In anime, sometimes a spiral is drawn on a character's finger tip, typically on their index finger, when they point the finger toward the camera. This doesn't mean anything. It's just a simple way to draw the "fingerprint," shimon 指紋, of the finger.

• guruguru-shimon
  ぐるぐる指紋
  Swirling fingerprint.

In manga and anime, sometimes characters are drawn drooling. This can happen for various reasons:

• They're sleeping, dozing off, or bored.
• They're stupid.
• They're hungry for food, or lusting for something, someone.

• In Japanese
• Rendering
• Examples
  
  • Sleeping
    
    • Sleepy
  • Stupid
  • Hungry
  • Greed
  • Lewd

In Japanese, namida-me 涙目 means "tearful eyes," or "teary eyes." In manga and anime, eyes are sometimes drawn with tear drops on the corners, but those drops don't fall on the cheek, they simply hang in there.

In particular, although crying characters are typically actually sad and depressed, characters that just have a tear hanging from their eyes can have other emotions too, like being embarrassed, displeased, or angry.

• Examples

In manga and anime, sometimes characters are drawn with "watery eyes," uru-uru-me うるうる目, in which case the eyes may be drawn simplified as large and with multiple highlight spots.


Often, characters drawn with this sort of eye will be begging for something, so they're like "puppy dog eyes."

The word uru-uru うるうる is a reduplication of urumu 潤む, which means just "to be wet." See namida-me 涙目 for eyes that have tears on them, and nakigao 泣き顔 for characters actually crying.

• References

In manga and anime, sometimes a character's eyes are drawn simplified like a mess of concentric circles and swirling spirals when they're flustered.


A term for this is guri-guri-me グリグリ目, "spinning eyes." The mimetic word guriguri グリグリ can mean "to press against and make turning movements," for example, to press a crayon against the paper and make turn movements to draw this sort of eye.

For the larger, more distinct version of this eye, see guru-guru-me グルグル目, "spiral eyes."

• References

In manga and anime, sometimes a character's eyes are drawn simplified like horizontal parallel lines when they're relaxing, enjoying something or having fun. They're also drawn as parallel vertical lines sometimes.

• Terminology
• Examples
• References

In manga and anime, "circle eyes," maru-me ○目, are eyes drawn as white circles with black outlines, typically used when a character is overwhelmed, shocked, startled, or scared, but sometimes just a simple way to draw eyes when they're being silly.^{(tonbi.jp:〇目)}

Effectively, they're a simplified type of "white eyes," shirome 白目.

It's also spelled maru-me 丸目, and also called zero-me ○目, because they look like zeroes.

• Hair strands sticking out also symbolize being overwhelmed.

In manga and anime, "dot eyes," ten-me 点目, refers to eyes drawn as mere dots, which typically mean a character is surprised. In Japanese, dot eyes is also an expression that means a person (in real life) feels surprised.

• ・ᗜ・

This term applies only to small black dots representing the whole eye. Eyes drawn as vertical bars are called konsento-me コンセント目. Normal eyes with irises drawn as solid circles are called beta-me ベタ目. If the irises are drawn as small dots, that is, if the character has small irises, they may have sanpakugan 三白眼. If there are no irises, and the eyes are white circles with black outlines, they're called zero-me ○目, circle eyes.

• 目が点になる
• Examples
• References

In manga, beta-me ベタ目 are eyes drawn completely black, without highlight or distinct iris and pupil, or eyes draw in a single color other than black other than black, or eyes drawn without a highlight.

It's also spelled beta-me ベタ眼.


Basically, in manga beta ベタ means an area filled with black ink, but eyes drawn pure black in manga are sometimes drawn with highlights in close-up panels, or in anime adaptations, so the term is kind of vague.

• Examples
• References

In manga, tsuyabeta ツヤベタ, literally "glossy beta," refers black hair with highlights, or the technique used to render highlights on hair as well as other shiny, black things.

In manga and anime, kouka-haikei 効果背景, "effect backgrounds," are backgrounds which express some sort of effect, like representing the emotion that a character is feeling.

In manga, suname 砂目, "sand grain," is a type of "halftone" pattern typically used to render darker gradients on the background or grainy textures on things.


It's also known as "noise," noizu ノイズ. Technically, it's known stochastic screening, the word "stochastic" meaning "random," or FM screening, FM meaning frequency-modulated.

The non-random, amplitude-modulated, AM screening halftone is called amiten 網点, by the way.

• Examples

In manga, amiten 網点, literally "net of dots," or "web of points," means a type of "halftone," a "dot screen."

Halftone is a technique to change the tone of an area by using a pattern of dots of varying sizes and with varying spacing. For example, it allows you to print various shades of gray using only white and black.

Normally, you won't be able to actually SEE the dots—as in: tell them apart—because they'll be very small.

• Pattern
• See Also

In Japanese, beta ベタ can mean various things: plain, normal, uninteresting; clichéd; to fill a space completely, leaving no gaps; to fill an area with a solid color, typically black; a mimetic morpheme meaning "sticky;" and some other things.

• Meaning
  
  • Plain
    
    • "Cliché"
    • Contact Print
    • Solid Typesetting
  • "Completely"
    
    • Prefix
    • Black Ink
  • "Sticky"
  • Fish
• Greek Letter
• References

The "Greek letters," Girishia-moji ギリシア文字—like alpha, beta, gamma—have a bunch of international uses, some of which are loaned into Japan. For reference, here's how the Greek alphabet is commonly katakanized in Japanese:

• List
• Usage
  
  • Homonyms
  • Software Versions
  • Omegaverse
  • Word Play
    
    • Ψ難
    • π/
• References