Anime has a visual language that shorthands character emotions and states of mind. The visual language comes from manga and its efforts to clarify the inner world of characters without resorting to words. Visual language can be thought of as a vocabulary of adverbs and adjectives. They add more detail to a character’s behavior. To strain the metaphor, think of nouns as character and environment designs and verbs as how these behave within a story. Some visual words require more thought and exposure to understand. Luckily, these visual words are standard. Some anime use dialects to match the art style of the series. Visual words can be combined to show conflicting states of mind or emphasize one state. Many manga artists create their own visual words, which may become a part of the anime lexicon.
Much of anime’s visual language focuses on the eyes (the style of the eyes can be considered a noun). Anime uses large eyes because they allow for better emotional expression than small eyes. The face of characters acts as a canvas in addition to a likeness. This view gives animators freedom to change the likeness of a character in order to express the character’s thoughts and emotions in a situation.
This list isn’t exhaustive, but it covers the most common visual words you will see. It is in alphabetical order.
Abstract Background Patterns
Abstract background patterns explain the feelings of the moment. Fast animations or twirling spirals show how quickly the character’s mind is working, much like gears in a clock. Wavy lines show irritation or upset emotions. Colors such as bright red are used for anger. Darker colors like purples or blues are used to show the characters are feeling sick, upset, or depressed. Patterns vary but here are two of the most common.
Abstract patterns. Often, these show anxiety, confusions, and feelings of being overwhelmed. Bubble patterns denote cuteness and love.
Arrow Piercing
Whenever a character says something hurtful to another, you will see an arrow piece the victim through the heart or head. A barrage of arrows can skewer a character too. It’s a way to show how the conversations hurts a character- intellectually through the head, or emotionally through the heart. It appears in many comedies.
Bento Lunch
When a female character brings a male character a bento lunch, it shows affection. The practice hearkens back to traditional Japanese gender roles. Woman were expected to cook for their husbands and take care of them. Making a bento box from scratch shows her desire to care for him. Usually she has to learn how to cook in the process, expressing her effort to work at the relationship. Sometimes, the guy understand the connotation. Other times, he doesn’t. Usually this failure happens in comedies.
Blank Face
This visual word literally means “loss of face.” The character feels extreme embarrassment or shame. The character’s upper face can be obscured by shadows, color, or lines or not drawn at all. Colored lines offer adjectives for embarrassment and shame. Purple, for example, denotes illness or sadness.
Blank White eyes
Often with this visual word a character’s eyes enlarge or pulsate. These blank white eyes also have jaggedly drawn borders. You will see this when a character experiences extreme shock or are stunned physically or emotionally. Sometimes this is combined with swirled pupils to emphasize the overwhelmed state of the character.
Bleeding nose
The bleeding nose links with sexual attraction or arousal. The level of blood denotes level of arousal or desired comedic effect. It can vary to a streak of red to impossible fountains. It can affect men and women. Although men show this more often.
Cat Mouth/Fangs
This visual word literally means “feeling catty.” It appears when a character feels mischievous. The character’s mouth will sprout fangs or will morph to resemble a cat’s mouth.
Censoring Steam
Thick clouds of steam will commonly censor body parts during bathing scenes. The characters can see through the clouds, but the audience cannot.
Chibi Deformation
Chibi designs feature oversized heads and small bodies. Characters will morph into chibi during comedic or lighthearted scenes. They sometimes appear in otherwise serious stories. Chibi also denote cuteness. Some characters will use cuteness to get their way, deforming into chibi to glare at the other character. Some anime use chibi as their main art style. Chibi can stand in for a character’s childhood, depending on the style of the series.
Clothing Explosion
Clothing will explode during fight scenes involving women or between men during muscle competitions. In the case of women, it often serves as fan service. For men, it shows the power of their muscles. Consider the amount of force needed to make clothing burst into small shreds! This visual word showcases the difference between how men and women are handled in anime. You don’t usually see muscular women flexing to explode their clothes like men, nor do you see men’s clothes get shredded during battle to tantalize.
Cloud of Sparkles
Sparkles denote a character’s beauty and attractiveness. You will see these clouds of sparkles hovering in the air around male characters females find attractive. Temporary clouds of sparkles can also denote cleanliness. You will see this around freshly cleaned objects and people. Sparkles can also show niceness in a character. Characters can walk around with floating flowers or bubbles that represent their love and buoyant mood.
Crying Large Tear Drops
Literally “crocodile tears,” these exaggerated tear drops show the level of a character’s pain. Tears can appear in streams or fountains such as in this example.
Doll Anatomy
In most mainstream anime, nude characters have doll-like anatomy. That means you won’t see nipples, penises, or similar details. However, when combined with Censoring Steam and Light Rays of Censorship, doll anatomy seeks to entice by hinting toward something more. Doll anatomy seeks to place the audience’s focus on the character’s personality and emotions instead of appearance. You often see doll anatomy in important psychological scenes, suggesting the character’s vulnerability. The most famous is found within Neon Genesis Evangelion. Nudity can represent innocence or a more nature-focused character.
Draining Color
When a character turns white or gray, they are either depressed, shocked, or exhausted. They will freeze and not respond to other characters who appear to see the decoloration too. Often played for comedic effect. Also known as the Paper Cutout.
Dramatic Spotlight
When a spotlight illuminates a character out of nowhere, it seeks to capture the character’s melodrama. Commonly, the character will be in a fetal position, sorrowing over something. Often used for comedic effect.
Dull Eyes
Dull eyes show a character’s disappointment or unhappiness toward another character. Sometimes they signify a dead character. Dull eyes lack pupils and highlights. They can be confused with Empty Eyes. Some character designs lack pupils but use highlights. This is stylistic rather than a visual word.
Electric Lines
These come in two variations. When they appear alone, they show a realization or idea. This is sometimes called the Flash of Insight. When electric sparks between two characters, it denotes a rivalry or antithesis between them. Variations of the rivalry electricity have the background divided in half and vying against each other.
Empty Eyes
Empty eyes lack highlights. Empty eyes depend on situation. They can mean the character is dead, controlled, traumatized, blind, angry, or less commonly a prophet.
Eye Twinkle
Twinkling stars, hearts, or similar shapes express the love, desire, or attraction a character has toward something or someone. Often, you will see sparkling eyes when a character sees their favorite food or book.
Falling Washtub
This is the Japanese version of the American falling anvil. Used for comedic effect, it shows shock or a reaction to a bad joke or pun.
Floored
When characters collapse and fall to the floor, it’s usually because of a painful joke or pun or something else otherwise painfully dumb happening.
Freeze Frame
A frozen frame with a chalk or pastel texture seeks to freeze a dramatic moment or cliffhanger before fading to black or the next sequence.
Ghost
When a ghost pops out of a character’s mouth or nose, it means the character is unconscious or knocked for a loop. It can suggest a near-death experience, usually caused by a bad joke or other comedic event. As you can see, the ghost can be combined with other visual words like Draining Color.
Hummingbird
A character will sometimes flap their arms like a hummingbird. This shows agitation, impatience, and an overabundance of energy.
Gelatin Boobs
Anime women have unrealistic chest physics. Gravity doesn’t affect breasts as it should, causing them to bounce and jiggle like gelatin. Gelatin breasts often associate with women who are feeling self conscious. Confident buxom anime women don’t allow their breasts to move like gelatin; they direct them as weapons.
Kimono/Yukata
Kimono and yukata represent Japanese femininity. When an anime girl wears one around her romantic target, she wants to appear as an ideal woman. Many romantic anime use this as a critical scene. This can be seen as fan service.
This category includes tails. Animators will use hair to cover a woman’s nipples. Sometimes the hair appear glued in place. Characters are aware of this censorship.
Old Man Face
The old man face appears on characters who are trying to be serious or are feeling exhausted. Used for comedic effect and often with little children.
Orz
When a character collapses to their hands and knees in defeat, the pose is called Orz. The letter combination represents the pose. Sometimes combined with spotlight and other emotional words.
Perverted Little Man
Perverted men often appear as small, child-like characters in comedies. This most commonly involves old men. They feature simplified designs, often without hands or defining features, similar to chibi. They lack the enlarged head of chibi and appear immature.
Popping Vein
This cruciform will appear on the temple or forehead in most cases, but you will also see them on the backs of hands. The vein represents anger. Larger veins (or more numerous) denote the level of anger. Veins can pulse with the level of anger too. Faster pulses means the character’s rage is high–along with their blood pressure.
Pout
Also known as Puckered Lips or the 3 face, the pout presents a character’s discontent with a given situation. Older anime use a 3 shape to represent a pout. Modern anime often uses a curved line to represent a puffed cheek as opposed to puffing the lower lip.
Puffed Hair
Used for comedic effect, puffed hair appears after some short of explosion or electric shock. The event leading to the hair style won’t always be shown.
Scare-deer
The bamboo scare-deer denotes a critical moment in a characters life and the passage of time. It punctuates a character’s decision or an event.
Secondary Kiss
The secondary kiss involves a character eating or drinking after another. It acts as a step toward an actual kiss between characters.
Short Skirts
Short Skirts represent seriousness and getting down to business. The association comes from Sailor Moon and other capable, short skirt wearing characters.
Sideburns
A relic of older anime, sideburns associate with male power and capabilities. They used to mark important male characters.
Sigh
This is a visible burst of stylized air used to show a character sighing from exasperation.
Snot Bubble
A bubble of snot coming out of a character’s nose represent sleep. When it pops, the character wakes.
Speed Lines
Used to represent high speed motion, speed lines appear in backgrounds and around characters. Speed lines occupy static characters or used to compliment fast fight scenes.
Spiral Eyes
Characters with spiral eyes have been overwhelmed by something or otherwise knocked unconscious.
Sweat Drop
The Sweat Drop represents worry or exasperation. It increases in size as the character’s emotions increase.
Thigh Show Off
The area of a lady’s upper thighs becomes attractive when she wears a short skirt and thigh high socks. Camera pans over a character can dwell on this. It happens to female characters of all personality types. This is a version of fan service.
Tiny Dot Eyes
Tiny Dot Eyes show a character’s fear. This is a stylized version pupils constricting from fright. These characters can also feel overwhelmed or confused.
Anime’s visual language expands beyond the words I cover here. The visual language varies from series to series, but all the words build off of anime’s simplified drawing style. The simplified style gives animators more freedom to play with visual language where more naturalism would not. The exaggeration of emotions allows anime to cross cultural boundaries. Anime’s visual language builds on common human expressions and behavior.
thank you so much for this!! 😀 I’m a rlly young artist who finally learned how to make good-ish manga-style art (similar to doggie_0117’s art if you heard of them) and this helps a lot!! I want to make more manga-like art and maybe manga itself ^^ I was misusing some of this stuff, so thanks for this, really informative! all I’ll have to do is make custom onomatopoeia and my studying will be complete 😀
thank you so much for this!! 😀 I’m a rlly young artist who finally learned how to make good-ish manga-style art (similar to doggie_0117’s art if you heard of them) and this helps a lot!! I want to make more manga-like art and maybe manga itself ^^ I was misusing some of this stuff, so thanks for this, really informative! all I’ll have to do is make custom onomatopoeia and my studying will be complete 😀
I’m glad you found this helpful! Good luck with your art and future manga project!
ReLife mentioned. Me Like
Really informative piece – Thank you!
So cool that you came back to this even 8 years later, and this supplements it greatly! I love the details and style.
Anime’s visual language is often changing as authors develop new methods to show emotions and character thoughts.