Shino’s internal conflict in Girlfriend, Girlfriend showcases a deeper exploration of the tsundere archetype, going beyond the usual stock characteristics.
Shino’s struggle to hide her feelings for Naoya while trying to support her friend Saki highlights common traits of a tsundere, including an inability to communicate and growing frustration.
Shino’s perception of herself as selfish and her tendency to push people away add layers to her tsundere persona, making her a compelling and complex character.
The following contains spoilers for Season 2 of Girlfriend, Girlfriend, available on Crunchyroll.
One of the better aspects of the second season of Girlfriend, Girlfriend has been the internal conflict faced by Saki’s best friend, Shino. Shino faces a major emotional quandary as she tries to squash her feelings for Naoya, and at the core of this conflict lies her characterization as a tsundere.
The way Girlfriend, Girlfriend has been building upon this has been exemplary, elevating her to a position beyond the stock characteristics often associated with the tsundere archetype, but what exactly is it about the path undertaken by the series makes Shino such a good tsundere character?
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The Archetype
The tsundere is a stock character found primarily within anime and manga whose most defining characteristic is that they display an outwardly hostile, defensive or standoffish demeanour while hiding a contrasting soft side that generally comes to be known over the course of their development of romantic feelings for another character, usually the protagonist. The tsundere will often try to hide these feelings, an endeavour that often ends in failure as their feelings reach a boiling point. For a large part of the 2000s, the tsundere was heavily associated with Japanese voice actor Rie Kugimiya, who is often dubbed the “Tsundere Queen” for her large number of performances as tsundere characters such as Taiga Aisaka from Toradora!! and the titular character of Shakugan no Shana.
The term is derived from two Japanese concepts; “tsun-tsun”, a mimetic word that is used to mean “prickly” or “pointy” and describes the character’s tendency to be irritable or harsh, and “dere-dere”, meaning “lovey-dovey”. The suffix “-dere” is used in the descriptors of many anime archetypes because the names label the kind of behaviour they exhibit around their person of interest. Tsundere often gets translated to “hot-n’-cold” as a good English summarization of the character’s tendencies. An inability to communicate is a common trait among tsundere characters, and usually they grow harsher with time as they grow frustrated with the lack of romantic attention from their person of interest.
Plot
Girlfriend, Girlfriend follows Naoya, a high school first-year who has always been in love with his childhood friend Saki, but only recently have the feelings become mutual. Now as a couple, Saki experiences much of the same enthusiastic displays of affection from Naoya. However, when Naoya introduces her to Nagisa, a girl who confessed her love to him that he found himself unable to reject, Saki finds herself in a situation where her boyfriend is dating both her and another girl. The expected developments of a harem occur as other girls wind up falling in love with Naoya while he and his girlfriends navigate their new relationship configuration.
Best Friend A
Shino was not a main character in Girlfriend, Girlfriend until the latter stages of season 1, when it’s revealed that she suspects something about Saki’s relationship with Naoya. As a concerned best friend, and the “Straight Man” in a village full of idiots, Shino’s role since her introduction has been to pull the wool from Saki’s eyes and get her to stop Naoya from two-timing her friend. What is introduced as concern about a friend is revealed to be much more, as it turns out that Shino has a personal stake in Naoya continuing to date other girls while dating Saki. Shino has feelings for Naoya that not even Saki knows about, but out of respect for her friend and the immense history Naoya and Saki have, Shino chose to distance herself from Naoya and kill those feelings. However, Nagisa’s presence created a problem: for as long as Naoya continues to date girls other than Saki, a small part of Shino deep down will believe that she still has some kind of chance.
Having relinquished the chance to explore those feelings at all, Shino feels great anger towards girls like Nagisa and Milika who, despite knowing about Naoya’s relationship, chose to follow their desires. Beyond that, there’s a disconnect between how Shino sees herself and how others perceive her–she doesn’t consider herself to be a kind person; however, Naoya has observed that she often does things for other people at her own expense without expecting anything in return. While Shino rationalizes her decisions as selfish, what ultimately becomes the biggest stumbling block for Shino is her tendency to “take care” of the people around her and neglect tending to her own emotional landscape. What further complicates the situation for her is that the more she tries to push Naoya into Saki’s arms, the more attractive he becomes to her and the more he begins to learn of her positive qualities. Invariably, through doing all she can to avoid having to deal with her romantic feelings for her best friend’s boyfriend, Shino is only feeding into the eventuality that Naoya will fall in love with her too.
Tsundere
The aforementioned disconnect between Shino’s perception of herself and that of others’ of her is what creates many of the traits she exhibits that are commonly associated with tsundere characters. Believing herself to be self-interested when she really is thinking about others, Shino tends to push people away, and can harshly rebuff Naoya’s attempts to look out for her even as Saki’s best friend, especially because of how harshly she’s judging herself for developing feelings for him in the first place. Her belief that nothing she does is ever nice or kind, mixed with the guilt she experiences as a result of her romantic feelings for Naoya create someone unwilling to allow anyone to get too close, which is what makes her “prickly”. Regardless of how harsh she is when reprimanding or berating those around her, Shino’s actions always paint her out to be someone who cares deeply about others, something she describes as being “good at looking after people”.
Shino doesn’t realize that Saki cares about her just as much, despite Naoya trying his best to communicate that to her, and because she can’t see anyone truly liking what she is, Shino can’t bring herself to be honest with Saki about her situation. Her insistence that Saki establish herself and make Naoya see only her is so that she can give up on Naoya knowing she never had a chance, but with other girls putting themselves on the line so easily, Shino’s apparent high road seems to have been a pointless sacrifice. With heavy significance to the current state of the plot within the framework of the comedy that is Girlfriend, Girlfriend, Shino’s character is a great exploration of the tsundere archetype that uses the stock description of the character’s behaviour as a tool to work through some interesting themes within the framework of this anime that is turning a lot of common tropes and ideas on their heads as it attempts to weave hilarity into a sincere love story. As Shino begins to break, it will be interesting to see where her story goes as the series contrasts her passivity with the kind of resolve shown by Nagisa and Milika.
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