Ask John: Why Are Certain Anime Characters Teased About Their Appearance?

Question:
I was wondering why, in certain anime, when the main character or a supporting character are short, they have a major issue with any mention of their hieght?

Is there some context you can give for young girls in anime being teased about their foreheads? Sakura in Naruto gets teased about it by both Naruto and Sasuke. And recently on cable I’ve been watching Petite Princess Yucie and she gets teased mercilessly about her forehead, and her complaint seems to be that this stigmatizes her as a little kid when she is actually 17. What is the deal about foreheads in an anime context?

Answer:
Since both of these questions deal with physical attributes, I’d like to address them both simultaneously. I’m not certain that my answer is correct, but if I’m wrong, hopefully I’m not too far off the mark. I honestly believe that there’s actually not any significant mystery behind teasing about height or having an especially large forehead. Rather, I think that both situations primarily reflect a simple divergence from the norm.

Japanese citizens have much more physical uniformity than Westerners. Japanese people are also a bit shorter than Westerners, on average. Typical Japanese people have straight, black hair, dark colored eyes, and a similar height and physical build. With that sort of natural uniformity, natural differences from the standard are noticable. The Kabocha Wine and Love Com anime series both deal with unusually tall high school girls and their unusually short boyfriends. Jumbo in the Yotsuba manga gets his name because he’s exceptionally tall. In these cases, whether tall or short, the person who’s extraordinarly tall or short stands out.

Apparently a moderate sized forehead is widely considered a sign of beauty in Japan, and an especially large forehead is considered unattractive. A large forehead is the butt of jokes in anime including Naruto, Puchi Puri Yuushi, Yamamoto Yohko, Negima!?, and Paniponi Dash. Again, some of the ostracization may have to do with Japanese standards of beauty, but the bigger motivation for teasing may simply be a divergence from the ordinary. A similar example occurs in the Bleach anime. Ichigo is teased because his natural red hair isn’t black like “normal” Japanese hair.