko Kazetsubaki (Maburaho)
Description: Rich types who speak formally and like to do impressions of female Santa Claus. They are often easily embarassed and have a degree of Vamp type features (or in the case of Ayaka – are just shotacons). They are great to have in your cast to make fun out of, but they generally do not feature heavily in storylines except as a device to get people from place to place or using their homes as scene settings.

Type 4b – Untouchable Ojou

Major: Ojou
Minor: Soft Spoken, Younger than she seems (tall and cool), Idolised
Accessory: [Rich/Secretly well off, Previous trauma] – optional
Examples: Sachiko Ogasawara (Marimite), Yakumo Tsukamoto (School Rumble), Sakaki (AzuDai)
Desription: They seem untouchable since they give out an air of either iciness or serenity and people are generally too much in awe of them to even approach them, let alone ask them out. But generally, given the right protagonist, they are just aching to open up to people and are insecure over their lack of friends.

Type 5 – Token loli

Major: Loli
Minor: Older than she seems, Ditzy, [Obsessed with breast size, precocious] – optional
Accessory: Young girl (Loli), Moe accessory (any), Distinctive way of talking (3rd person/concluding phrase)
Examples: Kana Suouin (Otoboku), Tomohane (Inukami!), Mint Blancmanche (Galaxy Angel)
Description: Every harem must have a token loli for all the loli-obsessed otaku out there. Add a distinctive talking phrase for extra moe powar (see DiGiCharat for details ^_^). Remember, if you want to bone the loli, you are automatically granted lolipedofin status.

| Shizuru – the most awesomest of all yuri vamps. The sort of girl you want on your side when you’re trying to set up a threesome…

Type 6a – Yuri Vamp

Major: Vamp, Vamp/Ojou
Minor: Yuri, Evil, Younger than she seems, lazy, dominant
Accessory: Previous trauma, [Older girl (sempai)] – optional
Examples: Shizuru Fujino (Mai HiME), Shizuma Hanazono (Strawberry Panic), Sei Satou (Marimite)
Description: These girls are gay through and through and will stop at nothing to get the girl that they’ve set their eyes on. But surely there must be some reason that they go through girlfriends like they’re rich tea biscuits? Surely they can’t just be doing this for fun? No, there’s always some kind of previous trauma that the female protagonist must overcome to win this one’s heart.

Type 6b – Sake Vamp

Major: Vamp
Minor: Lazy, Dominant
Accessory: Older woman, Disproportionately large breasts (J-league), Misc (sake/beer)
Examples: Rangiku Matsumoto (Bleach), Tamamonomae (Yamibou), Margerie Daw (Shakugan no Shana)
Description: Second only to their love of sake and getting slightly jolly, these women like nothing better than seducing young boys/girls and pressing them into their ample bosom. Not that we mind, you see.

Type 8a – Deadpan loli

Major: Quiet (taciturn)
Minor: Older than she seems, Soft-spoken, Sensible/Voice of reason
Accessory: Deadpan
Examples: Mea (Popotan), Ruri Hoshino (Nadesico), Marie Kagura (Tonagura)
Description: Girls of this type will be familiar to most people and are typified as “Rei-clones” due to the popularisation of the Type 8a by Rei Ayanami in NGE. Deadpan girls often provide the voice of reason to the main character or serve to deliver the punchlines in comedic scenes. Although they are often loli, they often act older than their age. Occasionally they can be mistaken for robots/constructs (Mea – POpotan)

| Nodoka – she’s not shy, she just needs some…guidance…yees…guidance…

Type 8b – Shy girl

Major: Quiet (shy)/Strong Willed
Minor: Studious, submissive, Easily Embarassed/Naive, Soft Spoken
Accessory: Uncanny Ability (empathic), Unrequited crush, [Moe accessory (glasses)] – optional
Examples: Shinobu Maehara (Love hina), Nodoka Miyazaki (Negima), Midori Kasugano (Midori no Hibi)
Desription: Another staple of Ken Akamatsu-sensei, shy girls are reclusive and often studious but can often help the protagonist through some bad scrapes. They are often secretly strong willed and can also be Relationship Driven as well. Glasses are entirely optional (generally a cheap accessory and not very effective as they can limit who the character appeals to).

Type 8c – Deadpan Robot

Major: Quiet (taciturn)
Minor: Soft Spoken, Sensible/Voice of reason
Accessory: Robot/Construct
Examples: Serio (To Heart), Miyu (Mai HiME), Chachamaru Karakuri (Negima)
Description: The most common type of robot girl, they’re everything you would expect Japanese robotics technology to come up with in the future – perfect manners, deadpan and body and legs to die for. Yuki Nagato could well be an exception to the rule, but since she is a data creature rather than a construct, she probably belongs in Type 8a.

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Category: Anime, Editorials, Humour?, Philosophy/Thoughts

Comments

6 Responses to “The Yuribou Guide to Fanservice for animators #5 – Character types Epilogue”

Kaoru
August 19th, 2007 @ 3:29 pm

“Type 1a – Long term contender … “Description: Subtly different to type 2a”

There is no Type 2a ^^;

Also where is Type 7? ^^;

Awesome descriptions ^_^ Your “Examples” always show how much more anime you’ve seen than me XD
yuribou
August 19th, 2007 @ 3:38 pm

Lol, oops, I typed that when there was a type 2a and b but then I realised that there really only was one type of archtypal tsundere and forgot to change it -_-

As for type 7, I couldn’t think of any typical “Strong-Willed” types so that one’s left open til I think of one.

As for seeing more anime, thats debatable, I think ^_^ Probably just seen more short fanservice series rather than long Naruto-esque series
myu
August 19th, 2007 @ 8:40 pm

I really like your Guide. You have put some time to this. Are you going to describe common fanservice scenes too? I hope so.
Triple-Love
August 19th, 2007 @ 11:54 pm

Ooo now I see!
Akin
August 20th, 2007 @ 2:23 pm

Sounds like you have a pretty good pencil and paper RPG system going there… prebuilt characters and everything!
Wading through troubled water « Stuff Happens
August 21st, 2007 @ 5:04 am

[...] It is interesting to note though, that it’s easy to find patterns in a list of people’s favorite characters. Even if most people do not always love one specific character above all other forever, it’s fairly common that a person’s favorite characters can, for the most part, be categorized under the same general ‘type’. Amusingly enough, “types” have also been a topic of late. One of these day’s I might, out of curiosity, make a list of my favorites and see where the bell graph lies. [...]