Hey Hey Heroes, Travelers, and Wandering NPCs, it’s February and with it comes another OWLS Blog Tour! Last month during our Metamorphosis Blog Tour we looked at the many transformations characters have gone through for better or for worse. This month we’re celebrating love and romance with our February Adore Blog Tour!
In February, we will be exploring love and romance. The word selected is “adore” because it has two main connotations: to be loved and respected or to feel worshiped. We will analyze characters that give us a feeling of admiration and explain why we love those characters. We will also be exploring different forms of love (familial, friendship, and even self-love) and how those types of love influence our lives.
–February 2019 Blog Tour Prompt
Love comes in many shapes and forms, but, in February, we tend to focus on the sweet rose colored, hearts and candy side of romantic love. Rather than focusing on romance and love in the traditional sense, I decided to take a crack at the darker side of love. What happens when love gets twisted into obsession? For this month’s Blog Tour, I’m going to be looking at obsessive love, the point where love becomes an oppressive compulsion that consumes the lover and the object of their affection.
People do crazy things in the name of love, but the most infamous offenders of obsessive love are of course yandere. Just Google yandere and I guarantee that you’ll find images knife wielding, blood covered schoolgirls smiling ever so sweetly. It’s a jarring image, but one that is not uncommon in anime, sometimes it’s a source of comedy, other times it’s a source of drama… maybe even admiration.
Yandere (ヤンデレ)
A portmanteau of two Japanese words yanderu (病んでる), meaning to be sick, and deredere (デレデレ), which is defined as strongly and deeply exhausted, infatuated, moonstruck, head-over-heels, or lovestruck, but in this case used for “lovestruck.”
You see yandere characters suffer from obsessive love, which is an all consuming desire to possess and/or protect a person for whom they have a deep affection for. But, it goes even further than that, people that exhibit signs of obsessive love don’t take no for an answer. They are consumed with fantasies about the object of their affection, and they are unable to accept anyone else spending time with their lover. Yandere characters will often resort to violence to protect their lover from unwanted contact with perceived threats, these can be small; verbal threats, anonymous notes/emails or they could escalate to physical violence and even murder. Anyone that threatens a yandere‘s lover is fair game, even the lover themselves, with many finding themselves the unsuspecting victims a yandere‘s rage.
Yandere are extremely distrustful of others and can often be found stalking their crushes, following them from them from the shadows in order to ensure absolute loyalty. Some might even go so far as to bugging electronic devices and/or regularly monitoring phone calls, emails, and text messages, even opening mail all in the name of protecting the sanctity of their relationship. What’s more a yandere may even attempt to isolate their lover from friends and family in an effort to minimize their contact with other people. And when that fails, yandere characters will just resort to good old fashioned kidnapping and imprisonment, with cages and handcuffs being the restraints of choice.
Anything can set a yandere off, a simple conversation or an accidental bump on the street can all be perceived as threats to their relationship and grounds for eliminations. Of course this isn’t exclusive to outside threats, if the object of a yandere’s affection is seen interacting with anyone, this is also grounds for retaliation. Though, it should be noted that yandere tend to shy away from blaming their lover for any transgressions, choosing instead to simply get rid of the threat quietly. Outwardly they are sweet and affectionate towards their lovers, lavishing them with praise and love. In some cases, the individual might not even know about their lover’s violent tendencies and any effort to inform them about it is met with disbelief.
Over time it becomes increasingly apparent that the yandere has completely taken control of their lover’s life, from where they go to what they eat, they are completely at the mercy of their whims. For some, encountering a yandere is fatal, while others find their overwhelming devotion endearing. Simply put, there is no love like that of a yandere because when they fall in love, it’s for life!
Conclusion
That’s my take on the Adore Blog Tour! I hope you enjoyed my post, but, I’m just one in a long line of OWLS blog tour stops! Check out Lyn Lyn’s Valentines Day post on Watakoi: Love is Hard for an Otaku and don’t forget to stop by Ange (Just Being Otaku) tomorrow for what promises to be an amazing addition to the OWLS January Blog Tour! Also if you haven’t already, please subscribe to the Official OWLS Twitter account @OWLSbloggers and the Official OWLS Blog, to stay up to date on all OWLS news and announcements!
If you are interested in becoming a member of the OWLS team, please feel free to fill out the contact form, HERE! So don’t be afraid to reach out to any of us on our blogs, on twitter, or at the contact page to learn more about us!! You just need an open mind and a willingness to have fun! Catch you guys on the flipside!
Haha was surprising you picked Yandere for this tour. Well you are crazy for that Banana Fish Muahhhhh LOL
LOL I figured the obsessive love of yandere was perfect for this tour. 😛