Sunday, June 11, 2023
Obsessive Love
The
Yandere is perhaps the most iconic ‘Dere’, not just within visual
novels but within the more general anime fandom, with their
distinctive mix of love and violence, they have found their way
into everything from Comedy to Slice of Life. It is the particular
combination of Yandere and Horror that is the focus today and the way
this niche aspect of visual novels has captured the hearts of many.
For what appears to be a simple concept at first sight, there is a
surprising amount of variety to the Yandere through how they create fear as well as how they play into the work in its
totality. On top of this, the normal side to a Yandere’s
personality has a lot a possibilities to it which helps obfuscate the
Yandere and suprise the player, but also provide a humanising element
to drive home the contradiction in their nature. So let’s lock our
crush in the basement and examine this fascinating sub-genre.
Defining The Yandere
In
short, a Yandere is an individual who initially appears to be normal
and caring but once the mask drops reveals themselves to be willing
to resort to violence, be that against the target of their affection
or those around them, in order to right something they perceive as
intruding on their idealised vision of a relationship. The mental
instability which characterises them when the mask is off is focused
around this idea of violence, but this does not always mean it has to
be physical in nature and more often than not it is a psychological
angle that the Yandere takes to achieve their desires. In turn there
is also an elemement of them being true to that desire in a way no other type of
character can be. This would almost be an admirable trait if not
for the extreme to which they take it. It is these
extremes surrounding their romances that separates the Yandere from someone
who is merely possessive and manipulative and it is in them
where the horror finds its material. Their mask or ‘dere’ side is not
a completely fake exterior and instead is a more even version of
their true nature crafted to allow them to exist in society. They are
a presentation of the way human interactions and hierarchies change a
person and how it twists our true selves taken to its logical
extreme in pursuit of the one thing that might set them free, the
unconditional love of another. Through the combination of these two
halves the idea of the Yandere has burned itself into our
consciousness and is ripe for exploiting to create a sense of fear.
A Matter Of Degrees
When
it comes to the usage of the Yandere in horror there are broadly two
ways of integrate it into the narrative, make it the sole focus or
use it to highlight a specific moment. These two offer vastly different
executions of the Yandere due to their contrasting uses of space and
their differing aims. However, this contrast reveals some interesting
aspect of the sub-genre.
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| I think we might be in danger |
Forming
a game around the concept of Yandere Horror presents some interesting
challenges, especially since the focus on a Yandere is often used as
the primary selling point of the title and as a result the player
already has some idea about what is going to happen. So rather than
try to pretend that the Yandere is not going to appear, they
instead lean into this inevitability as a source of tension and dread
as the player knows that the peaceful life and love presented to them
will end soon and this makes them jumpy at even the slightest sign
that something is wrong. This technique is exaggerated by the way
these games make the real Yandere hard to spot and giving other
characters red herring personality traits to throw people off and the
player is often led to jump at shadows or misread the situation as
they too slowly descend the spiral towards paranoia. Traumermaid
provides a good example of how these ideas are implemented in
practice. It plays up the cliches of returning to your home town
after an absence as well as being reunited with childhood friends to
create an almost inviting atmosphere. However, from the very start
something is subtly off and the player can feel it but it is
difficult to pin down exactly what it is that makes them feel this
way. Only as the curtain is pulled back and the illusion of peace
shattered does the source of this fear become clear. Assisted by its
leanings into the trappings of fairy tales, the encroachment of the
Yandere pulls the player deeper into the spiral of disaster. Drawing
the entire experience around Yandere Horror is an all consuming task
for a game and in turn that is felt by the player.
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| Things look normal now but just you wait. |
On
the other end of the spectrum, the Yandere forming only a part of the
overall experience allows the game to put their natural high impact
to good use. Concealment and distraction are the name game for this use of
the Yandere with hints about their existence being mixed into the
other narrative elements in such a way that makes their reveal a
surprise but not to the point of feeling out of place or poorly set up.
This form of horror is used to enhance specific moments and help
create a sense of escalation or climax using the Yandere’s
appearance to quickly shift the game into direct tension and an
immediate threat. As a result they generally burn bright and
disappear just as rapidly once their role has been completed so they
do not get in the way of the other elements present in the game.
Perhaps the most iconic example of this use of Yandere Horror is Doki
Doki Literature Club! which has multiple instances of it within the
game’s relatively short play time. Each time Doki Doki invokes the
Yandere it is to signal the end of a section of the narrative and a
raising of the stakes for the protagonist as his clubmates slowly
lose their sanity and the safe space is eroded away. To top all this off
the major antagonist force is also a Yandere and is involved in the
largest continual tension scene in the game as they exert their
controlling nature to capture the protagonist leading to the dramatic
resolution. Without the presence of the Yandere none of these
elements would have had the same effect since they rely on this shift
in personality to help draw attention to key elements while keeping
the feelings of unease the game has been building up.
Tension Between Desire, Love and Ownership
The
aspects of the Yandere which horror utilises all revolve around the
ways they reflect back onto us the darker parts of our desire and
relationships, the thoughts we never act upon. Ownership is the idea
the Yandere taps into the most with them often becoming paranoid that
the target of their affection might be stolen away from them. We all
want to be the focus of our partner's affection and may even get a
little jealous when they turn to talk to others, but, since most
people are well balanced enough to realise these feelings are
illogical, we do not act on them. However, the fact that those
thoughts existed inspires a quiet fear of our own thoughts and what
sort of person we would be if we acted upon them and a hope that
nobody else would act on similar thoughts against us. By contrast the Yandere
does not have that filter or self control and so acts on this part of
themselves and as a result are a figure we can empathise with while
also fearing since we know what their desire demand and what it means
for us. Building a bond between the player and the Yandere before the
inevitable decay into madness is key for this element of Yandere
Horror to work correctly and The Way We All Go showcases this set up
extremely well. It achieves this through mixing in romance to the
formula to humanise the Yandere and deal with them within an everyday
context to drive home just how similar to the player they really are
before they lose control. The banality also acts as a contrast to the
extremes of the acts performed later by the Yandere and they stand out all the
more, but at the same time these actions calls back to those simpler times to make
it clear where the Yandere’s line of logic originated from.
Sometimes there is nothing scarer than a person pushed to their
limits.
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| Is approaching her a good idea or will it seal our doom? |
What Lurks Behind The Smile
People
can be scary, they hide their true intentions behind masks to get
what they want or lie to play the social game to the point that we
can never be truly sure we know even our closest friends. While this
line of logic is mostly just nonsense as very few people are
actively out to get you, the thoughts which lead to it have a power
over our imagination perfect for Yandere Horror. The Yandere is the
epitome of this fear with a loving exterior concealing their violent
and dark inner thoughts. Playing into this concealment is by far
Yandere Horror’s greatest tool as it makes even the simplest
actions come across as suspicious to the player in order to build up tension
or creates a greater sense of betrayal and being up the creek without
a paddle. Tapping into this opportunity requires the game to commit a
decent amount of time as YOU and ME and HER: A Love Story does with a
large section of its first half being used to presenting a veneer of sanity and
normality for both the characters and the setting. A lot of effort is
placed into preventing the player from sniffing out what is going to
happen and at the same time creating a feeling of unease that the
player wants to shake off as their own natural paranoia. The game’s
use of fourth wall adds a directness to this switch as the person
being addressed by the Yandere’s darker desires is not some in game
character but instead the player themselves. This breaking of the
fourth wall follows the same escalation as the treat posed by the
Yandere and this ensures that it does not come across as silly due to
a smother transition into these elements.
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| For now.... |
Conclusion
The
Yandere is an odd creature, at once loving and faithful yet also
violent and possessive, but it is exactly this contradiction that
makes it the perfect subject for visual novel horror. This can be the
entire focus of the experience or just an aspect to highlight a key
moment. Regardless of which is chosen both share the common desire to
play up the tension of the Yandere’s reveal and actions around the
player character. Much of the fear invoked by the Yandere is born
from how their actions are exaggerated version of our own thoughts.
They act on the parts of ourselves we would rather deny, our
possessiveness, jealousy and fear of the two faced nature of humans.
So when the Yandere appears before us it is a mirror onto our own
faults and the urge to look away is just as strong as the desire to stare in facination. Yandere Horror is a fascinating sub-genre and
spreads well beyond the visual novels covered here and, since it
works well as a supplementary element, there is a lot of explore if
anything here has tickled your interests.
