So in today’s post, I’ll be revisiting manga tropes, with an emphasis on the tropes that are, shall we say, a bit fuzzier around the edges.

Trope #6 Shock lines

I mentioned shock lines only very briefly in my last post about manga tropes, so let’s start by taking another look at it.

Shock lines are vertical lines that, most commonly, cover the top half of a character’s face. Sometimes these lines cover just one eye, and occasionally appear even in the background. They’ve also got this bluish tint, although you usually don’t get to see this since most manga is in black and white.

Shock lines, of course, indicate shock – both the emotional sort as well as the physical, as demonstrated by Edward Elric having his new automail attached. Shock lines turn up in all sorts of other situations too, though. Just take a look at the following image, for example: there’s pure, unadulterated fear; hopeless despair; and even sheepish embarrassment.

Trope #7 Hurtful words

In the world of manga, sharp, hurtful words can literally cut you like a knife. You’ll usually see this trope in the form of an arrow that stabs someone right through the heart. So much for sticks and stones, right?

Manga artists have really had a field day with this one, and I’ve seen lots of variations of this particular trope. Hurtful words can take the form of a rock that appears out of nowhere and falls on someone’s head, for example… or, like the poor guy in the image below, each insult manifests as a bodily blow.

Trope #8 Giving up the ghost

Giving up the ghost means exactly that: someone is so close to death that his spirit has started to leave his body. It’s really common to see the bruised and bloodied loser of a fight giving up the ghost, although the cause could be anything from overwork to hypothermia. Also, as you’ll see in the following image, someone’s soul can be as detailed, or not, as the mangaka wants it to be.

The thing to note about this trope is that the person giving up the ghost is not dead. Not yet, at least – so sometimes you’ll see a character grab hold of the soul to prevent it from going into the light, as it were. In any case, by the next scene, the dying person is usually back to normal. Some manga artists take advantage of the temporariness of this trope to use it in a more figurative sense as well, like dying from disappointment.

Trope #9 Hitodama

Speaking of ghosts and spirits, manga artists rely on hitodama to indicate the presence of something… otherworldly. These floating balls of fire are, strictly speaking, actual human souls that have separated from the body, but manga artists just use them for anything supernatural. The demon wolves Hakubi and Madarao, for example, always seem to have one or two hitodama hanging around.

Hitodama aren’t just for ghosts and ghouls, though. They’re sometimes also used to play up how creepily ghost-like or witch-like someone is, which I guess isn’t too far a stretch from its original meaning. But I’m not really sure why they appear when someone is just feeling depressed or sad, like in the following image:

Trope #10 Tears

Now manga-style tears are pretty unambiguous and unmistakeable, but they appear so frequently I just have to mention them as well. When a manga character cries, these really huge pools of tears form in his eyes, or the tears stream down his face like a waterfall. Or, if a character is especially unhappy, he might even cry tears of blood.

The neat thing about manga-style tears is that they are actually possible in real life. I kid you not. You just have to be, you know, in outer space or something.

So, what’s your take on these ambiguous manga tropes? In what other situations have you seen them being used? And did you already know about the crying in space thing? Let us know in the comments!

All manga examples, once again, shamelessly lifted off manga aggregation sites.

These days I’m nowhere near as hooked on comics as I used to be. I just outgrew them, I guess… plus high school exam hell happened. In any case, although I loved both American comics and Japanese manga equally, I found and still find the differences between them quite remarkable.

Marvel and DC Comics, for example, seem to deal exclusively with the superhero versus supervillain formula, whereas manga has almost too many genres to count. The art style is very different, and so is the humor, especially the many tropes used in manga – and god were they confusing at the start. Bloody noses? Snot bubbles? What?

Funny thing is, once you’ve seen a trope often enough, you’ll just “get” what it means – and that’s a great feeling, like being let in on an inside joke. So for those of you that haven’t “got” it yet, read on to find out more about some common manga tropes. For those that have already “got” it, well, do come along for the ride anyway.

Trope #1 Nosebleeds

A nosebleed, in the wonderful world of manga, equates to sexual arousal.

I saw this trope for the first time in Dragonball, when Bulma lifts her dress and the lecherous Master Roshi spurts blood from his nose. Although Bulma was commando at the time, nosebleeds can be triggered by seeing something as mild as a pair of panties. In the case of the boy in the following image, it seems his bloody nose was triggered more by a fetish for swimsuits rather than the girl wearing them:

Clearly, horn dogs don’t spontaneously get nosebleeds in real life. So why is it so in manga? I think it’s generally accepted that a rush of blood to the head and the resulting nosebleed is a visual metaphor for blood rushing to, er, somewhere else – which probably explains why I’ve only ever seen guys get nosebleeds, although I could be wrong about that.

Trope #2 Sweat drops

Sweat drops are usually an “Oh shit I’m in trouble!” reaction, although they can also appear when someone is embarrassed or frustrated. Someone might have one gigantic sweat drop or multiple smaller ones, and they almost always seem to be on or near the head.

Now this particular trope is fairly easy to understand, and I think translates into English pretty well. Breaking into a cold sweat is normal if you’re nervous about getting into trouble.

Trope #3 Snot bubble

Snot bubbles are a particular favorite of mine. They’re sort of cute if kind of gross, and are used to show when someone is sleeping.

The first time I saw a snot bubble was in Doraemon, in one of the many scenes where the lazy Nobita was asleep. Sometimes you’ll see snot bubbles in anime too, where they gently inflate and deflate as someone breathes, or disappear with a pop when that person wakes. Unlike nosebleeds, snot bubbles seem to happen to both guys and girls.

Of course, the link between an impossibly large snot bubble and sleep makes no sense at all. The Western equivalent “Zzzz” doesn’t really make any sense either. I guess it all boils down to the difficulty that comic artists have when trying to depict someone who’s asleep, versus someone who just has their eyes closed – they had to make something up, and Japanese mangakas just happened to settle on snot bubbles.

Trope #4 Popping veins

Ever been so mightily pissed off you could feel a vein in your temple throb? This trope basically takes that and makes it larger than life – just the right size for manga, in other words.

The accepted format for popping veins is a cross-shaped squiggle, and you’ll usually find it on someone’s forehead. However, since the squiggle just by itself is enough to indicate anger, they can be in any size and even appear almost anywhere. In the image below, for example, you’ll see some popping veins in Inuyasha’s hair and even in Watanuki’s speech bubble.

It’s also really common to combine the squiggle with another emotion. Do you want to show that a waitress, despite her polite smile, is annoyed at a customer? Give her a popping vein or two! Or, as in the image below, a character can be sad and angry at the same time:

Trope #5 Faceplant

The faceplant is usually in response to hearing so something unbelievably shocking or absurd that the character falls flat on his face, arms and legs in a flailing mess. Sometimes there’s even a puff of dust to exaggerate just how hard they hit the floor.

The mangaka may even just imply a faceplant. The girl in the image above, whose crush is transferring, is a particularly nice example. Just look at her hair blown back to show how fast she’s heading for the floor! Arms straight out and ready not to break her fall.

Now the faceplant just looks and sounds ridiculous at first glance, but I think it actually does sort of make sense. To me it seems like a natural evolution from facepalm to headdesk to faceplant, one more extreme than the other… like Pokemon! And of course in English you can be floored with shock.

Trope #6 to … ?

The tropes I’ve covered in some detail make up just a fraction of what’s out there. There are loads more, like shock lines, giving up the ghost, a robber with a headscarf tied under his nose… the list goes on and on.

The sheer number of manga tropes available means cataloguing them all is going to be darn near impossible, especially in just one blog post. I’ve covered what I think are the most common ones, but which other tropes do you think crop up frequently? Have you come across any that just boggled your mind? Are there any tropes you particularly like or dislike? Let us know in the comments!

※ All manga examples shamelessly lifted off manga aggregation sites.