This post is a response to Shingo’s recent post on the newly revived Heisei Democracy, “Things That Aren’t Moe: Lips.” If you haven’t seen it yet, I must insist you do. It’s good reading.
In the visual arts, the balance between objects and the negative space that surrounds them is crucial. In the case of otaku fandom, for example, I believe we process anime faces not by what we see, but rather by what we don’t. Half the time, a modern anime character doesn’t even require a nose.
Behold.
There are historical reasons why anime faces are so simple, going back to Osamu Tezuka’s adoption of manga techniques to deal with the piss-poor budgets of the 1950s and 60s (in fact, the earliest anime on television wasn’t considered animation, but “moving manga,” like a glorified Reading Rainbow segment). Today, even with all the lovely technology anime has at its disposal, the big-eyes-small-mouth aesthetic persists, and anime that doesn’t follow the schema even suffers. Because now it’s an institution, you see, and institutions endure.
But even so, designers in the Great Modern Age of Otaku are finding ways to innovate inside the box. Take the basic anime mouth: A line when closed, a pink triangle or circle when open. There wouldn’t seem to be much room for change. But fiddle with that closed line a bit and you get these:
Okay, now play around a bit more with the upper lip and the shape of the pink space when open, and you get these:
Or this:
See what I mean? Fascinating.
Lips are not present. In fact, some of these shapes look ridiculous with a human mouth (see: Aya Hirano’s self-photos during the Lucky Star period), or they’re just plain impossible. Even Kyoto Animation’s patented peanut-mouth of distress, which has a real-life equivalent of sorts, still isn’t quite. And yet the moe factor of the new, dynamic anime mouth relies on an implication of lips. A simple change in the line transforms the negative space of anime faces from plain to cute.
And now, we have yet another permutation in the realm of color. Though K-ON! and KyoAni didn’t pioneer the idea, they certainly popularized it: Just add a spot of white to your pink space, and voila, glorious teeth. Amazing.
These are incredibly small details, but they aren’t trivial. And we clearly eat it up like kids fresh out of fat camp, because it’s only occurring more and more with time.
Further Reading:
Many moons ago, I wrote a post about the simplicity of anime faces and emotional recognition.
Digitalboy’s Character Database of Love #9 and 10: Yamada and Saten Ruiko – Aside from being a good blog post in general, both of the characters pictured have very interesting mouths.
On FAKKU!, conversely, lips are quite prominent and important. No link; I know you can all find it on your own.
October 12, 2010 at 10:22 am
Mouths shaped like circles, ‘x’s, triangles and squares have been around for years. I’m waiting for the manga/anime that’ll present us with the world’s first pentagon mouth. Exactly how bizarre is too much?
October 13, 2010 at 9:50 am
Situational mouth shapes are almost a different can of worms, but I can’t articulate exactly how. Only that Minami-ke’s teardrop mouths have a distinctly different quality from when a character gets a square-mouth look of horror when they’re, well, horrified.
Interesting train of thought. Thanks for reading!
October 12, 2010 at 11:32 am
Nice response post, 2DT. Keep it up!
As for the topic in question, I think I’ll stand by the idea that the implications of mouth moe will always be at the discretion of the creator of the canon material, no matter how simple or complex the mouth is drawn. There may be different ways to make people perceive moe through our oral organs, but there will always be a unique way to do it.
And we need to note that the rest of what composes our faces also contributes to the mouth’s moe factor, qualities, expressions and all.
October 13, 2010 at 9:56 am
Thank you, thank you.
I feel like any time the upper lip line becomes more plastic than usual, it indicates a more playful, maybe mischievous character– I’m thinking of Konata, Kuroko, Yamada… Except, interestingly, when it looks like a rabbit mouth, which seems to mean shyness or seriousness.
So we’re not at a universal standard, you’re right, but I feel like we’re in the process.
October 12, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Ah the basic design philosophy of anime: anything that impedes the expressionism of exaggerated emotion will be severed~
On a basic facial space vs emotional info scale, lips really don’t do much… especially compared to say, Mugi’s eyebrows.
Or so I presented the development of anime to my club xD
October 13, 2010 at 10:00 am
You think noses have gradually atrophied from modern anime for that reason? Interesting idea!
In the end, eyes are still king, queen and pretty much everything in anime expressiveness. But the way I see it, mouth comes in second.
October 13, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Well this about it, since when are noses ever used to describe emotion in textual fiction?
Oh the mouth explains plenty, lips curling is one of the oldest descriptions, but it also doesn’t require ‘lips’ to tell that. Actually from a pure drawing standpoint, it’s easier not to use lips— and Japanese anime is all about the evolution of ‘limited animation’ and how to cut corners after all =9
October 12, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Oh gawd that Lucky Star picture and the feet…
October 13, 2010 at 7:38 am
I love Konata’s cute little feet. I’m not one for a foot fetish, but she’s got adorable feet.
October 14, 2010 at 8:17 am
They’re a bit too simple for me. There’s a poster with Kagami’s feet floating around somewhere, and they look exactly the same. I’m sure my friend with the chart would have a fit.
October 12, 2010 at 2:22 pm
Au contraire, I don’t think lips play as crucial a part in making a character moe as the character’s other characteristics. I think that we DO decide what’s moe by what we see, and now what we don’t see. Perhaps it’s just me, but studios tend to use similar-styled mouths to depict their characters. If we were talking in a strictly-manga sense, I would have to agree, mouths have moe value too. But not so much for anime.
Moe characteristics usually tend to be more from personality than from facial features. Sure, facial features play a part, but what is ‘moe’? ‘moe’, after all, originally referred to someone’s interest in a particular style of character in Japanese media, and interest is subjective, after all. What I think is that if the authors wanted it, it would happen: meaning, if they were indeed, aiming for ‘mouth moe’ , they would find a way to achieve it, I’m sure of it. Otherwise, moe characteristics tend to come from other, more prominent facial features which fans come to associate the character with, such as Mugi’s eyebrows, or even just the character’s physical features, like twintails. Fans , in my opinion, remember what they like and see – but completely forget, or even ignore what they don’t.
And indeed, faces in anime are getting more and more simplified. Perhaps it’s due to all the budget costs, all the time needed to animate proper faces, or simply to give them a desired look. I mean, compare pre-2000 anime to what we see now. Which is more complex? Obviously , pre-2000.
October 14, 2010 at 8:17 am
I wouldn’t be so sure, friend.
I stand by the belief that anime before 2000 is only more detailed in the case of movies, OVAs, and cherry-picked stills from critics of today’s aesthetic. Just looking at a show like MM!, and how that utterly forgettable purple-haired girl has beautiful detailed eyes in every single shot she’s in AND gradient hair AND fluid motion… I mean, on a technical level, it’s pretty breathtaking.
But you’re right. In terms of the otaku database, mouth forms aren’t a distinct genre of moe that people necessarily seek out. Right now there’s just the one (the :3 face). Still, I see more diversity happening in recent years, and I think the response to it is pretty positive.
Thanks for reading!
October 12, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Read your link to your earlier post “many moons ago.”
I suspect that many “otakus” as they call themselves have Aspergers or Alexithymia. The weird compulsiveness for anime-related objects and the interest in minimalist faces are hallmarks of these autism-spectrum disorders.
The difference between a successful autism-spectrum person and an unsuccessful autism-spectrum person depends on the presence of co-morbid conditions. In colloquial language, this means: do you got other issues besides Alexithymia, Aspergers, or Autism? Autism by itself is really not that big of a deal. Many people with autism, like Bill Gates, are highly successful. But this autism will exacerbate any other psychological problems that a person might have.
October 14, 2010 at 8:18 am
Iiiiiinteresting. I didn’t know that about Bill Gates.
But it makes sense, and that’s why I prefer to say “the autistic spectrum” rather than “autism” as such. Because what’s really the difference between a mildly autistic, perhaps Asperger’s-esque person and a person who grew up without internalizing the finer details of social norms (from lack of opportunity by being a shut-in, for example)? Functionally little, at least in the here and now.
Great thoughts. Thanks!
October 12, 2010 at 4:27 pm
But if you don’t have any other psychological problems, then there is nothing to exacerbate!
October 12, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Yeah, it’s curious to see how the obvious gets overlooked, isn’t it? The other recent ‘shape’ I’ve noticed is another KyoAni-ism, that of the up-pointed triangle (Yui Hirasawa for instance). I guess it is indeed all down to the constraints that were forced onto the medium initially, but stuck as people became accustomed to seeing them…a bit like the girl in Azu Manga Daioh being nickenamed Osaka…eventually you can’t remember what her real name actually was. She’s called Osaka by her friends, and that’s how she’s referred to from that point on.
All this makes it a bit difficult for outsiders to ‘get into’ the medium though, because these conventions have long since lost their ‘necessity’ (e.g. I’m sure it’s easy to draw lips and teeth now) but still remain…and look odd until you get used to them.
My personal faves are the points where the characters in Aria and Eden of the East go sketchy/chibi-fied momentarily. There’s something about the quick change and change back that cracks me up.
On a related note, I noticed a while back that Family Guy is also quite ‘minimalist’ in its artwork, yet you can see the characters’ tongues moving in their mouths as they speak. Dunno why that detail jumped out at me, but there you go.
October 12, 2010 at 10:47 pm
re: Family Guy, it’s commonly considered that Americans care much more about mouths moving along with dialog than it is in Japan.
The most obvious reason it happens is that American animation has the voice recording done first and the animation matched to it, but in Japan, the animation comes first. Whatever the case, even in low-budget cartoons on cartoon network, mouth-matching tends to be way more specific than in anime (I always look for it now, too, lol).
October 14, 2010 at 8:18 am
What Digitalboy said. To westerners, mismatched lip flaps are the domain of cheap kung-fu movies.
Aria’s chibi-figures are interesting, because each figure’s features is a distillation of the character’s personality. And in context of this discussion, I mainly think of Akari’s square mouth of perpetual surprise.
October 12, 2010 at 4:54 pm
Heh, I’ve noticed that the lack of lips in anime, or the exaggeratedly small or large mouths (dependent on the volume the character is speaking) don’t set off none-fans so much as the lack of noses (maybe because Western cartoon characters tend to have prominent noses). One thing about the mouth that could be jarring to someone who’s not used to it (besides the lack of accurate lip-syncing) is when the mouth gets big and extends beyond the chin when a character is yelling about something.
I always figured that the large eyes look in anime came from Tezuka’s inspiration from Disney, making the eyes the “mirror to the soul” so to speak. The diverse and often flashy hair and clothes styles in anime developed as the best means to differentiate so many different characters and art styles. So then the nose and the mouth fell into less prominence? ~_^
I also find it interesting that female characters are more likely to have lips (or the outlines of them anyway) than male characters, especially when they’re in some sexy-ish scene. Also, adult female characters are even more likely to have lips (and lipstick!) than younger ones.
October 12, 2010 at 5:32 pm
– I also find it interesting that female characters are more likely to have lips (or the outlines of them anyway) than male characters, especially when they’re in some sexy-ish scene. Also, adult female characters are even more likely to have lips (and lipstick!) than younger ones.
It makes sense; the only hints of lips I ever see out of guys in anime (if they aren’t on by default for nearly everyone in the show) are when they’re about to kiss someone, or when the fat-lipped-black-guy stereotype gets played.
Also, I might be totally wrong/clueless on this, but doesn’t the linear relationship between the age of girls and the use of lipstick also apply in real life?
October 14, 2010 at 8:19 am
Well, not counting when kids play dress up, yes, I think you’re right. By the way, welcome!
October 14, 2010 at 8:18 am
Did you ever see that Homestar Runner bit about anime, ages and ages ago? It was all about the awkward lip-flap dubbing and the big mouths. “Really really small when closed… Ri-DIC-ulously huge when open!”
The nose is an interesting subject. I almost wish I’d devoted another entry to it. But for now I’m going to support Aorii’s hypothesis above.
October 12, 2010 at 8:39 pm
I love the semiotics of various works, I never had a name for that particular fascination I have (the meaning of images and signs) until recently.
Roger Ebert talked about something similar to this when explaining anime on a talk about Grave of the Fireflies. He talked about the plasticity of the anime characters’ faces and relative “realism” of any animated work. Skip to 2:05 for the relevant moment:
October 14, 2010 at 8:19 am
I wrote a little bit about semiotics some time ago, too.
http://2dteleidoscope.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/translating-the-hanamaru-in-the-kindergarten/
I’m surprised Ebert waited until it was “Ebert and Roeper” before he reviewed Grave of the Fireflies. But that was a good video, very informative! Scott McCloud says some similar things in his book Understanding Comics, which I recommend if you’re interested in cartooning and comics theory.
October 12, 2010 at 10:43 pm
K-On!’s glorious teeth are highly present in Seikon no Qwaser and are my favorite part of that show’s designs. Both have some of my favorite anime faces in general.
I love :3 faces, my favorite being Mikan from Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight. The inverse of that mouth helped make the Kana Hanazawa girl the best part of Occult Academy; lip design was all over the place in that series.
Raildex certainly does put effort into it, now that you mention it. I think the fang moe directly connects into this one, too?
What interests me is that mouth moe works situationally for the audience. I love some mouth types and hate others, with no connection to how they correspond to reality.
October 14, 2010 at 8:20 am
Mikan! I knew I forgot a screenshot in there.
There’s this fascinating part of the show where she’s writing a letter, and she puts her head down closer to the desk… and her :3 lips actually protrude outward into three-dimensional space! It’s amazing! But all of two seconds, I think.
Fang moe is yet another interesting subject… It might be a real-life representation of “yaeba” (protruding canines), which Japanese people find cute, but which we westerners would just call snaggle teeth. I think Peter Payne wrote about this some time ago.
October 13, 2010 at 12:32 am
I recall when Fran used plastic surgery to make that celebrity actor look more similar to the manga character she was playing – how it took like three separate surgeries and involved dozens of incisions, bone shortening, eye cavity enlarging and all that fun stuff. And how by the end of it all she could barely support her head, and making love would break her. Terrifying.
Again you bring me to the impasse at which I wonder on the nature of our people’s affection for forms so detached from our own. A theoretical matter or an empirical one? I recall, a long, long time ago, back when I was eight or so and completely uneducated on such complexities as moe or even culture, thinking to myself that the anime character’s lack of nose and mouth were simply aesthetically pleasing. Have I said that here before? I think I did. Analogous to the clean slate, the blemishless canvas – rather, the more prominent thought in my head was conversely that noses and mouths were what made real people ugly. Perhaps now I should be running for the hills screaming ‘autism’ at the heighth of my lungs – that takes more effort than sitting on my ass and waiting for an imminent Socrates of Anime to come and solve all our quandaries though, so I won’t.
Or am I really waiting for a Sigmund Freud?
I mean, the pathos that a face like this http://bit.ly/cC3XzV introduces instantly complicates things beyond my fathoming. With such things as Mitsudomoe and likewise within-the-box-but-still-avant-garde creations I’ll only be perplexed further. A fascinating time to be watching anime indeed.
October 13, 2010 at 12:34 am
http://bit.ly/cf7SnL
Forgot to mention: Danbooru is such a contemporary compartmentalized treasure trove. Just look at those facefuls of happiness.
October 14, 2010 at 9:11 am
When it comes to talking about anime, we’re all Socrates, Freud and Nietzsche rolled into one big network.
I don’t think it’s wrong to have the impulse that real=ugly… Well, let me rephrase that. It’s very understandable. We’re competing with characters who have perfect skin, so perfect that the girls have shiny red spots whenever they wear bikinis on posters.
October 13, 2010 at 7:56 am
It’s almost a necessity for this though. With each new generation of anime comes new evolutionary changes that keep it fresh. Mouth shapes is but a singular pinpoint that you are focusing on here. There’s also new eye types, and even the level of shading, and much more.
Anime has never been revolutionary since its creation. It’s only been evolutionary. What we believe is revolutionary is simply just good marketing. As such, tropes and rehashes are constantly cosmetically updated to distinguish themselves from the already frequently explored plots and personalities.
What’s interesting also is that the library of style choices and behaviors are growing and being revisited that even old techniques of the 70′s and 80′s are still deeply ingrained in the modern anime culture. Things like the puzzled blink, or falling head over heels, the mouth size to volume ratio, etc, even though a lot of these have been mostly retired.
Anime at its core, has always been about simplification of reality. Streamlining the structure to an almost symbolic level to illustrate a point, as well as simplifying scenarios to distill an idea.
Your topic reminds me of the Superflat reference to cultural anime and society’s obsession with oversimplification for aesthetics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superflat
October 14, 2010 at 9:16 am
Falling over! I don’t think I’ve seen that in ages.
I’ll be putting that on Twitter, if you don’t mind.
I think it’s worth discussing in further detail, for the people who don’t check comments here.
October 14, 2010 at 9:13 am
Like you note, part of the reason why lips aren’t drawn might simply be due to staying within budgetary constraints. Natural, unaccented lips require a considerably nuanced touch in terms of colour, light, and shadow – not easy when you’re on a demanding schedule to get something done!
On the flipside – when do we see lips accentuated or put on display in anime? In my experience I tend to notice they are used as a general symbol to denote a female character who is “adult”, or who desires to be adult (take the classic trope of the young girl trying on lipstick to appear older). The accentuation of lips plays to “sexy”, rather than “moe”, traits. Railgun is a good example of this – compare the Konori, who is still young, with Telestina, who is presented as older. There’s a specific symbology behind the whole deal.
As for dental hygiene… it makes me realize that anime characters with braces are incredibly rare, yet single fangs seem to predominate. Perhaps this calls for an orthodontist anime…
October 14, 2010 at 9:21 am
But how can that be? Shoujo characters have them all the time! Big, fat lips. But I get what you’re saying. And lipstick on adults is a pretty standard trope, from what I see.
Re: Braces – Frankly, Japanese people haven’t been big on them in real life until recently. They don’t automatically denote “awkward teenager” the way they do in the west. But maybe you’ve caught on to the next big wave.
October 15, 2010 at 6:39 pm
Gally/Alita from Gunnm/Battle Angel Alita.
That is all.
Hooray octopus.
October 16, 2010 at 12:06 am
Yes, this is true.
October 16, 2010 at 9:05 pm
[...] 2dteleidoscope.wordpress.com Negative Spaces of Cute: Observations of Emergent Mouth Moe Comments (0) [...]
February 12, 2011 at 4:39 am
[...] series, see Oh God That Face! Explorations of “Seriousmile” Moe, and its unofficial sequel, Negative Spaces of Cute: Observations of Emergent Mouth Moe. I guess that makes this a trilogy [...]