Why do anime characters bleed? Classic anime cliches (Topic)

I am sure that when you watched anime, quite a few times you noticed different cliches in the anime, wandering from one series to another. And if some are understandable to us, for example, the colored hair of a schoolboy symbolizing that he is a bully; not tucked in shirt, stooped back and a backpack thrown back - he is an ordinary gouge. Some of the cliches in the anime, or as they are also called anime tropes, are incomprehensible. The most striking example: "Why do anime characters bleed from their nose?"

So why do anime characters have nosebleeds?

Most often, this way they show the sexual arousal of the hero. That being said, bloody noses (hanaji or "") are not just part of anime or manga. It was a fairy tale of old women [well, at least in Japan]. Quite a moralizing thing, which they tried to teach boys to look at girls: "Don't look, otherwise your nose will bleed." Consider this as our domestic analogue of the euphemism: “Don't eat sweets, otherwise your ass will stick together” and so on.

Over time, it has become part of pop culture in anime and manga. Such a memes, or a trope (although I like to call them cliches). Trails have appeared in popular culture in Japan for years, with varying nuances in anime and manga.

Manga artist Yasuji Tanioka is believed to have been the first to show such excitement in his early 1970s manga Yasuji no Mettameta Gaki Dou Kouza. Other manga artists liked this way of expressing feelings and began to copy it in their works. It was a great and quite stylish way to show the excitement of anime for kids. In America, for example, in "Tom and Jerry" or in "Looney Tunse" this was shown by the fact that the character's face turned into the face of a howling wolf.

I have also heard the theory that anime nosebleeds are often equated with spiritual orgasm. In some cases, this is not so much sexual arousal, but rather a breakthrough of feelings. Allegedly, the character's heart begins to beat so hard with feelings and distill blood that the hero "explodes" with a red stream from his nose. And the bigger it is, the more you show your feelings.

As difficult as it may be to guess, in reality this is not true. And although there is a direct link between sexual arousal and increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, this does not lead to nosebleeds.

At the same time, on the contrary, frequent bleeding, if you have one, does not mean that your level of otaku has reached the point that you are breaking the laws of biology or physics, no. Perhaps you have hemophilia ...

Other anime tropes. Bread in the mouth and ordinary schoolchildren

The first thing that interested me when I watched "K-On!" was how the hell Hirosawa was running with a piece of bread in his mouth. In fact, in Japan, few people do this, or rather, no one. In Japan itself, there are rather strange rules of etiquette, so they will not run around with a piece of bread there.

The point here is the intersection with another anime path, or rather with a cliched representation of an ordinary ordinary Japanese schoolboy. Often this is an ordinary teenager, of whom there are millions in the country. The more ordinary-looking the hero, the more likely he is closer to the audience and fully corresponds to the idea of reality.

But with an interesting character it's getting harder. He needs to be shown getting out of the crowd. And just to represent an unusual girl, perky and cool, they use a technique with a piece of bread in their mouth. This goes against the cultural norm, and therefore emphasizes the non-standard.

Clamshell phones

Another famous cliche in anime is the clamshell phone [although it is increasingly a thing of the past]. You may have noticed that in our age, when the entire globe uses smartphones, at least in anime, everyone is still using old clamshell phones.

Well, as we know, everyone in Japan is also actively using smartphones. However, for a long time, it was folding phones that were quite popular there. When smartphones were just coming into use in our country, in Japan, old flip phones had half the functions that modern gadgets have.

They could connect to the Internet, receive TV signals, had a good camera, touch screen. And since in the land of the rising sun they got used to modernizing technologies, clamshells stayed on the market longer and tried to compete. Again, this could not but affect the culture.

As for me, in modern anime, we increasingly stop seeing such phones. Remember only "Your Name" by Makoto Shinkai - absolutely all the characters use smartphones and this perfectly shows the realities of Japan.

On the other hand, the clamshell looks more aesthetically pleasing, or at least not intimidating. We live in a period when our whole life is in our smartphone, and quite often dependence on a smartphone is associated with slavery of the 21st century. But the old clamshell from the 2000s brings only a feeling of nostalgia.

There are also many other cliches in the anime, but they are somehow more understandable to us or are largely based on the archetypes of the characters. At least at least the top three weirdest anime tropes still lend themselves to logical explanation.

The Topic of Article: Why do anime characters bleed? Classic anime cliches.
Author: Jake Pinkman