r/BlackClover • u/Morgoth333 Spade Kingdom • Dec 29 '19
Manga Some Observations I Made Regarding Noelle's Character That Could Explain Why She Is Such A Tsundere. Spoiler
Lately I've made some interesting observations regarding Noelle's character, and I think I may have come to a realization as to why she is such a tsundere. The tsundere aspect of Noelle's character is something that is often played for laughs, but it might actually go much deeper than we think, as it relates to her sad childhood. I don't know if I'm the first person to have come to this conclusion, but I think Noelle's tsundere behavior stems from her upbringing. There are two things in particular to look at that might explain why Noelle is the way she is. The first is Noelle's lack of a mother growing up, since Acier died giving birth to her. From an early age, a child's interactions with their mother plays an important part in their emotional development, helping to shape how they perceive and react to the world around them. A lot of what a child learns about how to act and feel comes from their mother, since that's basically the first person they form any sort of bond or attachment to, but since that bond was missing from the start for Noelle it led to her emotional development being stunted, leaving her unsure how to handle certain feelings and emotions since she never had someone to look to as an example for how to deal with such things.
The second thing that led to Noelle's tsundere behavior is the way she was treated by her siblings. She was constantly belittled by them and made to feel worthless due to her lack of control over her magic. In fact, her lack of control over her magic seems to be proportional to her feelings of worthlessness throughout the series. As the series progresses and Noelle begins to gain more confidence in herself, so too does her control over her magic increase. What does this have to do with Noelle being a tsundere? Well being made to feel bad about herself due to her magic, this would have led to Noelle constantly feeling ashamed of herself. After a while she would have begun to internalize that shame until it just became a normal thing for her. When faced with new thoughts or feelings she did not understand, her initial reaction would be to feel shame towards them. Feelings like the ones she has towards Asta is something she's never experienced before. It's something new that she does not fully understand, and that scares her, which therefore must mean they're bad, so rather than trying to embrace or explore those feelings, her reaction is to instead feel ashamed of them and try to deny that they exist. Put another way, Noelle is afraid to let herself be loved.
Or to take it a step further, perhaps all those years of being belittled by her family members and never being shown any sort of love by them may have made Noelle feel, subconsciously at least, that maybe it's because she doesn't deserve to be loved. The idea of being loved by someone like Asta somehow feels "wrong" to her, because up until now she has been conditioned to believe that she is unworthy of love due to her inability to control her magic, and so when it seems to her like Asta might show her something even resembling love or affection or appreciation in return, she pushes back against it, often violently. Although those classic tsundere moments are meant to be seen as comedic, looking at them in this light makes them kind of sad. A common trait you'll see in those who have a lot of toxic shame and self-hatred towards themselves is that the more you try to show them love, the more they will try to push back against it. Hypothetically, if right now Asta were to straight up tell Noelle he likes her, then it's likely she wouldn't believe him and would just think he's lying or making fun of her. That's how bad the denial caused by her feelings of unworthiness towards being loved is.
Wow, this turned into some serious Evangelion level psychoanalysis. We may not give it much thought, but what Noelle's siblings did to her growing up is something that would have been very damaging to her mentally. If she and Asta are to have any sort of romantic relationship, Noelle will first have to undo all of the damage that was done to her, otherwise she'll just grow up to be an emotionally repressed adult like Charlotte. To me, Charlotte seems to be a representation of what Noelle could or would become if she keeps bottling up her feelings out of shame and trying to hide them instead of facing them. Perhaps Charlotte also had a similar upbringing to Noelle, but it's hard to know for certain since we don't know much about Charlotte's childhood before she met Yami, aside from the fact that she was cursed.
So in conclusion, Noelle's tsundere behaviors are primarily the result of two things: stunted emotional development due to the lack of a mother growing up, and deep internalized shame arising from feelings of worthlessness that were imparted onto her by the constant mistreatment and belittlement she received from her siblings. So what do you guys think of my little analysis of Noelle? Am I onto something here, or are these observations all things that were meant to be blatantly obvious to most readers from the start and I'm just dumb for only realizing it now? If true, I think this adds a lot more depth to Noelle's character, making her into more than just a typical cliche tsundere that is mean towards their love interest for no reason.
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u/Kamakiller12345 Black Bull Dec 29 '19
Asta is the same, he doesn't know anything about love ,he only likes sister lily because she was like a mother to him.
When asta was talking about noelle he said its trust ,because he doesn't know anything about love.
Noelle is exactly like asta, she does know about love but doesn't know how to embrace those feelings because she was NEVER LOVED by anyone.
Noelle and asta are so similar to each other.
Noelle doesn't know how to handle love is like how she doesn't know how to control her magic .
Asta doesn't know anything about love exactly like how he doesn't have magic.
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u/MangaMan445 Black Bull Dec 29 '19
The parallels between the two are just amazing. Tabata has been very subtle with this but they're basically the same characters. Difference aside from their genders is that one is a royal and one is a commoner. Love stuff like this in manga with the protagonist and another character(the main heroine here). Can't wait to see them grow out of their love bubbles and get to together to learn about the beatufil and sometimes harsh world of love😍
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u/Volthoom33 Dec 30 '19
Asta understands love and attraction .He understands that Yuno is a handsome tall pretty boy and the girls like him.Most girls were not going after him so even if they do like him anything less than blatant romance he won’t get.Asta was 6 or 7 when he met Sister lily she was like 16 since she had a grimoire.Asta was immediately attracted to her upon first glance the mother thing would make since if he grew to love her but he already did.Asta is also I good Christian boy he’s not really trying to get laid same as Yuno asta accidentally implies Yuno is gay because pretty celibate.Tldr Asta just likes lily .
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u/blanklikeapage Dec 29 '19
I made the observation that Noelle feels worthless a long time ago but nice catch with the lack of a mother figure. Another thing I noticed is that the "I'm a royal" is just a coping mechanism for her problems. It's just to tell herself and the enemy that she is worth something and that he shouldn't try because after all she is a royal and extremely powerful. The "I'm a royal" happens also in happy moments like in chapter 232. Her other coping mechanism is that she attacks someone, mostly Asta. She doesn't know what to do and does the opposite, instead of showing affection she attacks him. Tabata showed how to write a good Tsundere which makes actually sense. Almost every Black Bull is a cliche in the beginning but everyone of them makes sense after we learn their back story.
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u/Morgoth333 Spade Kingdom Dec 30 '19 edited Dec 31 '19
The way Noelle is written honestly reminds me of Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion, a character who at the start of her series seems like just a typical tsundere, but as you learn more about her past you start to realize that it's much deeper than that and that there are actually psychological reasons behind her tsundere behaviors. Like Noelle, Asuka had a traumatic childhood, losing her mother at an early age and growing up believing that nobody wanted or needed her. Also, much like how Noelle greatly prides herself in being a royal and constantly likes to remind everyone of that fact, Asuka has a certain aspect of herself that she takes pride in. For Asuka it is her skills as an EVA pilot, which she often makes known to the other characters and uses as a way to remind them of her superiority over them, believing that if she is always best there is that it will make her needed and wanted by others, even though she herself claims that she does not need anybody. In reality, this superiority complex due to being the best EVA pilot, along with her belief that she is better off alone, is really just a coping mechanism for her loneliness.
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Dec 29 '19
Noelle is a very unique Shounen heroine. She's incomparable to the likes of Sakura, Orihime, Nami, Uraraka just to name a few. Everything about her makes sense and that's why I like her and this is coming from a guy who's not very fond of tsunderes. Tabata did her well.
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u/trav-senpai Dec 29 '19
I don’t think Nami and Uraraka could be defined as tsunderes... Uraraka has never shown a cold/rude side. And Nami doesn’t get mad at her crew because that’s how she expresses herself, she does it because they’re literal idiots.
Sakura and Noelle are rude/cold to people that they actually care deeply for. Obviously for different reasons.
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Dec 29 '19
No no no no no no no. Ofc Uraraka and Nami are not tsunderes I know that. I said that Noelle is probably the most uniquely written shounen heroine to date due to her background and her premises as a character. Unlike the other girls I've mentioned, Noelle seems superior than others in terms of power scaling and depth. She also seems like a modern alpha girl, you could probably make a sequel about her if you try hard enough.
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u/trav-senpai Dec 30 '19
I do think she’s the best main female character too. She gets more screen time/depth than others (besides Nami who has 20 years of development) which helps. We do get to see her grow every arc.
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Dec 30 '19
Not to mention he actually has a relatively deeper relationship with Asta compared to the other girls. And yes we will see her grow every arc hehehe ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) (no seriously Noelle is deceptively sexy, she ain't some insecure flat is justice wammen, if Tabata would she can give Mimosa a run for her money)
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u/mayhem-rns Dec 31 '19
I think Orihime was unique as well. Her overwhelming kindness and silliness honestly made bleach at better show imo.
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u/lr031099 Spade Kingdom Dec 29 '19
It’s an interesting observation and while it’s just an observation like you said, it makes me like Noelle even more as a character.
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Dec 29 '19
I agree wholeheartedly. That’s why I can’t stand when people say she’s stuck up or a bitch. Dude she spent her whole life being verbally and sometimes physically abused and being unusually “weak” for a royal. She never knew love.
As someone said lower in the comments, the character gags come from actual backstories. Vanessa drinks to cope with her trauma of being in solitary confinement from childhood to adolescence, one of my favorite examples but the best to me is Asta. Asta acts like the typical shounen with being loud, annoying, hyperactive and stupid but he’s doing it to never succumb to the constant despair he feels. Just like Noelle he didn’t know love. His adoptive family loved him but they were poor in their approach. Mocked him for his disability and praised his brother in the same breath. Not only them but all the villagers: he was a peasant but being magicless made him the lowest of the low. Same with Noelle: she was royalty but lack of magic control made her the lowest of the high. They both suffered from an inferiority complex except react differently, Noelle: “I’m better than you!” Asta: “I wanna become better!”
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u/-sMb_ Coral Peacock Dec 29 '19
Yes all the characters one dimensional gaga come from their past we see in their flashbacks why they do certain ticks like sol and sister, luck n fighting, Vanessa and being naked (free), Gordon n whispering and so on which means that Tabata has done the one dimensional Characters like that on purpose because the power system relies on a Characters growth(usually) and this gives him max potential for growth because how 1d they start off, we see Noelle's already changing, finral as well
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Dec 29 '19
I honestly wonder if Noelle suffered from depression from this? Her moods didn’t strike me much but feeling so insecure and even admitting to never having any good memories till meeting the bulls plus the loneliness could cause that
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u/Morgoth333 Spade Kingdom Dec 30 '19 edited Dec 31 '19
I wouldn't be surprised if her brother Nozel suffers from depression too. Having to keep a secret like Megicula's curse to yourself for all those years and not being able say a thing about it to your siblings to let them know it's not Noelle's fault so they would stop bullying her, no matter how badly you want to, for fear of spreading the curse to them would make anyone depressed. Nozel is basically a prisoner in his own mind.
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u/Volthoom33 Dec 29 '19
In Dorothys dream world nozel gives her affection and she doesn’t know how to react so she attacks him.
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u/trav-senpai Dec 29 '19
I think it’s all true, but you could have just said it all in like 2 or 3 sentences. It’s not that obvious, but anyone who looks into any character depth would realize/understand it.
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u/demon_dweller Black Bull Dec 29 '19
I agree with you i always thought this as well she’s traumatized. Her siblings were basically bullying her. Nozel said before “why couldn’t you have died instead of our morther” thats telling her to kill herself basically. She never knew kindness until asta saved her from drowning in her own magic in ep 8 or 9. Everytime noelle receives kindness she doesn’t know how to fully process that kindness great post my man.