Manga iconography

• 1. Introduction

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  In 2010, a bright red symbol was added to the Unicode standard under the plain name "anger symbol". Its code is U+1F4A2. The picture behind it comes from Japanese manga, where a mark shaped like a cross on a character's head tells the reader that a temper has just snapped. Manga iconography is the name for this shared visual vocabulary of marks, shapes, and patterns that show what characters feel inside. A reader who has never opened a manga can find it baffling. Why would a character's eyes turn into spirals? Why does a bead of sweat appear on someone who is not even warm? Where did those enormous shining eyes come from, and what do they have to do with attraction? And how does a silent printed page make a reader hear a shout?

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• 2. Line, Panel, Page

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  Manga pages run from right to left, matching traditional Japanese writing, and the panels on them are read in the same direction. Artists often put the weight on line rather than on form. Storytelling and panel placement also differ from Western comics. Backgrounds are frequently impressionistic. Some sequences give an entire panel to details of the setting instead of the characters standing in it.

  Four series did the most to carry these habits to Western readers: Akira, Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, and Ranma ½. Even so, not every manga artist follows the conventions those series made famous. The style has also crossed over into anime. Many manga are adapted into television shows and films, and some well-known animation studios were founded by manga artists.

  Inside the panels, the most distinctive effects come from a handful of specific techniques, and the first of them starts with a material that artists literally stick onto the page.

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• 3. Screentone and Speech

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  Screentone is a transparent adhesive sheet printed with a distinctive pattern, and artists cut it out and overlay it on a panel. Dots and hatching are the typical patterns. Other sheets show stars, explosions, cityscapes, schoolyards, or natural landscapes. They add shading and detail that would be time-consuming or unfeasible to draw by hand. Computer-generated equivalents are increasingly replacing the physical sheets.

  The border of a speech bubble carries feeling too. An explosion-shaped bubble suits shouting or an angry exclamation, and the pattern or style of the border shifts with the tone of the words inside. For ordinary speech, manga mostly follows the Western convention of a solid arc extending from the character's head. Thought is shown with several small circles in place of that arc. Manga sometimes uses the thought style for whispered dialogue.

  Some overlays never come from a store at all, because artists sometimes borrow them from their own earlier pages.

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• 4. Backgrounds That Feel

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  Neatly ruled speed lines often overlay the background of an action sequence to show which way something is moving. Artists can also apply them to a character, especially to the limbs, to stress the motion of the body. Blurred backgrounds in this style extend into most action-based anime. Converging lines emphasize focus, as if a camera were dollying quickly toward the subject.

  A mini flashback reuses a segment of an earlier chapter, sometimes only a single panel, edited into the current story. A darker tone overlay separates the memory from present events. When a character's whole life flashes across the mind, a splash page may use a background made entirely of segments from earlier chapters.

  Elaborate hatching in the background can strengthen the mood of the plot or reveal a character's state of mind. Speed lines, freed from motion, can dramatize determination, high spirits, or a combative mood. Dense gauze, or cross-hatched patches and contours, suggest something mysterious and ominous. Thinly dotted screentone, or tone filled with hearts, animal shapes, or spirals, signals a fun, jubilant mood. A pitch-black background calls for seriousness.

  In the foreground, the eyes on those faces have a long history of their own.

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• 5. The Big Eyes

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  Large eyes became a permanent fixture of manga in the early 20th century, and they came from shōjo magazines aimed at teenage girls. Illustrators Yumeji Takehisa, Jun'ichi Nakahara, and Kashō Takabatake drew female characters with big eyes for those pages. The visual conventions of shōjo manga were heavily shaped by that magazine illustration.

  Inside the eyes, artists exaggerate the transparent feeling of the pupil and the small glints of reflected light in the corners, whatever the lighting around the character. Only living characters get these glints. When a character dies, the eyes keep the iris color but turn darker. The same effect can mark a character who has gone emotionless because of trauma, or who has lost control to possession by a ghost, demon, zombie, or magic. If hair covers part of a face, the hidden eyes are often outlined so they stay visible.

  The shape of the eye works like a word. Love-hearts and doe-eyes indicate infatuation, and stars indicate a character who is star-struck. Spirals mean dizziness or overwhelming confusion. Flames, or wide empty semicircles, mean anger or a thirst for revenge. An "X X" can stand for a character who is dead, unconscious, or stunned, used comically or as a euphemism. One large "X" across both eyes means furious crying, or death played for laughs. A pair of "> <" covers nervousness, embarrassment, or excitement, and pupil-less eyes with glints suggest delirium.

  Extreme excitement is drawn with eyes that grow huge and perfectly round, with tiny pupils, no iris, and a reach beyond the face. The mouth often becomes a stretched semicircle whose point extends past the chin. Two thick half-circles instead give a cute, delighted look.

  Size and shape can also stand for personality. Bigger eyes usually symbolize beauty, innocence, or purity, while smaller, narrower eyes typically represent coldness or evil. Completely blackened eyes indicate a vengeful personality or deep anger, or a wise-guy type when paired with a grin. A character's eyes are shadowed regardless of the room's lighting when the character is angry, upset, ill, or emotionally hurt. And when bubbles gather in the corners of a child's or a female character's eyes, tears are about to fall.

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• 6. Small Faces, Big Feelings

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  Characters in manga usually have small noses, tiny mouths, and flat faces, with female characters given larger eyes than male ones. The art itself can be realistic or cartoonish. Psychological and social research on facial attractiveness has found that childlike, neotenous features increase attractiveness. Manga artists often play on this to make their protagonists appealing.

  Character design can push the effect further. An artist or animator may build a character around youthfulness, either physical, such as a younger age or pigtails, or emotional, such as a naive outlook or a childlike personality. Another route is a sympathetic weakness the character works hard to correct and never fully overcomes, such as extreme clumsiness or a life-threatening disease.

  A mouth is often a single line. A fang peeking from the corner of the lips indicates mischief or feistiness, unless the character has fangs anyway. A cat mouth, shaped like a number "3" rotated 90 degrees clockwise, usually with larger eyes, signals the same. The notable exception is Konata Izumi from Lucky Star, whose usual mouth is exactly that shape.

  Noses shrink to a brief L-shaped mark. On a female character facing forward, the nose can disappear completely, and in profile it is often a small button of a triangle. A nosebleed indicates excitement after stimulating imagery or a stimulating situation, and it is based on a Japanese old wives' tale. A balloon dangling from one nostril, the snot bubble, indicates sleep.

  Beads of sweat on the brow or forehead are among the most common marks, and they stand for embarrassment, exasperation, confusion, dismay, and shock, none of which usually makes anyone sweat. Real perspiration is shown by drops spread evenly over the body, sometimes on top of clothing or hair. A red cheek, or hatching on the cheek, represents blushing from romantic embarrassment, while oval blush dots show rosy cheeks. A scribble on the cheek, which indicates injury, can be mistaken for either. In moments of strong emotion such as sadness, a long blush may run through the nose.

  Face shape shifts with mood, from a round apple to a subtler carrot. Parallel vertical lines with dark shading over the head or under the eye represent mortification, fatigue, or horror, and wavy lines represent disgust. For frustration, young female characters in particular puff out their cheeks while delivering a line in a gruff voice, with an elongated "3" showing the puffed lips.

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• 7. Anatomy of Anger

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  The throbbing vein drawn as a hollow cross in the upper head region signals anger or irritation. Artists sometimes exaggerate it, and when a character faces away from the viewer, the mark sits on top of the hair. Each further throb means more anger. Older manga such as Doraemon used smoke puffs for anger instead of the vein insignia.

  Sparks literally fly between the eyes of two characters who are fighting or simply glaring at each other, and a lightning streak may even connect their eyes. Thick black lines around a character can indicate trembling from anger, shock, or astonishment. These lines usually come with a rigid pose or super deformed styling.

  Panic and comic rage share a pattern of motion. All the facial features shrink, the nose vanishes, the character may lift off the floor, and the limbs multiply as if moving very fast. That means panic. If the same drawing keeps larger facial features, it means comic rage or shock, and some versions add a yellow spark near the head.

  Exaggerated faces signify anger in several ways. Star-like eyes ringed with dark shading, set against a red and black background, imply comedic or understated rage. Other versions use blank circular eyes with slanted eyebrows, triangle eyes, a square jaw with sharp teeth, or burning eyes above gritted teeth.

  Quiet fury has its own marks. Twitching eyebrows or eyelids indicate anger or shock the character is holding back, and white eyes, a stern look, and a dark atmosphere imply barely concealed rage. In a louder scene, the panel turns red with speeding background effects while the angry character grows large and yells. Speed lines then appear when that character strikes the target in an exaggerated fashion.

  When one character sharply criticizes another or raises a sensitive topic, the word bubble itself can form an arrow that pierces the person being spoken to.

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• 8. Symbols Beyond the Face

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  An ellipsis floating over a character's head indicates silence, implying that something is going unsaid. A drooping head may indicate sorrow or depression, sometimes with lines drawn over the hunched figure or the eyes. Wavy lines combined with white circular eyes can imply embarrassment. Tear drops cascading from the eyes, or forming a twin fountain, indicate either intense joy or sadness.

  An odd white shape, often close to a mushroom, appears during an exhale to represent a sigh of awkward relief or depression. A wavy ghost drifting out of the mouth is a comical way to show depression, mortification, or a figurative death. It refers to the hitodama, a ghostly flame from Japanese tradition. Cherry blossoms indicate a sweet or beautiful moment, a reference to the idea of mono no aware. A flower blossom falling from its stem may indicate death or, more commonly, a loss of innocence.

  Unbound hair may represent freedom, while hair tied back may represent some form of literal, figurative, or emotional enslavement. Characters push their index fingers together when admitting a secret or telling the truth. A sleeping character may have a bubble coming out of the nose that inflates and deflates with each snore. This is usually done when the character falls asleep at an inappropriate moment, such as during class, at work, or in public. Sometimes a character who screams or is surprised strikes The Scream pose.

  Injuries have their own shorthand. A round swelling, sometimes drawn the size of a baseball, exaggerates a bump from an injury, and a white cross-shaped bandage denotes pain. In older manga such as Dragon Ball, eyes pop out to symbolize pain. A character who suddenly lands on the floor with limbs twisted overhead is a typically humorous reaction to something unexpected. Something cracking or shattering often signifies either death or a serious event.

  Strong shock or a severe psychological effect is shown by negative imagery or rapidly dilating eyes. Dark shading over the eyes, or leaving the eyes out while showing the face, suggests a silent or sullen disposition. Twinkling, star-like eyes with a smile signify excitement, and heart-shaped eyes imply immediate attraction to someone or something. A serious nosebleed, sometimes mimicking a waterfall, often indicates a romantic or infatuated reaction from a male character. Steam or smoke from the nose indicates arousal.

  Even color follows the code. A subdued character is colored in lighter tones and a flamboyant one in bright tones. Villains are often given darker tones, and colder characters get neutral black, white, or gray.

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