A Cup Angst / Literature

• The main character in Michelle Cunnah's chick-lit debut Thirty Two AA suffers from this.
• Accel World: It's revealed that for all her confidence and commanding presence, Kuroyukihime suffers this, especially when compared to the more well endowed Chiyuri. This is especially seen in the second OVA "Vacation" wherein she and Chiyuri are getting physical exams at school. This may stem from a belief that she only has protagonist Haruyuki's attention until someone better realizes what a catch he is and gives her competition. This is completely false as whatever other attributes she may lack, Kuroyukihime has Haru's complete and utter devotion as the whole package.
• And You Thought There Is Never a Girl Online?: This is a major sore point for Akane Segawa, aka Schwein, since she's the only girl in the group without impressive boobs. Ako and Kyou tease it's because Akane never followed proper nutrition and sleeping habits while growing up, but Akane retorts it didn't matter because she lacked the (genetic) material to craft the items they have.
• At the beginning of Are You Alone on Purpose? Alison feels inadequate next to her best friend Pauline, who's developed a lot faster than she has. She finally grows breasts by the end of the book.
• A major theme in Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.. Margaret and her friends are sixth graders who can't wait to grow breasts. They envy their classmate Laura Danker, who already has.
  "I must, I must, I must increase My Bust!" - chant by Margaret and her friends.
• Downplayed in Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest. Yue isn't usually bothered by her chest size, but when Shea foolishly starts bragging about having a bigger set of breasts, Yue turns to Hajime and point-blank asks him if he likes them bigger. Hajime wisely dodges the question.
• The less developed girls in The Babysitters Club, have this.
• In Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts, this is the main cause of romantic friction (and a major hindrance to their Relationship Upgrade) between Akihisa and Minami, as it never fails to instantly triggers her rather violent Tsundere nature. It doesn't help that her main romantic competitor is the well-endowed Mizuki.
  Mizuki: It really isn't as great as you think. You get these backaches and jogging's a total pain.
  Minami: That's what all you huge-boobers tell us!
• Being Able to Edit Skills in Another World, I Gained OP Waifus: When the party meets Rita, Cecil feels self-conscious regarding their respective chest sizes. Unbeknownst to her, Nagi likes her flat chest the most out of all the harem.
• The Belgariad: Ce'Nedra's petite figure becomes a practical concern when she creates a Jeanne d'Archétype image to lead an army. She ends up commissioning dress armor with extra cleavage so she'll be recognizable at a distance as a Queen, not someone's pageboy.
• In S.L. Viehl's Blade Dancer, Jory isn't sure why people are staring at her tits when she takes her shirt off to treat an injury, and compares herself unfavorably to full-blooded Jorenian women in that regard.
• Chivalry of a Failed Knight has a relative example. In the light novels, Stella (who is the type who would normally inspire this kind of angst in others) gets depressed when she lends her clothes to the even more well-endowed Sara (who finds them too tight in the chest).
• Jame in P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles of the Kencyrath is flat-chested and self-conscious about it. She's flat to the point of being mistaken for a boy all the time (being rather tomboyish doesn't help, of course). The master thief she's apprenticed to in the first book thinks she's a boy the whole time, even when she strips to the waist in front of him. After that, she gives up trying to tell him otherwise; granted, he's eccentric and has bad eyesight, but still. She also doesn't ever understand the crushes other characters have on her, convinced that there's nothing worth looking at in her. (One suspects she's rather blind to what she does have...)
• The Crosses-Boy's Counselor: Main character Dover quips at one point that his sister Carolyn is as flat-chested in the modern day as when she was 15 years old. Carolyn is not amused.
• Damned: Madison, who died before puberty, expresses jealousy of Babette's more developed body.
• Date A Live:
  • Kaguya Yamai is annoyed that her sister Yuzuru has larger breasts that her, even though they are twins.
  • The almost completely flat Nia Honjou tries to put the pay she was giving to Shido in her (nonexistent) cleavage for him to retrieve, but is utterly devastated when the check falls off her chest and to the floor.
• In The Devil is a Part-Timer!, Emi Yusa is flat-chested and gets jealous of Chiho for having big boobs despite being younger than her. At times, Emi tries to claim that she's proud of her flat chest because it provides better mobility on the battlefield and because it means her armor is cheaper, but she is not fooling anybody.
• Mile and Reina from Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life? both have this in spades. Reina keeps Mile nearby as much as possible in part because she makes her look bigger on several fronts. Both are crushed to find out a ten-year-old girl is bigger than both of them combined.
• Discworld
  • Magrat Garlick has been described several times as being a physical match for an ironing board with two peas on top of it. Although being flat is not her defining characteristic in terms of attractiveness (the author also makes note of hair which refuses to cooperate) she certainly does seem to be very self-conscious of it. Now imagine how she must have felt in Wyrd Sisters when, having stuffed her bra among other preparations, she takes a quick survey of her assets upon encountering Verence and finds that her stuffing has descended approximately to her waist. She also gets a feeling of not quite meeting the specs when she has to don the battle-armour of a previous, rather bigger, Queen of Lancre, and discovers there is an awful lot of empty air in between the breastplate and the chest it is there to protect.
  • Monstrous Regiment opens with Polly Perks being annoyed that, when doing a Sweet Polly Oliver, she didn't need to bind her breasts.
• Doctor Who Expanded Universe novels:
  • The Doctor's companion (later ex-companion and Adventurer Archaeologist) Bernice "Benny" Summerfield. One could probably draw quite a few conclusions about certain novel writers by counting up the number of times per book some of them have felt the need to mention her legendarily petite rack. Benny's creator, Paul Cornell, had a character describe her (in dialogue) as having "no tits".
  • Trix MacMillan, from the Eighth Doctor Adventures, is a less-prominent example, so to speak. Her breasts aren't big enough for her to have what you'd call cleavage. This only seems to bother her when she's feeling especially self-conscious, though. Also, she has some kind of sex-work-ish career in her Backstory, although that isn't necessarily saying a lot, at least in Real Life, and she manages to look glamorous and another character actually has nice things to say about her rack... but he Really Gets Around and has a 6'6" ex-girlfriend, so maybe he's not all that picky.
• Ex-Heroes: Sacrificial Lamb Banzai (a college freshman) laments how her fourteen-year-old sister has bigger breasts than she does. She does appreciate how it helps her Sweet Polly Oliver deception, though.
• Beth in The Fabulous Five series develops this after losing the role of Glinda in the school play to her rival Laura McCall, who is buxom.
• Louise from The Familiar of Zero. Saito has said there was "nothing" there, and considering almost every other female (especially Tiffania) in the show is extremely busty, Louise really gets aggravated over this. Violently aggravated. In episode 2 of the third series, Louise goes into an over-the-top extended rant denouncing large breasts. Except that immediately after coercing Saito, her Love Interest, into declaring his preference for small breasts over large ones, he is caught in a compromising position with Tabitha, who is even flatter than Louise. Resulting in a new insecurity for Louise, and of course more pain for Saito. It is later revealed that pure-blooded elves are naturally flat-chested. Luctiana gets slightly jealous of Tiffania for inheriting enormous boobs from her human father's side of the family.
• Averted in Michael Slade's Ghoul, in which Rika Hyde's flat chest doesn't stop her from playing up her onstage sexuality as a head-banging rock performer. Her lack of cleavage becomes plot-relevant when it gives away that a more buxom woman had impersonated her.
• Girl, Fifteen, Charming But Insane: This is practically the focal point.
• Misaki, the protagonist of Girls Kingdom, is kind of embarrassed about her 30A bust, which she specifically notes when she goes underwear shopping with Himeko.
• Aika Tsube/Tail Blue from Gonna Be the Twin-Tail!! has a Berserk Button in the form of her chest size. When an enemy mistakes her for a boy in drag, she flies to into an Unstoppable Rage and defeats him without even using any of her special attacks.
• In Good Luck! Ninomiya-kun Houjou Reika has small breasts and that gets particularly highlighted by Tsukimura Mayu's huge boobs. At one point, while wondering what's wrong with hers, Reika finds a solution worthy of a true ojou-sama: to make small breasts fashionable. The next episode's opening omake shows that through application of her huge wealth she has succeeded in making small breasts most desirable and big breasts a cause for humiliation; to the point that Mayu gets chased out of town for her breasts.
• Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World: Despite knowing that small breasts are common among the race of dwarfs she comes from, Sherry becomes seriously sensitive about her chest size after comparing herself to the women from other races at the slave merchant. Michio's fetish for big breasts doesn't help.
• In Haruka Nogizaka's Secret Purezza, Alice had a moment of this. A ping-pong ball had got caught in Haruka's cleavage. When it was finally out, Alice picked up the ball and dropped it onto what would be her cleavage if she weren't a grade-schooler (or at least having the body of one). Her sigh and expression of disappointment when the ball just fell to the floor...
• High School D×D: Given Issei's preference for big-breasted girls, Asia and Koneko tend to have huge complexes about being on the smaller size compared to Rias, Akeno, and the other members of the harem.
• Honor Harrington: Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore commented in one of the novels that due to prolong treatment extending the stages of life, not just lifespan itself, she didn't have anything like a bust until well into her 20s. Apparently this had been a sore point for her.
• How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse has Duff who, having the chest of a man, constantly suffers of this. Mostly Played for Laughs.
• Subverted in The Hunger Games. Haymitch throws an absolute fit when they want to give an unconscious Katniss breast implants to make her more appealing to the Capitol audience, and wins that particular battle. When she wakes up and finds out about it she's very relieved to have gotten to keep her (at that point almost non-existent, due to the fact that she's been in the Games and has lost a lot of weight) natural bosom.
• If Her Flag Breaks: Nanami is rather insecure about her flat chest, especially when compared to Akane, or even Tsumugi who has a rather large bust size despite being really short
• In Another World with My Smartphone: Elze Silhoueska is rather self-conscious about her appearance, especially since her (younger) twin sister Linze is notably bustier than she is. Princess Yumina as well; when some slimes that like to attach to small breasts immediately target her, she blows them away with her wind magic, and starts muttering "I'm still growing".
• INVADERS of the ROKUJYOUMA!?: Sanae and Theia, who are both rather flat-chested, are both jealous of Kiriha, who has the largest chest of all the girls. Theia is more so, since she is the smallest of all the girls chest-wise.
• In I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse, Satsuki gets defensive when Iris mocks her chest size, claiming that she's average sized (and she does appear to be decently endowed, judging by her appearance in a swimsuit).
• Hestia from Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? may be the youngest-looking and weakest of all goddesses but she is incredibly well-endowed, allowing her to invoke this trope and utterly embarrass her stronger and more confident peers like Freya or Loki (who is female in this universe but her chest is in no way indicative of that).
  • Tiona Hiryute, from the same series, is quite sensitive about her lack of endowment, especially since her twin sister Tione has no such lack.
• In I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level, about the only gripe Azusa has with her reincarnation as an immortal witch is her small chest, since being immortal means it won't grow any bigger.
• Jessica Darling frequently laments her "A-minus cup" chest.
• KonoSuba: Megumin, probably owing to her lack of nourishment due to growing up poor. Doesn't help that Yunyun and Arue have outgrown her despite being the same age.
• Kris Longknife frequently became depressed early in the series that she had nothing in the way of cleavage, especially as she seems to keep running into attractive women with greater endowments. She generally gets over it later, but still notices more endowed women with some envy. On the flipside, it means her Ninja Maid Abby can provide her with exploding falsies without making her look top-heavy. Inverted by her better-endowed frenemy Victoria Peterwald, who tells Kris she got off lucky: outside of their use in Distracted by the Sexy, which Vicky is a master of, her assets are actually a hindrance to her military career since they give her back problems and just get in the way while running.
• Yuna of Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear frequently laments her lack of breasts. Aside from constantly meeting much better endowed women in her job as an adventurer, it's just one of many things that cause people to think she's a lot younger than she really is and treat her like a kid.
• Maoyu: The Lady Knight gets pissed when someone mocks her small chest, and she can't help but feel that she doesn't... stack up to the Demon Queen.
• Middlesex: One of the concerns Calliope has while growing up is being totally flat-chested, at least until the truth about her intersex body is discovered.
• Lisbeth Salander in the first book in the Millennium Series. Because of her flat chest and the fact that she's short and skinny, she is often mistaken for a 14-year-old. Her legal guardian even uses this fact to his advantage when he drugs and rapes her. He claims no one will believe he raped her since her small cup-size means she's not a turn-on (yeah, he's a jerk). Lisbeth has gotten breast implants by the time of the second book, though.
• In Modern Magic Made Simple, when Koyomi learn that Yumiko Ichinose is actually the same age as her, she look at the latter's chest and sigh in envy.
• In Momo Kyun Sword, Karin and Toutetsu are both flat. Maron is not small, but in the Beach Episode, she compares herself unfavorably to the others.
• Not as pronounced as some examples, but Clary Fray from The Mortal Instruments, feels insecure when she compares herself to the more traditionally beautiful, busty/curvy Isabelle.
• My Mental Choices Are...: Furano, who is rather flat-chested, constantly wonders if her Love Interest Kanade likes large-breasted women.
• Hilda in Robert A. Heinlein's The Number of the Beast refers to her regrets at her lack of, er, development at many points, especially in comparison to stepdaughter Deety.
• In Stephen Manes' The Obnoxious Jerks George makes a crack about Leslie's IQ being bigger than her bra size before riding off.
  Frank: Actually you should be flattered. I told George the Lords never hang out with women whose IQ is bigger than their bra size.
  Leslie: Funny line. Yeah, real flattering, all right. My IQ could be thirty-three. My mother says there's nothing wrong with being flat, but I notice she doesn't have that problem.
• Ōkami-san gives us both the title Ryōko Ōkami as well as her best friend, Ringo Akai. Of course, they probably wouldn't be too concerned about it, if a certain Lemony Narrator didn't call frequent attention to the fact.
• Overlord has Shalltear Bloodfallen, who to complete her Elegant Gothic Lolita look (being designed by a pervert whow packed every last one of his fetishes into her), pads out the chest of her dress. After being resurrected, she was immensely distressed that her real size was on display.
  • One side-story has Ainz DM a role-playing game to get the Guardians to understand how humans think. Albedo goes for a Stone Wall fighter, Shalltear for a Magic Knight, and they immediately start sniping at each other for playing a self-satisfied character with big stats and nothing else/a fake who needs to use tricks to perform adequately. Amusingly, Shalltear and Albedo have the same dating history.
• Yuko, Sorata's younger sister in The Pet Girl of Sakurasou, goes through this while groping Mashiro and Nanami's breasts in episode 7. Jin tries to cheer her up by yelling that she'll get bigger in high school.
• In The Princess Diaries, Princess Mia's biggest insecurity about her appearance is her extreme lack of a chest — it was pointed out several times by Lana that she doesn't even need a training bra. Granted, by the end of the series she has B-cups.
• Rebuild World: Subverted. There is clear set-up for this when the flat Sheryl takes a bath with both Akira and Carol, and Akira falls asleep in Carol's large chest. But Sheryl can only think about how she can't be Bash Brothers with Akira like Carol can. Sheryl is an established Proud Beauty, after all, being an expert in the Honey Trap.
• Alua in The Reunion With Twelve Fascinating Goddesses hates being compared to her older sister, who's the bustiest character in the series. It doesn't help that Alua is identical to her sister when she was her age, except for this one point.
• Based on a True Story: Catalina, the teenaged protagonist of the Colombian novel later international franchise Sin Tetas No Hay Paraiso^note Without..."tatas"...there is no Paradise, is a dark play on this trope. Catalina's real reason for wanting a bigger chest is to catch a rich boyfriend who'll buy her luxuries and get her out of her poor neighborhood, like the ones her bustier friends have. The catch is that those "rich boyfriends" are drug dealers and traffickers. She tries to approach that "rich world" by becoming a prostitute, but her beginnings are harder because most of her potential clients prefer chicks with "more meat". She eventually gets a bust augmentation from a Back-Alley Doctor and marries a minor boss of a Cartel, but she's still under her pettanko complex, by that point she has lost her True Love and any chance of escape, and eventually the brutal reality of the shady world she has gotten into hits her hard. When she is forced to reverse her boob job in a Life-or-Limb Decision, it's become the last straw for her, so she arranges a Suicide by Hitman to end her suffering.
• Lina Inverse of Slayers, a very dangerous Black Magician Girl, also has a huge inferiority complex about her chest size. She's been known to Dragon Slave people who comment on it, despite the fact that her bust is small only compared to some other anime females. Although it's not really evident later, this was magnified in her first series traveling with an annoying overly busty sidekick (who showed it off to boot). While she's probably better endowed than almost everyone else on this page (a far more accurate description of her would not be to say that she's flat, but that her figure is unremarkable for her height, which is rather short—only 5'1"), Lina has had the bad luck of accumulating lots of overly busty female allies. Plus the youngest of the group, Amelia, already outmeasures her and is still filling out. So she thinks she's flatter than she actually is and if you tease her about it, she's liable to blow up your entire village with you as Ground Zero. In at least a few of the earlier OVA's she's drawn very flat, but does grow with the series to having at least some sort of chest. The artists seem to note that Lina really didn't have much to complain about in earlier season and decided to draw her flatter later, giving off the impression that her breasts SHRUNK as she got older.
• In So, I Can't Play H!, Lisara gets pissed that boys only seem to care about bust size, as she has the smallest chest of the main cast. In one scene, Ryousuke meets her mother and briefly mistakes her for Lisara, until he looks at her huge chest and says it couldn't possibly be her, causing Lisara to smack him. Ironically, Ilia, who often makes fun of Lisara's chest, is revealed to wear padding and is really even smaller than Lisara. Her own A-Cup Angst was what made her pad her chest.
• So I'm a Spider, So What?:
  • Ariel stopped maturing as a young teenager and is one of the flattest girls in the story. Hearing the well-endowed Shiraori whining about another demon's even larger bust irritates her enough that she decides to purge the "evil" by tearing Shiraori's breasts off.
  • Oka-chan has the smallest chest of everyone in the story as elves mature slower, but remains optimistic that she'll develop more in the future. Unfortunately for her, elves tend to have small chests.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, Brienne of Tarth, in addition to being riotously masculine all around, is flat to the point that she may as well not have breasts at all. Jaime once comments that she's like the Hound with teats — or would be, if she had any teats. She's not terribly concerned with her bust in general, but her flatness is part of the overall lack of femininity that often distresses her, as she is so often taunted and rejected for her appearance and knightly ambitions.
• Student Council's Discretion has a couple of gags along this line.
  • In the pilot episode, Ken tricks Kurimu (through Duck Season, Rabbit Season dialogue) into saying pettanko. After crying into her friend Chizuru's bigger chest for comfort, it only made her feel worse.
  • In the penultimate episode, Minatsu asks Kurimu, "President, where's the pettanko?" i.e. "Where's the flat (stamp)?" Trauma ensues.
• The "Extra Edition" OVA of Sword Art Online shows Silica feeling somewhat down about the fact that her other female friends (particularly Suguha and Lizbeth) have more generous busts than herself.
• Tales of the Pack: Lexie dislikes the fact that she has an A cup, hoping eventually her breasts will get bigger.
• Honoka from The Third: The Girl with the Blue Eye gets a lot of rib for her flat chest and unlady-like behavior.
• Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs: Marie's chest growth apparently got stunted due to her magic training, and it doesn't help that in her previous life she was better endowed. In side-stories taking place during the third volume, Marie angsts about her small chest, comparing herself to the much larger Olivia. In the Marie Route Alternate Timeline this is a bit more pronounced, with Marie sometimes getting angry at Leon for staring at Olivia's breasts, and lamenting that her over-straining herself learning healing magic prevented her body's development. She also talks about how I Was Quite a Looker in her previous life.
• Taiga Aisaka from Toradora! is sensitive about her flatness as well as her height, which ever-considerate Ryuuji tries to help her with. When swimming day is coming up at school, he uses his sewing skills to make her a pair of breast pads for her swimsuit, causing some of the boys to remark that the Palmtop Tiger has grown nicely over the summer. Unfortunately, one of the pads pops out underwater, and Hilarity Ensues. In a later episode, the boys are discussing how to use their voting power to make the cultural festival event involve sexy outfits for the girls, but when they propose Qipao, Ryuuji realizes that a figure-hugging dress would draw attention to Taiga's flatness and hurriedly suggests an alternative that would look more flattering on her.
• Whateley Universe:
  • Played with in the Ayla stories, where Ayla helps one person at powers testing get implants to fix this, and get the guy she likes. When one of her own close friends wants Gag Boobs to become a stripper... Ayla rejects that whole-heartedly.
  • Jade Sinclair (Generator) is closer to the flat girl who worries about her lack of size and maintains that childishness too. In fact, she still looks like she's about eleven.
  • The otherwise level-headed Jadis Diabolik quietly seethes with envy towards the likes of Fey and Majestic over the fact that she is only modestly endowed herself, despite being an Exemplar (a power that adjusts the mutant's body to fit their ideal self-image, which in women usually leads to the Most Common Superpower).
• Mari Ado from Woken Furies has this as a sore point. In his narration, Takeshi Kovacs notes that she's not actually that poorly endowed; she just has a complex about it.
• It's downplayed, but Taylor Hebert in Worm is somewhat self-conscious about being rather tall and flat-chested, especially in her civilian life. She wears her hair long specifically because she feels herself to be lacking other feminine features. At one point in her superhero battles, she gets stabbed in the breast and self-deprecatingly wonders how her opponent could hit such a small target.

---