Character Archetype Study: Rikka Takarada and Kuudere

Pixiv tags are funny things. They are a way for artists to state what they believe are the key components of their work and allow an audience to find images featuring the same theme. For example, clicking the “Xenoblade 3” tag will yield a reverse chronological look at every piece of art that an artist tagged as “Xenoblade 3” art. This is commonly used as a way for people to find art of characters they enjoy as most often artists will tag the name of the character in their drawings. These tags do not just have to be series or character names however, they often describe features of the art in a more detailed manner. The auto translation from Japanese to English Pixiv uses often leads to quite comical results, such as “stomach I want to stroke” often appearing in art where a character’s midriff is showing.

The fact that artists are able to self tag artwork leads to the promulgation of fan terms to describe things such as character pairings. One such pairing is for SSSS.Gridman character Rikka Takarada and SSSS.Dynazenon character Yume Minami. The tag for these two is known within Pixiv as “Kuudere Alliance” a play on the style of character these two are believed to be as well as the fact that in SSSS.Gridman the main trio, which includes Rikka, is known as the Gridman Alliance. Upon seeing this tag for the first time, this led to a thought from the author, are Rikka and Yume Kuuderes? This spawned this essay. It will begin by briefly looking at the emergence and nature of Kuudere characters. It will then Rikka’s character arc in SSSS.Gridman, look briefly at her arc in Gridman Universe, before looking at where she ends up in the post Gridman Universe audio dramas. Yume will receive a similarly premised essay later down the line. There will be spoilers for all works mentioned so please be warned.

According to the subreddit which exists to extol the virtues of the kuudere, the term means “anime characters who are often stoic, cold, blunt, and cynical. They can appear to be emotionless or expressionless, but on the inside, they are caring toward the ones they love.” (r/kuudere, n.d.). Simply put, a kuudere may seem emotionless until one gets to know them, in which case the character will exhibit signs of interest or care towards the other character.  These characters are not simply more kind towards their friends but in fact often show no emotion at all towards characters they do not know or trust.

The most well known kuudere, and possibly the progenitor of the trope, is Neon Genesis Evangelion’s Rei Ayanami (Hutton, 2021). Our first real exploration of Rei as a character comes in episode 5, “Rei I”, she doesn’t react when Shinji Akari, the protagonist of the show, sees her naked and accidentally falls and grabs her boob (Sugiyama et al., 2000). Yet, the event preceding this interaction is Rei quickly walking up to remove some glasses Shinji had put on that were important to Rei. She is also short tempered with him, stating “will you get off me” and a curt “what” when speaking to him. She reserves her ire at him for when he speaks ill of his father, at which time she slaps him. This shows us that the prototypical kuudere does not fit the mold particularly well. She is emotional and expresses those emotions even to those who she is not close to, such as Shinji. Rikka follows in this mold of having emotions but not expressing them.

We are introduced to Rikka in episode 1 of SSSS.Gridman through the eyes of Yuta Hibiki (Miyajima et al., 2018). We see Rikka sitting playing on a computer and singing a song. When she sees Yuta is awake, she asks if he is okay as she found him collapsed and could not wake him. She is kind yet distant towards Yuta, pointing him towards the washroom. After Yuta walks into the shop area of her house she becomes confused and begins arguing with him over whether Yuta is screwing with her. She does all this despite not knowing Yuta well at all, later in the episode she remarks to Yuta, “I hate to burst your bubble, but this is the most we’ve ever spoken”. She is cold to Yuta but not emotionless. She is animated in a similar style to Yuta throughout the episode, acting normally as a teenage girl would. She is cold towards Yuta because she does not know him. There is an additional reason why Rikka is distant towards Yuta.

In the SSSS.Gridman Character Concept Design, we get a storyboard of what happened before Yuta loses his memory (2023). Yuta asks Rikka out and she declines as she does not know him well, starts walking away, and then he collapses, losing his memory. This is a profoundly weird experience for Rikka. This happens less than an hour from where we see her in episode 1. She is distant as she does not particularly like Yuta, he just asked her out on a date and then for all she knows  he is pretending to have amnesia to avoid dealing with being rejected. She has earned the right to not be entirely welcoming to Yuta and in fact it speaks to her character that she did not just leave him on the street. This relationship does warm slightly over time however.

Even as she begins to befriend Yuta and his friend Utsumi through out the series, her relationship is different with those two guys as compared to her girl friends of Haas and Namiko. She is willing to rest in Namiko’s arms and be teased by both Haas and Namiko in episode 1. She is more determined with Yuta and Utsumi, they are cordial, but it is more of a team atmosphere between them. She does not hang out with them on non-Gridman activities. Even with girls such as Akane, who Rikka hasn’t hung out with in a while, she is more able to laugh with when compared to the guys (Fujii et al., 2018). Rikka’s relationship with Akane points to why she is less inclined to be more overtly friendly with the guys.

Rikka is in love with Akane. In episode 4, she is very nonplused about going on a group date with her friends and some content creators and only agrees when Akane joins in. Rikka only went on this date to be closer to Akane, later in the episode, remarking how Akane left early she says, “I wanted to talk to her [Akane] more” (Fujii et al., 2018). Out of the Gridman team, Rikka is the one who most strongly believes Akane can be reasoned with, coming to argument with Utsumi overt this and leaving the group briefly in episode 8 as she did not want to fight Akane (Takashima et al., 2018). Also, in episode 8 we get Rikka’s lesbian awakening. After leaving the group, she runs into Akane on the bus. Here, Akane hugs Rikka from behind and whispers in her ear. Music swells as Rikka has a look of shock on her face, this is the shock of both realizing she was made by Akane but also that she is deeply attracted to Akane on an emotional and physical level (Takashima et al., 2018). The series ends with Rikka and an emotionally distraught Akane sitting on Akane’s floor together. Rikka gives Akane a gift she has been meaning to give to her and states, “I want to be together with you” before Akane vanishes from the world to go live her life in the real world (Miyajima et al., 2018). Rikka cannot connect with her guy friends as deeply as she can with her women friends as she is a lesbian who simply does not know how or have the desire to connect with men. She is much more comfortable dealing with women, who she understands better. The series, and later the movie, Gridman Universe, shows she can connect when men such as Yuta and Utsumi, but it is a very different type of relationship.

This differing in relationships between men and women for Rikka is why Rikka may seem distant. We often see Rikka through the eyes of Yuta, a boy who wants to date her. We don’t see Rikka as she is a lot of the time but through the eyes a boy who doesn’t entirely understand her. When we do see Rikka through her own eyes, she is brimming emotion and often struggling with how to deal with it all. Rikka seems emotionless because she does not connect with Yuta how she connects with Akane. Rikka talks Gridman business with Yuta because that’s why she hangs out with him. Rikka talks about anything and nothing with Akane because she cares about and wants to be with Akane.

Gridman Universe sees Rikka desperately hoping to tell the world about the woman she loves, Akane Shinjo, after her disappearance. (Amemiya, 2023). Rikka feels this lose keenly and uses the chance to write a play for the school festival to tell the story of SSSS.Gridman, and thus Akane’s story. She is constantly shut down by the people who supposedly care about her. Things start out well enough, with Yuta, the actual Yuta this time not Gridman inhabiting his body, praising the character of Akane in the play. Rikka visibly beams at this statement as that is the part she cares about most. Utsumi then states that everyone else dislikes the Akane parts. After a rewrite, Rikka shows the script to her friends Haas and Namiko, who dislike the parts about kaiju, and thus the parts about Akane. The script goes through several subsequent rewrites, adding in parts such as the cast of SSSS.Dynazenon who appear in the film. Crucially, these rewrites remove Akane Shinjo as a character in the play. Rikka remarks to Yuta, “nobody got it”. The film ends on the play being shown at the festival. Rikka and Yuta debrief it, Yuta being in the audience as it happened. Yuta, the first champion for the play as Rikka originally wanted it states it was a success. Rikka remarks that she feels as though no one got what she wanted to say. To this, Yuta says, “but they all laughed”. And then they start dating. There relationship carries forward to the post Gridman Universe audio dramas as well. Rikka is far from a kuudere in Gridman Universe, she is desperately looking to express herself through art and is unable to connect with seemingly anyone who understands her. This is not a fault on herself but instead on others for not seeing the distress behind her smile. Yuta, the person who comes closest to seeing and understanding Rikka, is too preoccupied with trying to date her as a version of her in his head to truly feel what she is going through.

The post Gridman Universe audio dramas also show Rikka as someone who is not emotionless. Rikka is perfectly capable of being friendly with people she met recently. In “A Matter of Ethical Senses”, she speaks to Koyomi, a SSSS.Dynazenon character she met in the movie and who’s role is rather small in the film, with ease and makes small talk a Kundere would not (Barnnn, 2023). She is kind and seems genuinely interested in Koyomi’s life, asking him about work, which is the inciting incident of the audio drama. In that same audio drama she expresses curiosity about the new appearance of Knight, a friend who grew significantly older between SSSS.Gridman and SSSS.Dynazenon. She also worries about how to refer to him properly. These are not something someone as emotionless and uncaring as a kuudere would do, despite knowing Knight quite well. She also expresses that she does not want to see her mother in emotional distress as the events of the drama play out. The audio drama “Gridman Universe 2”, starts with Rikka causally joking with Yomogi and Yume, two SSSS.Dynazenon characters. She is also able to correctly read Yomogi’s thoughts and understand his feelings. She also expresses remorse after hurting the feelings of Yuta. She experiences a range of emotions throughout the rest of the audio drama. While she is very comfortable and friends with everyone present, she is behaving in ways that Kuudere such as Rei do not after becoming close to people. Rather than being someone who is emotionless and distant, Rikka just takes time to warm up to people, which, if that is the definition of kuudere, the archetype is so broad it is meaningless.

Rikka’s arc is generally one of being more open with herself. The exception to this is her relationship with Yuta, which is a romantic relationship based on lies. In the audio drama “The Acceptor Doesn’t Ring”, the first of the works to happen after Rikka and Yuta begin seeing each other after the film, she is unable to tell Yuta why she is disappointed after Yuta and her go on an onsen date (Barnnn, 2023). She storms off without discussing it with him. Yomogi and Yume, an example of a functional relationship in the series, are able to correctly deduce that Rikka and Yuta do not fight. This lack of communication is causing a rift in their relationship. It is revealed that Rikka and Yuta don’t even know each other particularly well as Yuta cannot think of something about Rikka he dislikes. Despite dating there is a clear distance between the two, Rikka shies away from physical intimacy such as kissing and does not appear particularly enthused when Yuta compliments her.

This distance is because Rikka is suppressing her emotions of not particularly being in love with Yuta and is continuing the relationship out of a sense of not wanting to hurt him. In “Gridman Universe 2” she states, “You’re just leaving things unsaid”, when she thinks Yuta is stressed due to their relationship (Barnnn, 2023). She is telling on herself. She is not being honest with herself regarding her feelings toward Akane and is simply attempting to fill the hole with Yuta. A hole that will never be able to be filled because Rikka is not attracted to Yuta.

Throughout Rikka’s journey as a character across the various entries the series, we see her trend towards being more open and honest about her feelings. She does this because she is getting closer to the characters involved and becoming more friendly towards them. But her starting point as a character was not one of a lack of emotion. Instead, she was full of emotions but didn’t properly know how to express them. She starts as a girl who was just asked out by a boy she doesn’t know and is trying to figure out her sexuality. All the while she is dealing with the challenging situation of being one of three people who knows the world is being attacked by kaiju. She then turns into a girl who feels trapped in a relationship with a boy she doesn’t particularly like or connect with out of a sense of obligation and grasping at not being lonely in the absence of someone she truly cares about. When she says, “I’m glad it took you so long. It gave me time to get to like you” she is lying, both to the world and herself. She is desperate for human connection of any kind after the disappearance of Akane. Rikka is nowhere close to being a kuudere, she is brimming with emotion at every turn and bottles it up because that is the type of person she is. In Gridman Universe, Rikka stands out looking across the city and when asked about talking to Akane she states, “If I started, it’ll all come out”. The emotion is there, bubbling, desperate for a release she cannot give herself.

References

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Barnnn. (2023, October 23). “A matter of ethical senses” https://barnnn.blogspot.com/2023/10/gridman-universe-voice-drama-home-video_27.html

Barnnn. (2023, October 26). “Gridman universe 2” https://barnnn.blogspot.com/2023/10/gridman-universe-voice-drama-home-video.html

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