{"id":14789,"date":"2009-02-24T13:51:48","date_gmt":"2009-02-24T17:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/2009\/02\/24\/ask-john-whats-up-with-anime-characters-and-licking\/"},"modified":"2009-02-24T13:51:48","modified_gmt":"2009-02-24T17:51:48","slug":"ask-john-whats-up-with-anime-characters-and-licking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/ask-john-whats-up-with-anime-characters-and-licking\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask John: What&#8217;s Up With Anime characters and Licking?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Question:<\/strong><br \/>\nSo what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s up with anime characters and licking? Whether it&#8217;s in eager anticipation of something or licking the blood off their face or weapon, characters seem to love to do it. Why is it so prevalent?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<strong>Answer:<\/strong><br \/>\nFlexing the tongue is a very sensual visual image. Licking the lips demonstrates a provocative desire; a very tactile desire to touch and stimulate through primal means of either violence or sexuality. Running the tongue around the lips suggests kissing or other &#8220;oral stimulation.&#8221; Licking the blood from a blade is a near uncontrolled primal urge to &#8220;taste blood,&#8221; both literally and figuratively. Licking also requires very close, intimate contact. Licking another person&#8217;s face or body is an intimate, sensual act. When a villain licks the blood from a character&#8217;s face, it suggests that the villain has or desires a very close, personal, intimate contact and relationship &#8211; one that involves not just physical contact, but a deep seated connection involving parts (blood, the normally internal wet tongue) that don&#8217;t have the boundary of skin between them.<\/p>\n<p>Anime is fundamentally a means of visual expression, so visual imagery like licking and making use of the tongue serves as a highly effective and evocative visual symbol.  Just showing a tongue out, or a character using his or her tongue conveys more meaning in an instant than a several minute long monologue does. It&#8217;s a powerful image, which explains why it&#8217;s only used in select instances in which its symbolic strength is warranted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question: So what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s up with anime characters and licking? Whether it&#8217;s in eager anticipation of something or licking the blood off their face or weapon, characters seem to love to do it. Why is it so prevalent?<\/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-14789","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\/14789","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=14789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}