Face fault

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A face fault is an anime-specific property of cartoon physics, usually limited to comedy anime. It can also mean any exaggerated facial expression that breaks the normal character design. They are the equivalent of wild takes which are seen in many American cartoons, many coming from cartoons from Disney, Warner Bros. and MGM. Please note that some of the following examples' meanings may differ depending on the usage by the artist or studio responsible for a work. In the Japanese language, a joke or story is said to "slip" (suberu) if at any point it fails to keep up with comedic timing or the joke is seen as unfunny. Therefore, the origin of the actual facefault, the specific action of falling on one's face or back, is likely a literal expression of the slipping (failing) joke, resulting in characters manifesting the metaphorical use of the word literally and physically.

[edit] Common face faults

• Facefault (spelled as one word): A character falling over (usually flat on their face or back, sometimes with their legs sticking up in the air as the only part of them visible on-screen) with a loud thud or crash from another character saying something anticlimactic or stupid. This is one of the most common and best-known variations of the face fault. This is the most common facefault in the Pokémon anime, and was frequently used in the various DragonBall series. The anime Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo's main female character Beauty has on a few occasions overexaggerated this by falling (head first) from the top left side of the screen and landing in the bottom right as if thrown or launched from an offscreen cannon.

• 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 insane action or spoken line. Less frequently indicated nervousness, especially when a character is asked a question (s)he doesn't want to answer. The sweat drop generally forms above the head and slides down until it largely overlaps the head. It is also one of the best-known and one of the most common of all facefaults.

• Multiple smaller sweatdrops: May indicate nervousness or fear.

• Nosebleeds: Indicates lust (based on a Japanese wives' tale that a boy would get a nosebleed if he stared at a pretty girl), or seeing someone nude. On rare occasions, it can be reversed to a girl getting a nosebleed (Yukihiro Ayaka from Mahou Sensei Negima! has bled on a few occasions that involve Negi).

• Blushing of the cheeks or a red bar across the nose: Indicates embarrassment, love, or drunkenness.

• A blue or purple blush (or bar): Indicates fear.
  • More rarely, it can indicate illness, nausea, or depression.

• Pulsating crossed forehead veins: Indicates anger, rage or irritation.
  • If viewed from behind, veins can be viewed through hair, no matter how thick. It may also appear on the fist as well.

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

• U-shaped closed eyes: When rightside-up, can often indicate calm, exasperation, shame, or irritation. When upside-down, it indicates joy, nervousness, or pride, but sometimes also indicates irritation. For some characters, especially in Pokemon, a character's pupil may form this shape instead of their whole eye, basically because they are normally incapable of blinking. The shape can also be overexaggerated depending on the level of their emotion.

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

• Normal eyes replaced with circular white eyes (usually with a black outline), or two small dots: Indicates surprise, shock, vacancy, a lack of intelligence or an instance where the character is "struck dumb". It can also mean extreme pain (often featured in One Piece and Naruto).

• Little twinkling stars appear around the character's face. Usually indicates idealism, often about a girl. (Sometimes featured in Trigun.)

• Rivers of tears underneath the eyes indicate comedic anguish or discontent.
  • Balls of tears have also been used for the same purpose, either with large balls hanging on a string below the eyes, or as small balls just below the tear ducts.

• Horizontal lines sitting on the top of simplified pupils would indicate an unimpressed character. It is a look also accompanied by sarcasm or stating enlightening information to otherwise oblivious characters. Body posture is often slouched by the character in question.

• Lumps of flesh growing humorously on a character's head if he/she has been hit in the head.
  • Occasionally, when a character is hit in the head more than once, however many extra times the character was hit will appear as small lumps on top of the large one.

• 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 their 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, which then crumbles or blows away: Indicates 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, it will mean that another character is singing badly.

• General area around a character starts to snow, sometimes building up on and around them.
  • Someone has said something that is not funny.
  • The character has been shunned or ignored (the joke being that they have been treated coldly).

• Character turns much smaller and cartoonish, looking like a doll; this is called "super deformed".
  • 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 head), indicates the situation is only for comical effects.

• The character's upper face (from the eyes up) is blacked out. This shadow usually indicates serious sadness or shyness. It is sometimes used for character's in the background or for grunts, thugs and soldiers to indicate a generic extra.
  • Hair can be used for the same purpose and may be accompanied with the shadow. However, without the shadow, hair slightly covers the face but no eyes are visible behind it, where they should be. (Nodoka Miyazaki from Negima is commonly seen this way and is considered a hairstyle: On side views, only one eye is made out before the hair cover-up begins.)
  • Hats or other head wear can be used for the same purpose and may be accompanied with the shadow.
  • On rare occasions, the eyes will be shown with the shadow, indicating a grim resolve. This is also seen in Pokemon with the Team Rocket grunts.
• 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 arms with hands closed in fists, and is shown as multiple flesh-colored balls with motion lines and no arms: Indicates irritation, impatience, confusion or loss of control, or occasionally, running away from something or someone. Many times this one is shown full-body, with the same effect happening for his or her legs.

• When the characters hear something very interesting or shocking behind their back, their ear instantly becomes much bigger and moves. A variation of this one appears in Slam Dunk, in which lead character Hanamichi Sakuragi sometimes folds his ears closed when he does not want to hear what others are saying.

• Short vertical red lines appear or flash above the character's head before disappearing, indicating that something has caught the characters attention or understanding.

• Thin vertical blue lines appear over the character's forehead or back of head, often accompanied with a dark blue "aura": Indicates that the character is ashamed, guilty, afraid or depressed. (Commonly occurring in Ouran High School Host Club)

• When a white cloud-like puff flies out of a character's mouth and disappears: Indicates a sigh of exasperation, grudging acceptance, relief, boredom, or disappointment.

• Character's head becomes giant as it screams their anger at somebody else.
  • Two character's heads may take turns in alternating between a "giant head" and a normal head as they are having an argument, each taking turns yelling at each other.

• 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 occasionally, eyes falling out.

• Pupils disappear, indicating shock, anger, or a bad pun. They may also disappear in times of extreme pain.

• When eating some spicy food, a character's face turns entirely red. The character's lips might turn swollen and red and the character occasionally breathes fire.

• Characters sometimes fly off into the distance and finally disappear as a star in the sky when defeated in a duel. This is a common running gag in the Pokémon series with Team Rocket, appearing also sometimes in Love Hina, and characters can be KO'd in this way in the Super Smash Bros. video game series. In-game, this is known as a "Star Finish" ("Star KO" in Melee).

• The character will knock another character into the air when something stupid is said. (Frequently seen in Ranma ½)

• Two rivals may glare at each other, and have lightning bolts cross the gap between their eyes.

• Spirals replacing the eyes indicate that the character is under hypnosis, using hypnosis, or subconsciously attracted towards something as though they were hypnotized. Alternatively, spiraled eyes could indicate that the character is unconscious, but usually after a more trivial or comedic fight rather than a major battle. (Frequently seen in Rurouni Kenshin) These are also used if the character is dizzy. Spiraled eyes are often accompanied by a completely white, banana-shaped mouth with equally white drool dripping down one corner.

• Hearts replacing the eyes while the character clasps their hands is a sign that the character is attracted to someone.

• The screen colors being inverted generally represents moments of unexpected pain, such when someone is shot or hit with a knife. This effect can also be used to express extreme shock.

• When mocking or imitating another character, a character's face can actually morph into the face of the indivdual that they are mocking/imitating.

• A large spherical bump of skin with black dots shows up on the head (through the hair, in this case) or another part of the body if it gets hit (the black dots representing skin pores). Sometimes a crossed patch may appear on top of it.

• A large bubble coming out of the nose of the character indicates sleep (from boredom or exhaustion for example). Often the bubble will suddenly pop with a loud snap if the character is awoken. Female characters are almost never shown with nose bubbles.

• Eyes in which the pupils and irises disappear could either indicate shock, blindness, or lack of consciousness (often when being mind-controlled).

• A little white spirit coming out from the mouth of the character when it passed out or it is too terrified from a situation.

• Character may be struck by an arrow for every negative comment regarding the character mentioned. Usually multiple arrows, as another character lists negative points one by one (thus, one arrow after another) about the face-faulting character.

[edit] 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:

• Action scenes (more prominently those that focus in a single character) have for background a dynamic set of parallel lines, all of the same color hue and drawn in the direction the character is going to (if they are facing forward though, these lines are vertical).
• The background of a romantic scene or the introduction of a beautiful and attractive character may be a motif of flowers or a translucent scene with twinkling lights (sometimes also containing bubbles).
• 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 on its sounding like a-ho which means stupid) accompanying a bad joke or embarrassment. This gag very similar to the Western "cricket chirping" gag, being used for the same types of scenarios where they are basically identical save the animal used. (this is a running gag in certain episodes of Naruto)
• 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. (see Menchi from Excel Saga) Alternatively, this same effect is often used for dramatic (and specifically not for intended comedic) effect to illustrate a character's introspection and inner monologue. Often an inner monologue spotlight will gradually lighten back to the real world with the character in question remaining unchanged, and their surroundings returning to their consciousness.
• A kyokujitsuki war flag appears behind the character when they feel extremely and unreasonably proud or determined, complete with them standing on a heroic pose. It usually has a trumpet sounding in triumph as background music.
  • Alternatively, they might be standing near a sea with giant powerful waves.
• Hitodama appear floating near the character when they feel depressed or scares other characters with their dark attitude.
• Very anguished character falls down in a very dark void with other objects circling them.

[edit] Anime without face fault

Although face fault is very common in anime, it is not uncommon for drama anime series to abandon the use of face faults, examples of such include Gundam Wing, Gundam Seed, Blood+, Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu and many others.

Some series with a more serious tone, such as Death Note use face faults only in extremely unusual situations, and generally only for childish characters. Less exaggerated effects like a character's face becoming shadowed in broad daylight are sometimes used even in serious situations.