All right, I was rewatching the Spice & Wolf anime and I was struck by a thought:
As much as I love tsundere characters, they inevitably tend to grate on me after a while. There's only so much drama that can be gained from a character that violently refuses to acknowledge their own feelings before the trope loses purchase. Past a certain point, the gag stops being funny and simply becomes annoying, and my love for these characters tends to be inversely proportional to how long the show goes on.
And yet, as I was rewatching the Spice & Wolf anime recently, I realized that I still hadn't tired of Holo and Lawrence's constant taunting and bickering. Even years after my initial watch-through, Holo and Lawrence continued to have one of my favorite romantic relationships depicted in an anime.
Of course, this led me to think about what made them different from other tsundere characters. On the surface, at least, they're largely the same--they both couch their respect and love for one another in pointed barbs and unnecessary arguments, and often refuse to state aloud what they truly mean to each other unless it's accompanied by an act of comic violence.
However, I think I finally realized what the difference is: despite the fact that they rarely say it aloud, Holo and Lawrence are never in denial about their feelings for one another.
Even before spending as long as they had traveling with one another, they have both admitted to themselves and each other that there is (at least) the beginnings of romantic attraction between them. For all her bluster, Holo repeatedly confides in Lawrence about how lonely she truly is, and how much she values the time she gets to spend traveling with him. For all his obsessively mercantile thinking, Lawrence always makes sure to show Holo moments of true, unambiguous appreciation for her companionship.
It's true that Holo is quite tsundere from the beginning and Lawrence starts out much less so. But by the time we hit the third arc, the loving insults and incisive sniping are no longer just a game to them--it's one that's mutual. It's both a way that they hone their instincts and wit as merchants, as well as part of a shared understanding of how they show affection to one another--an understanding that they both share and participate in.
The vital difference with these two is that they're both fully aware of what they're doing, and choose to participate in it anyway. The tsundere act is not a one-sided coping mechanism inflicted from one character onto another, but a mutually understood and reciprocal act of affection.
And that distinction is why I still love to watch these two dorks time and time again, even after all these years.