![]() ![]() Her name was Yamagishi Yukako, and while at the time she was both intended to be and viewed as a bold defiance of the moe archetype, today she is considered the progenitor of one of the most popular ~dere types under the moe umbrella: the yandere.Ī yandere is a character, usually female, who is lovesick: dere meaning love, and yan an abbreviation of yanderu, “to be mentally ill”. Working in a climate overburdened with the moe archetype, Araki created a character who embodied the opposite. ![]() While the original blueprint for what we now consider moe is unknown, with people arguing for candidates ranging from Sailor Moon’s Tomoe Hotaru all the way back to The Castle of Cagliostro’s Clarisse (a discussion that also involves reckoning with the connection between moe and lolicon), we do know that it was relevant in the late ‘90s, when shonen mangaka Araki Hirohiko was writing part four of his magnum opus JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Prior to becoming a genre in its own right, moe was itself just another archetype. Rena and Shion originally appeared in direct counterpoint to the then-oversaturated moe tropes of the time however, what began as subversion would become an archetype all of its own, for better or worse. The characters most associated with this bait-and-switch are Ryuugu Rena and Sonozaki Shion, female characters who initially appear to meet the standards of moe before ripping away these sweet, simplistic facades and becoming something far more complex. Higurashi evoked then-popular moe tropes in order to create a false sense of ease in its audience, eventually tearing these adorable overtures apart in order to amplify the narrative’s deeper themes of horror, mystery, violence, and trust. ![]() Higurashi first emerged in the year 2002 as a sound novel with an art style and cast of characters proudly inspired by Air and Kanon’s brand of moe. As moe ballooned in popularity during the 2000s, its definition expanded and broadened from a general impulse of protectiveness to a genre unto itself that increasingly squeezed characters, usually female, into the narrow confines of one-word traits. From the turn of the millennium onward, moe was increasingly everywhere-you couldn’t so much as blink at anime without big, doe eyes blinking right back at you. Spoilers for Higurashi: When They Cry and Higurashi: When They Cry Kaiįloaty bangs, blushy cheeks, precious smiles. Content Warning: parental abuse, ableism/sanism ![]()
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