Movies

A face fault is an anime-specific property of cartoon physics, usually limited to comedy anime. It can also mean any over-exaggerated facial expression that breaks the normal character design.

List of common face faults

• Facefault (spelled as one word): A character falling over (usually flat on their face) with a loud thud or crash from another character saying something anticlimatic or stupid. This is one of the most common and best-known variations of the face fault.

• A super deformed face, which normally includes the disappearance of the nose, the oversimplification of the eyes, and a mouth bearing a simple triangular shape showing either no teeth (red) or all teeth (white). This is often included with other forms of facefaults.

• Giant sweat drop: May indicate a response to a stupid or inane action or spoken line.

• Multiple smaller sweatdrops: May indicate nervousness or fear.

• Nosebleeds: Indicates lust.

• Blushing of the cheeks or bridge of the nose: Indicates embarrassment, or love.

• Pulsating crossed forehead veins: Indicates anger, or rage.
  • If viewed from behind, veins can be viewed through hair, no matter how thick.

• Large, shining eyes: Indicates "cute" excitement.

• Flames in eyes: Indicates immense passion, usually accompanied by scared characters in background

• Rivers of tears underneath the eyes indicate comedic anguish or discontent.

• Eyes shaped like half-moons with very tiny pupils:
  • Indicates a devilish intent, usually accompanied by a toothy grin, a flash on the corner of one of the eyes and sometimes the flat side of the eyes will form a V.
  • Indicates anger, usually the flat side of the eyes will form a V parallel to the eyebrows (if any).
  • The character is totally uninterested in the situation, usually accompanied by a flat small line as his/her mouth or simply having no mouth at all.

• The sudden appearance of vertical lines on the face, indicates embarrassment or speechlessness in response to some absurdity.

• Character does a The Scream pose, indicating fear or great anguish.

• Character turns into a cracked stone statue or a sand pillar (having part of the body being blown away), indicating great emotional shock.

• Character is frozen by ice can either indicate:
  • Someone just said something out of extreme stupidity.
  • One of the characters told a joke (usually an old pun) that is not funny anymore.
  • Occasionally, one of the characters singing is awfully bad.

• Character turns much smaller and cartoonish, looking like a doll; this is called "chibi" mode.
  • A body scaled as 4~5 times the height of the head indicates the situation is still similar to normal.
  • A body scaled as about 3 times the height of the head indicates the situation is greatly comical.
  • A body scaled as about 2 times the height of the head (the main body is equal to or smaller than the main body), indicates the situation is only for comical effects.

• Character becomes monochrome during states of extreme stress or shock.

• Character becomes a wavy paper doll and undulates, indicating shock or playful bliss.

• Character shakes his arms with her/his hands closed in fists, and they are shown as multiple flesh-colored balls with motion lines and no arms.

• When the character hears something very interesting or shocking behind his/her back, his ear instantly becomes much bigger and moves.

• Character's head becomes giant as it screams its anger at somebody else.

• Jaw drops all the way down to the floor. Another version of this is when the jaw is detached from the head and falls downs as a separate object after dangling. This is usually accompanied by buggy eyes or eyes falling out.

• Pupils disappear, indicating shock, anger, or a bad pun.

• When eating some very spicy food, the character's lips turn swollen and red and occasionally breathes fire.

• When nervously talking with someone, a character may push his/her index fingertips together.

• Characters sometimes fly off into the distance and finally disappear as a star in the sky when defeated in a duel.

This list is not comprehensive.

Effects accompanying a face fault

The background may change to suit the mood of the scene, usually disregarding the physical setting of the scene. For instance:

• The background of a romantic scene or the introduction of a beautiful and attractive character may be a motif of flowers.
• A scene where one character is in a rage may have a distorted, jagged background showing flames.
• A sudden gust of wind (and/or a loud crow flying in the background in a very straight line, the sound of the crow is a pun to its sounding like a-ho which means stupid) accompanying a bad joke or embarrassment.
• An expression of disbelief is commonly accompanied by a single-color background with prominent vertical black lines at the top of the frame.
• A lone spotlight shining on a character comically dramatizes despair.
• A Kyokujitsu-ki war flag appears behind the character when he feels extremely and unreasonably proud or determined.
  • Alternatively, he might be standing near a sea with giant powerful waves.
• Hitodama appear floating near the character when he feels depressed or scares other characters with his dark attitude.
• Very anguished character falls down in a very dark void with other objects circling him.