Of course, in my case it's just a need to find a kindred spirit. :) Not so much the violent aspect–that's a huge turn-off–but the whole "aloof, pretending not to care" type? Oh yeah, that's so me.

Oh, and of course, you forgot to mention the most important thing. Tsunderes blush. A lot. Some of them seem to be stuck in blush mode. And that is what makes them so moe.

or maybe because they're not the damsel-in-distress type, they're strong.
and when someone is being bitchy with them, they strike back.

*and maybe something is wrong with me because i dont find louise annoying.
sometimes i got pissed off, yes, but not because she's always beating up saito
(but because she should rather beat the hell out of that siesta instead )

http://www.atalude.net/archives/2009/03/02/clannad-what-should-have-been/

Plus I just dig purple haired characters.

This is not always the case, and there are many examples of non-tsunderes with strong personalities, however the will to bite back is always present in a tsundere.

That being said, I only like them to a certain level. Like almost anything in life, too much of one thing can spoil its taste. Louise is a perfect example of 'too much tsundere' her abusive behavior goes far past acceptable boundaries and straigt into the 'Saito, what on EARTH are you doing with this girl?' territory.

The aforementioned Teana, on the other hand, shows the typical tough tsundere attitude, but does not shy away from showing her more gentle side.

A general rule of thumb for me is if a tsundere often becomes violent for unreasonable things (such as Louise whipping Saito for doing things she herself asked for), I probably won't like her.

And when it comes down to it, he doesn’t so much “like tsundere characters” as much as like assertive female characters. It’s just that the tsundere character trait often accompanies an assertive character, possibly for ease of audience identification.

I'll hold my hand up say I'm guilty as charged; I can see where your friend's coming from. I actually don't like the submissive moe archetype at all so assertive characters are a breath of fresh air for me. Like any personality type though, it can be used in a predictable and lazy fashion or just over-used, as any personality archetype can be (moe included. Hell, it's possible to have moe characters that don't irritate me).

Why are tsunderes awesome? I'll say it's the tsundere trait itself more than a full-on tsundere character because it can indeed be over-used. The duality in personality can happen for a number of reasons, which adds a lot of entertainment value onto the characterisation. "Why is she being so short-tempered and hiding her feelings?" and so forth. Secondly, it is refreshing when the 'anime girl' stereotypes are meek, submissive and whatnot. Furthermore, when I interact with people like that IRL I find the more assertive, tsun-tsun people easier to deal with. If they're annoyed about something, they don't suffer in silence; they often come across as more honest in that sense.

Of course, that's the type B you mention. Type As aren't really that honest since they're hiding one set of emotions behind another, and are often a bit predictable and one-dimensional (lacking the things I like about the tsundere in the first place!). Watching someone being obnoxious and rude isn't fun, I'll admit.

It depends on the time and nature of the 'payoff' though. To me the tsundere of Toradora! is Taiga – she has real problems admitting to even herself that she cares about Ryuuji. Granted, her tsun-tsun behaviour is either funny or grating depending on your personal tastes but it's entertaining, and rewarding in a way, to see her notice and then think about her true feelings.

I was expecting to write a rambling comment (I did a post about this on my old blog absolutely ages ago…hopefully including a link won't get this comment eaten by your spam filter) but it's turned out to be even more tl;dr than I expected…sorry about that!

I was thinking about writing a Tsundere post on my blog too since you post it I have a great increase my knowledge of it. Thanks!

I liked this analysis a lot, so much that I decided to feature it on a brand new anime channel for Dailysite! Every day I pick a new link to feature on the Dailysite anime channel, and if you make that your starting page, you get taken to articles like yours automatically. I hope it helps your traffic just a bit :)