{"id":121,"date":"2000-08-16T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2000-08-16T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/2000\/08\/16\/ask-john-whats-behind-giant-heads-in-anime\/"},"modified":"2000-08-16T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2000-08-16T14:00:00","slug":"ask-john-whats-behind-giant-heads-in-anime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/ask-john-whats-behind-giant-heads-in-anime\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask John: What&#8217;s Behind Giant Heads in Anime?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Question:<\/strong><br \/>\nIs there any significance to the way some characters seem to get more superdeformed in high-stress situations- i.e. Vash in episode 8 of Trigun spends about the first 3 or 4 minutes onscreen really pissed off, and he blows up at this kid, and suddenly his head gets huge.  What&#8217;s the deal?  Japanese comedic device or something deeper?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><strong>Answer:<\/strong><br \/>\nActually, what you&#8217;re referring to is exactly the opposite of &#8220;super deformed.&#8221;  SD is the phenomenon when anime characters suddenly shrink.  I&#8217;ve never come across an analysis or explanation of either the SD phenomena or the reverse, &#8220;giant head&#8221; characteristic that appears often in Slayers, Trigun, Rurouni Kenshin and other comedic anime series.  As an amateur guess, I&#8217;m inclined to say that the trait is used to lighten up and add comic relief to serious scenes, often to provide a foil to the darker, more serious tone these shows often take toward their conclusions.  By literally &#8220;blowing up,&#8221; it&#8217;s easy to not take a furious scolding seriously while, especially later in shows like Slayers and Trigun, when the stories get serious, you don&#8217;t see the &#8220;giant head&#8221; as much because the show wants viewers to now consider the characters seriously.  Because the characters, previously, have been so exaggerated, when they get furious without growing giant heads, it&#8217;s new to the viewer, and therefore has more impact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question: Is there any significance to the way some characters seem to get more superdeformed in high-stress situations- i.e. Vash in episode 8 of Trigun spends about the first 3 or 4 minutes onscreen really pissed off, and he blows up at this kid, and suddenly his head gets huge. What&#8217;s the deal? Japanese comedic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ask-john"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}