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"Don't let them in, don't let them see
Be the good girl you always have to be
Conceal, don't feel, put on a show
Make one wrong move and everyone will know"
Elsa, Frozen (2013)

A common response to the stereotype of women as overly emotional, the Emotionless Girl is an enigmatic female character who appears to be entirely emotionless.

Whether she actually is emotionless depends on the story and often on her level of characterization. As seen in the page quote, it's common for one of these characters to have had to hide any signs of emotionality, often for fear of being disregarded and written off as a Hysterical Woman. Sometimes, however, she is simply The Spock or, in villainous examples, The Sociopath. This can also be Played for Laughs since characters of this archetype are typically male.

It is important to note that this is not simply a girl or woman who does not conform to the typically higher standard of emotional intelligence for females. This character goes beyond healthy management of emotion and enters a disturbing, perhaps even creepy realm of emotional numbness. Be on the lookout for another character making an "is she even human?" comment.

As emotions are a major part of social interaction, the emotionless girl is usually depicted as having No Social Skills, which often leads to her being isolated or even ostracized. Even when not physically isolated, she is very likely to be Alone in a Crowd, aloof from the rest of the group. The rare Emotionless Girl who can handle social interaction is usually depicted as a cool manipulator who, while unable to empathize in a normal manner, has learned through experience how to handle people. Expect these examples to almost invariably be The Sociopath. People who do not react in the expected manner can really confuse her.

If she's a teenager, there's a high likelihood that she's either a Goth, a Creepy Loner Girl, or both.

This is a female-specific subtrope of The Stoic. Sister-trope to Ice Queen and Defrosting Ice Queen. Often overlaps with The Hermit, The Quiet One, Robot Girl, The Cynic, or Tin Man. In comedies, tends to partake in either The Comically Serious or Deadpan Snarking. Quite often a Foil to a more Hot-Blooded partner to form a Red Oni, Blue Oni or Straight Man and Wise Guy pair. Contrast Sugar-and-Ice Personality, where the character is alternatingly warm and aloof.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: Eiai Nano's expression never changes beyond minor alterations for comedic effect; the first time she smiles even a little is in chapter 161. Blunt and cold, Nano is initially unconcerned with anything save for 'efficiency', forgoing companionship completely to spend all her time on schoolwork, to the extent that there are rumours around the school that she's an actual Robot Girl. When she initially falls for Rentarou, she attempts to repress it, but through a date he's able to prove to her that the time she spent with him matters to her, and she comes to consider the making of memories to be her primary goal, alongside efficiency. After this she's perfectly kind to Rentarou and the family, but she still retains a rather flippant attitude to obstacles; when sneaking into the Hanazono household, her initial suggestions for making their way past the pets both involve cold-blooded murder. (Each are rejected, of course.)
  • Ah... and Mm... Are All She Says: Tanaka used to be unable to smile, to the point that one of her friends made a bet with another that he could get her to laugh or cry before middle school graduation. He failed, though she does eventually become a much happier person.
  • Kanade Tachibana, the titular Angel of Angel Beats! is, at least on the surface, an example of this. She's quiet, and impassive seeming even when dishing out violence or receiving grievous injury. She has emotions, but she rarely shows them.
  • Attack on Titan:
    • Annie Leonhart. It's not that she lacks emotions, it's just that she doesn't care about the world around her. When Armin (correctly) suggests that she's the female Titan, however, she smiles, and it is rather unsettling, to say the least.
    • Mikasa cares about others, but usually acts aloof. She really is emotional, but has issues with showing her emotions.
  • Kazuo Kiriyama from the Battle Royale manga is an Emotionless Boy. He was rendered incapable of emotion when he was brain-damaged at the age of six (since birth in the original novel) and is described in-story as a sociopath. Add to this his phenomenal analytical ability and intelligence and you've got a very tough match-up.
  • Reincarnated Griffith from Berserk is a rare male example. Lacking empathy, Griffith shows no emotion, sans a soft smile that is meant to be more unsettling than endearing.
  • R. Dorothy Waynewright from The Big O. She's an actual Robot Girl. On at least one occasion, she expresses relief on never being programmed with emotions, although arguably she didn't need to be — she demonstrates disgust, loyalty, nostalgia, and numerous other emotions, just not at what a human would call full intensity. Sometimes her actions suggest she's far more emotive than she lets on but holds back because it annoys/unnerves Roger.
  • Ran-Mao from Black Butler is Lau's bodyguard and shows little-to-no emotion.
  • Eve from Black Cat and pretty much any character dubbed by Brina Palencia. She appears to be a specialist at playing monotonous and emotionless girl characters and gets typecast as such.
  • Secre Swallowtail/Nero from Black Clover is almost always calm and apathetic, rarely emoting and contrasting her with the more expressive Asta. It's understandable due to her past trauma, but she does show emotions occasionally around the Black Bulls after formally joining them as well as during more serious moments.
  • Nemu, Mayuri Kurotsuchi's Lieutenant in Bleach. No matter how horribly he treats her, she never reacts. Mad Scientist Kurotsuchi CREATED Nemu. His "daughter" is really just an Opposite-Sex Clone.
  • In the first Cardcaptor Sakura movie, Syaoran's mom is usually this, though she does become a Defrosting Ice Queen around Sakura.
  • Carlos Santana in Captain Tsubasa is a male example. He became this due to his adoptive father's upbringing to raise him into the "perfect" player, to the point he even was nicknamed "The Soccer Cyborg". Thankfully, he slowly grows out of this after he falls to Defeat Means Friendship at Tsubasa's hands.
  • Fiore from Chrono Crusade, although it's hinted throughout the series that she may not be as emotionless as she claims—and her relationship with Joshua is a partial reason.
  • Yin, July and all other dolls from Darker than Black play this straight as empty, programmable shells, though the dolls seem to slowly regain emotions (and free will) as the series progresses.
  • Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure: D fits this until the final battle. She's actually frightened about showing emotion.
  • Mischa from Endride is a child assassin who was brainwashed not to have emotions in order to turn her into a better killing machine. Even after being defused, she barely displays more emotion than quiet jealousy and mistrust.
  • Eureka from Eureka Seven. The girl is literally close to emotionless since her birth until she met her destined partner Renton and gradually fell deeply in love with him. Although 3 years ago she did experience her first emotion which is "surprise" when she realized she orphaned the three children she would later adopt.
  • The entire premise of Expressionless Face Girl And Emotional Face Boy. Kashiwada is a stoic girl who is unable to make facial expressions to signify how she felt. As such, her classmate Oota becomes obsessed with trying to invoke a response from her.
  • Maria, manager of the Hakushuu Dinosaurs in Eyeshield 21 was originally a Sugar-and-Ice Personality. Sadly, her relationship with team captain Marco has left her in this state, and she only begins to recover after his defeat.
  • Riza Hawkeye in Fullmetal Alchemist has a reputation in her military unit as being coolly competent — to the point of being slightly terrifying when she feels the need to lay down the law. She most definitely has emotions but it takes a fairly extraordinary situation to draw out anything other than polite, brisk, and slightly sardonic behavior from her.
  • Miyabi "Professor" Oomichi of GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class is extremely subtle in her expression of emotion, but her friends seem able to pick up on her emotions sometimes: during the yaminabe arc, there's a panel with a closeup of Miyabi's face looking stoic as ever, yet Tomokane can tell she looks happy. Also, the reader can see an expression of sadness — mostly in the eyes — when she realizes that the chick she had been caring for had fallen silent.
  • Vanilla from Galaxy Angel. Used in the anime to comic effect. In the games, her story arcs deal with her coming to terms with expressing emotion.
  • The Gods Lie: This is how Rio Suzumura initially comes across to Natsuru and their classmates. She always has a stoic demeanor at school, and when Natsuru asks her if she can take care of an abandoned kitten he found, her reaction is to accept as long as he pays her a specific "rent" for the service. As the two of them bond, Rio starts showing more emotion with Natsuru...and he eventually finds out just why she was so emotionally reserved and frugal.
  • The cyborg assassins in Gunslinger Girl, as a result of the use of drugs and conditioning they're emotionally stunted.
    • Beatrice is more emotionless than the others. Triela is even surprised when another cyborg dies and she feels very little emotion about it.
    • Invoked with extreme prejudice in the case of Henrietta, when her deteriorating emotional state caused the Agency to, for lack of a better expression, 'reset her to factory settings'. She's the perfect assassin again, but her personality is little more than a robot soldier.
  • Hanaukyō Maid Team: To varying degrees, Grace, Konoe, and Mariel all act in an emotionless manner at times. Grace does it because she's suffering from a split personality, Konoe because she's been trained as a security maid, and Mariel because she's been brainwashed to be the perfect maid for her master Taro.
  • Ai Enma from Hell Girl. Subverted in that she does have emotions, but she must repress them to carry out her atonement for the revenge she carried out on the villagers who buried her alive. Or else, she'll wind up in Hell. We first see it when she snaps before Hajime towards the end of the first season, and it's not a nice sight to behold.
  • I'm Gonna Be an Angel!: In the first season, Silky is an emotionless puppet under Dispell's control, merely repeating whatever he says. In the second season it gets subverted, as it turns out that it was Dispell who was really a puppet and Silky's real personality emerges which is an exact opposite of the term 'emotionless'.
  • Kanna from Inuyasha most certainly fits this trope, as she was created to be emotionless so that she would be undetectable by any trace of Demonic Energy or Scent. In fact, the translation of her name quite literally means 'void'. By the end, it is subverted as she actually has emotion as her heart can feel.
  • Child Soldier Jonah from Jormungand displays these tendencies, likely due both to the trauma of seeing his parents killed in a bombing when he was a small child, and all the violence and strife he has witnessed since.
  • Toyama Sachi from Jubei-chan. In the dub, she is referred to as "the strange, emotionless girl" once.
  • Karin's little sister, Anju, in Karin. Although Anju is more the 'doesn't emote but is certainly feeling a lot' type, rather than truly unemotional:
    Anju: I'm not crying.
    Bge: Yes, you are. Your voice doesn't crack. Tears don't fall. But all the same, you're crying.
  • Key from Key the Metal Idol seems to be emotionless initially, claiming to be a robot, but is eventually revealed to be a severe case of emotional repression prompted by merely being convinced and, as a result, convincing others that she is a robot when she is, in fact, a human to prevent her potent extra-physical abilities from awakening.
  • Fate in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Fate actually does have emotions, but keeps them suppressed as a defense mechanism against her mother's insane demands and even more insane punishment for failure. Although she recovers later, Fate remains quieter and more reserved than the rest of the Improbably Female Cast, albeit also considerably more sensitive.
    • Lutecia in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS. Likely a result of Jail's experiments and/or of growing up without her mother. She becomes more emotional by Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid.
    • The youngest Combat Cyborgs- Otto, Deed and Sette- also count. Deed doesn't even change expressions while asking Wendi to get her hands off her breasts, and when she and Otto don't react as Wendi celebrates her victory over one of the Einherjar installations, Wendi gets annoyed and complains about having to be in the same group as them. The youngest, Sette, is almost completely devoid of emotions to the point of seeming robotic, and Tre tells her to put some life into her daily routines.
  • Ruri from Martian Successor Nadesico. Though she's far cry from being actually emotionless - just emotionally repressed, and sometimes not even that - her voice never seems to reflect her emotions, making her always sound like she just doesn't care. This is a big part of why she used to be the Trope Namer for the Little Miss Snarker.
  • Mother in Mother Keeper is this, though she is a computer so it's understandable why.
  • Lila from Najica Blitz Tactics showcases many characteristics of this trope, being an Artificial Human, although she can fake emotions to some degree if needed to achieve a certain goal (like seducing men). Later in the series, she starts to genuinely warm up toward the protagonist though.
  • Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
    • Asuna was emotionless in the backstory. She was still emotionless upon arrival, but ten years of being bugged by Ayaka taught her emotions, albeit mostly emotions regarding irritation.
    • Zazie Rainyday is emotionless to the point of Cute Mute. Although she speaks up in the endgame of both the first anime and the manga, she still shows very, very little emotion. The manga makes you think she's showing a playfully humorous side- but no, she isn't. That's her twin sister. She herself is still mildly altruistic, infuriatingly mysterious, and as emotional as a dead yak.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion: Rei Ayanami was intended to be depicted as an emotionless, creepy child to deconstruct the Yamato Nadeshiko archetype that many otaku seemed to love, showing that a person with that behaviour would be very disturbing in real life. Ironically, she became a fan favorite. Anyway, Rei displays emotions every so often. Much like the "Spock eyebrow", the subtle hint that Rei is actually having an emotional reaction is if she bothers to make eye contact with something, which she normally doesn't do.
  • Mai from Nichijou rarely shows emotion. It's notable when she laughs, which she does one time in the first volume/episode because of a piece of squid remaining in Yuuko's hair.
  • Parodied in a chapter of No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular!. After watching an episode of an anime (strongly implied to be Haruhi Suzumiya), Tomoko decides to become an emotionless girl so people will try to get close to her and break through her shell. Unfortunately, nobody notices, and in the next episode of the anime, she sees the same character displaying emotion and everyone liking her better.
  • Kirika from Noir acts emotionless, but hides deep concern about her apparent amnesia. She becomes truly emotionless when her memory is restored.
  • Now and Then, Here and There has Lala-ru, although she does start to emote more as the story progresses.
  • Kyouka Amamiya in Not Lives rarely emotes at all, and Mikami thinks that it's almost like she's being 'controlled by a program'.
  • Sabrina (or Natsume in Japanese), the Psychic Gym Leader from PokĂ©mon Red and Blue, appears as an Emotionless Girl in PokĂ©mon: The Series. In the first episode in which she appears, she has that trademark creepy blank stare and a doll who sits on her lap and does all the talking for her. She beats Ash easily, then lets her doll "play" with him and his friends in her dollhouse. Later, the viewers find out she had a rough childhood and reacted by stuffing all her emotions into her doll (who represents her childhood self) and having no mercy on the trainers who come to visit her. Ash teaches her to laugh again and by the end of the second episode she's a normal girl (well, with psychic powers). In PokĂ©mon Adventures, she almost qualifies as one, but still cracks a smile or a glare every once in a while.
  • A rare male version of this trope: Mytho from Princess Tutu, who is literally emotionless, thanks to a spell that shattered his heart. When he's first introduced, he constantly has a blank look on his face, has no opinions about anything, and does whatever other people tell him to do. As the shards of his heart are returned to him, he slowly regains his emotions and free will.
  • Homura Akemi from Puella Magi Madoka Magica starts out as this. She never smiles, has a completely toneless voice, and acts like she's made of stone when Mami dies and Sayaka turns into a witch. It is subverted as we find out that she invoked this trope on purpose after watching her friends die again and again while stuck in her "Groundhog Day" Loop. She went from being a Shrinking Violet with glasses and a heart condition to a coolheaded stoic in a desperate attempt to finally save Madoka from her terrible fate.
  • Anthy Himemiya from Revolutionary Girl Utena is a variant on the Emotionally Repressed Girl, in that she is effectively anesthetized by the circumstances of her... very complicated connection to her brother.
  • Tomoe Yukishiro from Rurouni Kenshin plays this for tragedy, since she couldn't show her fiancĂ© Akira how happy she was when they got engaged, so he thought he wasn't good enough for her and went to search for his fortune to Kyoto... where he got killed.
  • Kurasuma from School Rumble speaks in a monotone and tends not to show emotion.
  • Shinigami Trilogy: Himeka, a Devil in Plain Sight, basically Mandy (specifically Bleedman's teen version). She may have been terminally ill but thanks to a love-struck Grim Reaper she will rule the world with an iron fist.
  • Shiori from Tamako Market initially appears this way, due to her inability to express her feelings. However, she manages to overcome this by becoming friends with Tamako the end of Episode 3.
  • Time of Eve: Half of the robots in-series (the female half) qualify, most notably Sammy and Akiko when they are outside the eponymous cafe. They transform into a Shrinking Violet and a Genki Girl, respectively, when given the opportunity to express their emotions. However, behaving like humans in public would draw unwanted attention, and they are very good at suppressing their feelings.
  • Yami from To Love Ru, although she has shown the barest hint of emotions other than "I hate ecchi people" on occasion.
  • Shiori of Wasteful Days of High School Girls is always seen without much affect nor emotions, and this is why she is given the In-Series Nickname of "Robo".
  • In Wild Rose, because Mikhail's full-body markings manifest whenever he feels emotion, his mother raised him to feel nothing so he could pass for normal. As a result, he doesn't even understand what separates "loved ones" and strangers from each other. Bernt is a less severe example, simply being the utterly unflappable butler.
  • Ininia from Witch Hat Atelier is a very pretty but very creepy child who does not show any emotion other than an ice cold stare. Even though she likes to heal and help people in a technical sense, nothing shown had even registered as a mild surprise from her. This is further highlighted when she is paired with Coustas who is, personality wise, the direct polar opposite of her. Given that Ininia is an apprentice of a Brimmed-Hat witch, whatever she was forced to learn would have been so horrifying that she became numb or preconditioned towards forbidden magic.
  • Suou from World's End Harem presents herself as someone with a lack of varied expressions beyond her deadpan face, only focused in her job to make Reito initiate the mating process with many women (including her) to repopulate the human race after billions of men died due a virus, however when confronted by others about Reito’s lack of cooperation she seems to hold some loyalty towards him and when seducing him she tries to put on a smile, which makes Reito see Erisa on her sometimes; almost veering into Sugar-and-Ice Personality territory.

    Comic Books 
  • In Lost at Sea, Raleigh believes that her soulless nature makes her this, unable to feel anything or have any friends. Upon realizing that she never lost her soul, she promptly bursts into tears, lamenting that her problems have ruined her new friends' road trip.
  • Quake Woman in Mega Man (Archie Comics), during the "Spiritus Ex Machina" story arc. Her creator, Dr. Lalinde, believes robots should merely be treated as tools. As things developed, it was revealed that Dr. Lalinde was quite a Motherly Scientist, and when she almost lost Quake Woman in an accident, she removed her personality, feeling that losing a Ridiculously Human Robot is harder to deal with. After the events of the story arc, Lalinde realises that she made a mistake and restored Quake Woman's personality.
  • The Passionchild in Shade, the Changing Man, an androgynous pretty boy who incited emotion to the psychotic degree in everyone around him, but never expressed anything. He didn't even speak until Shade cracked into his inner world, and found nothing.
    Passionchild: I find nothing out there. I find nothing in here too, but it's my nothing.
  • Raven from Teen Titans. Based out of necessity because if she ever let her emotions go, her demonic father, Trigon would seize control of her and take over Earth's dimension. For instance, during a Space Opera story with the team assisting in a battle against Starfire's sister, Blackfire, Raven was so overwhelmed trying to help the wounded with her limited healing powers that she had the horrified realization that she was about to lose emotional control and her demonic father, Trigon, nearly seized control of her at that very moment until she calmed down. Her learning to accept and express emotions after the defeat of her father is a major piece of Character Development.
  • The Transformers: Robots in Disguise: Arcee goes through a phase where she's very emotionless and unable to bond with anyone after the death of Hardhead. She eventually gets better and regains the ability to relate to others, even developing (and acting on) romantic feelings for Aileron.
  • Wonder Woman Vol 1: Queen Atomia's Protons all look like (identical) human women, but they have no ability to express emotion without being specifically ordered to by their queen and seem to have had their ability to emote naturally expunged.
  • X-Men:
    • Sage, a mutant whose brain works much like a computer, is pretty emotionless sometimes, though occasionally shifting to The Stoic level when really, really worked up. (Naturally, she's such an expert at Perp Sweating that her gaze alone accomplishes what Wolverine's famed "claw on either side of neck; dare me to pop the middle?" approach cannot.) Surprisingly, "computer brain" simply describes her brain works. Despite the functions of her mind often being described in computer terms, it, and the rest of her, are a hundred percent organic.
    • Emma Frost frequently comes across as this due to her detached, cynical persona. The Stepford Cuckoos are generally portrayed as just copying her attitude, but between X-Men: Phoenix: Warsong and Nation X they are physically incapable of having emotions.
    • X-23, a clone who was raised as a child assassin, is also an example. Through multiple traumatic events in her backstory, she learned to never trust or emotionally connect with anyone. This makes her an outcast among her fellow teenagers, and even most of the teachers perceive her as a heartless killer who is unable to think as a human or desire anything. But her character development (and eventual journey to find herself) ultimately subverts this trope; she gradually becomes accustomed to emotion, and bonds with other abuse victims who understand why she prefers solitude. It's actually quite heartwarming. It's implied that one of the reasons she represses her emotions is because she does not know how to handle them or the memories of her past; when she does completely abandon her stoic exterior, we see either suicidal depression or psychotic rage. Ironically, the emotionally detached state that others scorn her for is in place for their own safety.

    Fan Works 
  • Deconstructed in Advice and Trust: When Shinji and Asuka visit Rei's apartment, Asuka discovers that Rei is emotionless because she has been instructed to take a giant cocktail of emotion-suppressing chemicals. Aghast, she tries to convince Rei to stop taking them and worries that NERV would also do this to Shinji and herself. Afterwards, her emotions slowly become that of a normal teenage girl, though she still pretends to be emotionless at NERV so that Gendo doesn't realize that she's off her meds.
  • In the Sherlock fanfic Baker School Blitz, Sherlock fits the model of the Emotionally Repressed Boy, in that he can express appropriate emotion (unlike his friend Jim), but often doesn't, instead preferring to be blunt, Literal-Minded, and calm.
  • The Child of Love: At the beginning Rei is very unemotional. Throughout the history, she has to struggle with new emotions she is unprepared for: her jealousy towards Asuka, her caring towards Shinji, her protective feelings towards Teri… and in the process, she learns to acknowledge them and becomes somewhat more expressive.
  • Child of the Storm has, in the sequel, Maddie Pryor a.k.a. Rachel Grey, who was actively conditioned to maintain this attitude by Sinister, tending to communicate via Spock Speak, and maintaining a fairly robotic demeanour. The heroes find this deeply creepy, especially when contrasted with her Separated at Birth identical twin sister Jean Grey, who wears her heart on her sleeve. Mainly, it's played for tragedy, especially during the later parts of her introductory arc as she pulls a Heel–Face Turn and finds out the truth about herself (that she's not an Artificial Human created solely as a Living Weapon, and that she was stolen from her cradle and thus from a loving family), when it's revealed that while she's unfazed by anything combat related, up to and including a small horde of Eldritch Abominations generated as a side-effect of an epic psychic battle in the Nevernever, simply having people genuinely care/be concerned for her reduces her to baffled tears because she simply doesn't know how to deal with it. Thankfully, she gets better with time and therapy, but she still generally remains as The Stoic.
  • Deconstructed in A Crown of Stars: Due to her emotionally stunted upbringing, Rei has a hard time understanding someone one else's feelings and handling her own emotions. As a consequence of it she fails to recognize Shinji and Asuka's arguments as Belligerent Sexual Tension and Asuka's words' endearing nature, and she does not realize that her jealousy is clouding her good judgment so that she refuses to help them right when they need her.
  • In Dating a Team Magma Grunt, Courtney could very well be mistaken for a robot half the time. However, she shows signs of emotion around Maxie. This was especially obvious when he seemingly refused to eat the pie she wanted to feed him.
  • In Despair's Last Resort, Miyako Morino acts like this. The only times she's noted as actually expressing any emotion is after witnessing Kaito's execution and when the remaining students are fighting among each other. Turns out it was a ruse to keep her from revealing that she still has her memories.
  • In Dreaming of Sunshine, Shikako has an accident while practicing the Nara clan techniques that leaves her completely detached from everything to the point where she can't even bring herself to care that it isn't her normal state of mind. She recovers after a few days, though.
  • Deconstructed (again) with Rei in Doing It Right This Time: Gendo ordered Rei to take medication to "keep herself focused". Upon returning to the past the three pilots found out that her "medication" was a cocktail of mood suppressors and tranquilizers which turned her into a completely creepy and unemotional person. After stopping to take them, Rei starts exhibiting a normal emotional range.
  • Evangelion 303: Rei suffered brain damage because of a trial flight gone wrong. She survived, but she stopped being cheerful and warm and became unemotional and quiet.
  • In X-Men fanfic Guilt Trips, Northstar (Jean-Paul) is an Emotionless Boy, having asked his empathic friend Manuel da la Rocha to prevent him from feeling strong emotion. His reasoning for this is because here Manuel is an Emotion Eater and needs to fed off something, and he himself doesn't have the energy to deal with emotions.
  • HERZ: She is not as bad as she used to when she was younger, but Rei is still pretty emotionless and quiet, even when she is confronting a squad of armed loons trying to kill her she and her niece.
  • Higher Learning: Rei was pretty emotionless at the beginning. After listening to her new teacher's lessons she gradually gets better and learns to recognize and display her emotions more openly, although she kept being quiet and cool. She stopped seeing herself as expendable, though, and one of her clones sacrificed herself to give her a chance to keep living.
  • Tsukuyomi from Infinity. She's basically a Rei Ayanami Expy, although it's more that she doesn't understand emotions rather than lacking them.
  • Last Child of Krypton: Rei is aloof, quiet and expressionless, and other people find her behaviour eerie and creepy (right like she was intended to be in the original series).
  • The eponymous heroine of legolas by laura seems remarkably unconcerned about being tortured and raped by orcs, even though she's only ten.
  • Five-of-a-Kind in Manehattan's Lone Guardian scarcely ever emotes, even in the face of dangerous situations. She speaks quietly at all times, never raising her voice under any circumstances. Fiver might express mild annoyance at worst, but that's it. When a kidnapper has to put up with her for several days, the little pony's behavior initially freaks her out.
  • In Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide, Rei’s third incarnation is emotionless and has to relearn how to acknowledge and express her feelings.
  • Once More with Feeling: Rei is unemotional and passive at the beginning, but she slowly starts opening up after meeting Shinji. However, she decides to hide her changes from Gendo and SEELE out of a growing sense of self-preservation.
  • The One I Love Is...: Rei starts the story like this, completely emotionless, but she learns to identify and display their emotions and becomes more expressive as she spends time with Shinji and later Asuka. However, when Shinji disappeared for one month -and later when he chose Asuka over her- she reverted to her original behaviour (although Asuka managed to make her snap out of it the second time).
  • In Origins, a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands/Halo Massive Multiplayer Crossover, Sarah increasingly looks like this. Justified, by her creators at least, because the last time she got mad she destroyed a lot of stuff. Her psychologist even notes that she was meant to be a weapon, not a person. Samantha Shepard tries to be this but heads into Not So Stoic territory before hitting a Heroic BSoD, falling into depression, and only recovering belatedly, providing an aversion.
  • RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse: Midnight, from Nightmares Yet to Come, tends to be emotionless in near every situation (her exact age isn't given, but Trixie's known her for several years, and the implication is she's around the same age). She does briefly display emotion when objecting to a decision of Princess Luna's. It's hinted that her emotionlessness is either an act or something to do with brainwashing. Later chapters show she does feel at least one emotion: Anger, and plenty of it.
  • In the Mob Psycho 100 gender-swap fic Shigeko Kageyama AKA Mob, Mob, like in canon, can't emote without running the risk of exploding. Instead of being off-putting, many characters find it endearing and even cute.
  • In the Frozen (2013) modern AU fanfic A Snowflake In Spring, Elsa hasn't displayed emotion - or spoken, or acknowledged another person's existence - for ten years, earning her the nickname "Ice Queen" among her fellow asylum patients. When the story switches to her perspective, she's shown actively trying to repress her feelings, attempting to "conceal, don't feel", though the reason remains unclear. The only person capable of breaking this pattern is Anna, whose mere presence transforms her into a flustered, Moe Cute Mute.
  • Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: Rei is calm, collected and cool even when she fights.
  • Unsatisfied: Numb has Marinette become one after learning about a drug that completely suppresses emotions, which has become popular as a way of avoiding akumatization: no negative emotions means nothing for Hawkmoth to work with. She considers the fact that this leads her to stop caring about all of the things that used to annoy her, such as Chat Noir's persistent flirting or Lila's sabotaging her at school, to be a bonus... even though this also means that she stops caring about her friends, hobbies and other interests as well.
  • You'll Get No Answers from the Blue Sea Star: Kid starts out as this, never laughing, crying, or getting angry, to the point it creeps strangers out. Her sisters eventually teach her to smile because she wants to stop driving people away.
    After spending a little time with her, strangers would come up to me or Beth (they never dared say it to Dad) and whisper, "She's a nice girl, but she's not quite right, is she?"
  • Ellen Harrison in Zero Context: Taking Out the Trash. She's described as the most cautious of her family to an almost absurd extent, being the utter picture of calmness and silence. Combined with "her perpetual half-lidded stare, soft-spoken voice and near inability to smile", she's considered creepy and borderline frightening... which is exactly how she likes it, since it means no one is bothering her.

    Films — Animation 
  • Frozen (2013): Elsa is a deconstruction. Because her magical powers are controlled by her emotions, Elsa has grown up trying to be as emotionless ("Conceal, don't feel") but it's taken a massive emotional toll on her (and her family). Ironically, the fact that she tried to be an emotionless girl makes her less capable of controlling her powers, and in the end it's by embracing her emotions, namely her love for Anna, that lets her gain full control. Provides the page quote.
  • Sugarcoat, a member of the Crystal Prep Shadowbolts introduced in My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Friendship Games certainly qualifies. She's in a constantly serious mood, rarely smiles, always speaks in a Creepy Monotone and never raises her voice. She also seems to be somewhat grouchy, as she gets clearly annoyed and angry in when the situation calls for it.
  • In Turning Red, when Mei discovers her transformations are triggered by strong emotions she tries to be this briefly.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In The Happening, Zooey Deschanel is actually given the line "I don't like to show my emotions," which many suspect was a late addition to the script to try to cover up her less than enthusiastic performance.
  • The Masque of the Red Death: Princess Scarlatti is quite stoic as Prospero tauntingly refuses to give her and her terrified husband refuge. Even having her husband shot with a crossbow and her former lover Prospero tossing her a knife and suggesting she use it on herself don't faze her. Her reaction might also count as a Face Death with Dignity moment.
  • Morgan: Lee shows no real emotion toward anybody in the film, and kills calmly with no signs of remorse. It turns out she's an artificial human who's literally engineered to lack emotions.
  • Amanda in Thoroughbreds, which is understandable since she's a sociopath, albeit one with a moral code and no thirst for violence. She's a self-described "skilled imitator," copying people's emotions so well that she used to believe that she really had them, including being able to realistically cry on cue. By the end of the film, though, she sports a genuine smile once when looking at a picture of her and Lily as kids.
  • Safety Not Guaranteed begins with Darius emotionally numb from her mother's death. Her friendship and eventual romance with Kenneth helps bring some joy back into her life.

    Literature 
  • The alien Sisters of Orion of Adam R. Brown's Alterien series are an example of this trope. Their leader who does most of the talking, Vasja'ri, is particularly emotionless in her delivery of every single line.
  • People unfamiliar with Zamira in An Outcast in Another World might interpret her as this. In truth, she’s as emotional as anyone, but her facial expressions are naturally subdued and subtle.
  • Broken Gate:
    • Nezumi really seemed to have mastered suppressing her emotions in light of her situation, as examined in chapter 4, when it's noted that her lament doesn't feel painful (like it would for some), instead, it feels cold. It's to such an extent that she wished she could cry or, at least, shed tears, something to express her anguish in some way. Likewise, she hadn't felt cold in a long time, either, and is very detached from her own thoughts towards it. Naturally, her feeling lament for the first time made her realize how her pragmatism had its drawbacks in that she had shut her mind off to anything irrelevant to guarding the gate, her thoughts and feelings included, in which case she stopped feeling them.
    • To some extent, six chapters afterwards, this becomes a bit more extreme, as when she starts to feel the aforementioned again, she decides to, as the story put it, "destroy" that feeling and doesn't feel it again for the remainder of the chapter (a move called disaffection). The reason as to why she does this was because she couldn't cry, thus, she refuses to allow herself to feel them once they come, as, if she cannot express them well, then there isn't a purpose in feeling them, almost invoking this trope more directly. In short, she would much rather be emotionless and not to feel emotions vs not being able to express them. When she finally does feel her emotions, it's when she's dying and its also when she cries.
  • The "Imouto" Misakas in A Certain Magical Index (except Last Order). Because they were produced in a lab for the sole purpose of being slaughtered, they never learned how to express emotions, though it is clear that they do have them by the way they act.
  • Charlotte Crescent/C2 from Charlotte Powers, at least on appearance. She cannot intuitively 'read' the emotions of others, and has difficulty understanding and expressing her own emotional state.
  • Felli Loss from Chrome Shelled Regios comes off as emotionless because her Psychic Powers make it difficult for her to express emotions. It's promptly subverted in her introduction, where she is seen screaming and shouting insults down one of the city's ventilation shafts to relieve some frustration.
  • A Court of Thorns and Roses: Feyre is emotionless for much of the second book, due to struggling with her guilt and PTSD. She gets better.
  • Discworld:
    • Susan Sto Helit of Soul Music, Hogfather and Thief of Time shows no outward emotion on hearing of the deaths of her parents (though she spends the entire book struggling with grief in her own way, before finally breaking down at the end), and otherwise fits the "cool in a crisis" model. She does occasionally get angry. Don't get in her way at this point.
    • Adora Belle Dearheart in the "Moist Von Lipwig" novels also comes across as emotionless, when she's actually repressing a mountain of rage. Alternatively, she comes across as a woman burying her issues under a mountain of bitter sarcasm.
  • Actually subverted in The Dresden Files. Ivy appears to be totally emotionless for quite a while after we meet her, but it turns out that this is actually one of the Archive's defense mechanisms. Ivy herself is lonely and has to cope with the fact that she has almost no personal identity; even her name is just a nickname Harry gave her. She's also cursed with the Archive's perfect recall, so she knows exactly how her mother felt about her. (Hint: It wasn't real positive). It's implied that since names have power, Harry starting to call her Ivy (and asking others to call her that) instead of the Archive allowed her to find strength in her own identity and open up to people.
  • Electra in Greek Ninja. She shows little emotion even when she's informed of the death of her sensei. During stressful situations, such as battles, she remains cool and stoic.
  • Haruhi Suzumiya:
    • Yuki Nagato, who is also the The Spock, The Stoic and the Badass Bookworm. The tenth novel reveals that she's surprisingly bitter about being designed to be so unemotive and that the IDTE could have made her more expressive like they did to Asakura, but didn't. It's implied she was created without the capability to express emotions, in the same sense a computer may be designed to not have a graphical display. This largely confirms the point below, which prior to this were based mostly on Kyon's interpretations. As the series progresses, it is clear that (due to Character Development) in spite of her lack of apparent feeling, Yuki is a warm, caring and kind-hearted girl. It could be said that Yuki and Asakura are inversions of each other and that both are subtle subversions of this trope (and by extension, Red Oni, Blue Oni). Yuki appears emotionless and coldly logical, but her inner workings are clearly fighting in the other direction. Asakura is what could best be described as a Purity Sue on the outside, while she is the creepy, emotionless girl whose attempted murder of Kyon was actually a calculated act designed to reach a specific goal.
    • All the Humanoid Interfaces seem to have one emotion setting they do not deviate from, (which is... none for Yuki). Asakura is always cheerful, and Kimidori is always a polite Ojou. The other two interfaces could be considered a Double Subversion of this trope since they clearly do display emotion but apparently do not have any other emotions to display.
    • Subverted by the "official-but-not-exactly-canon" Gag Series spinoff Haruhi-chan, which shows Yuki staring into space after completely finishing an anime/game series, and monotonously telling Kyon that "It was an emotional game." Aside from this, she actually laughs at one point, but it is hidden by her arm.
    • The Alternate Universe spinoff The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan averts this trope in its characterization of Yuki. In this universe, Yuki is a Shrinking Violet who is fully expressive of her feelings, such as her crush on Kyon.
    • Kuyou Suou, an interface of another alien entity, is even more alien than the other Humanoid Interfaces, communica__ting__in__mono__tone...broken__speech__ and generally remaining expressionless, though sometimes also having sudden creepy bursts of emotion. Her behavior is of one who simply doesn't even know how to act like a living thing, and she is so weird that Muggles who haven't been made to acknowledge her ignore her existence.
      Kyon: [referring to Kuyou] A cardboard cutout would have had more life than her.
  • Tsukiko from Hentai Prince and the Stony Cat becomes this after she wishes she didn't show her emotions so easily and obviously. Her actual feelings about things remain unchanged, but she's literally unable to make any emotional reaction at all.
  • I Am Not a Serial Killer has a rare male example in John Cleaver. He does try to fake it for the comfort of those around him, but usually fails. Before learning his name, Elijah calls him "the boy with the dead eyes".
  • Eucliwood Hellscythe from Is This A Zombie?. On top of showing little emotion, her main means of communication is writing in a notebook as opposed to talking. The reason for this being that her magic is so powerful that any of her words or expressions of any kind can trigger uncontrollable, devastating magic. Subverted and justified in that she's not really emotionless, but her magic requires her to be in control of all of her emotions, including so much as showing amusement.
  • In The Last Unicorn, the titular character can be seen as such. In fact, she's rather stoic when she's in her normal form. Even if she can feel sorrow, joy, and fear, she's unable to feel some human feelings, such as regret and love. As an immortal being, she does not fear mortality. When she's turned into a human by Schmendrick, she's horrified. Following this traumatic event, she becomes completely emotionless and slowly forgets who she was. It's not until later in the story that she's able to feel emotions again.
  • Malazan Book of the Fallen: The young recruit named Sorry in the first volume. Upon their first meeting, the sorceress Tattersail describes her as 'young, pretty as an icicle and looking as warm to the touch' and immediately has a feeling that something's wrong with the cold and distant-seeming girl. There is. She is not only an assassin but also possessed by the Patron God of Assassins himself, with no memories of her life before the possession.
  • Lisbeth Salander in the Millennium Series is practically a poster child for the emotionless girl. To others, she appears emotionless, cold and strange.
  • The Paradox Trilogy has Caldswell's daughter, Ren. She spends most of her time playing chess by herself, and barely even reacts to anyone except Caldswell or Rupert.
  • In the Lowell Bair translation of The Phantom of the Opera novel, Raoul describes Christine as "indifference personified." (He wouldn't be surprised if he knew what the poor girl was going through at that point, of course...)
  • Kambili from Purple Hibiscus seems like a snobby version of this to her peers, but in reality, she's being terrorized by her father. It's thanks to her Aunt and Cousins that she's finally able to reach out to others.
  • In River of Teeth, Adelia is always described as having a blank expression and cold eyes. Fittingly, she is a ruthless Professional Killer. When at one point Archie catches her off-guard with a question, Adelia shows mild surprise and Archie notes how that's the first time she's seen Adelia show any emotion at all.
  • Shimoneta:
    • Hyouka has a perpetually deadpan expression and, in the anime, speaks in monotone, including rare instances when she's agitated. She only smiles once in the entire series — after she agrees to lie for Tanukichi on the condition that he would convince Oboro to return her yaoi doujinshi.
    • Oboro is near identical to Azumanga Daioh's Sakaki in both appearance and mannerism. So he'll often make off-the-wall statements with a perfectly straight face and monotone and mean it.
  • In The Ship Who... Searched, Tia complains that many of her fellow shellpeople classmates tend this way and that psych counselors try to encourage it of her as well. A friend suggests that since they have no memory of life outside the shell, they have no experience of being physically nurtured and never saw or experienced much emotion, and are awkward around humans on top of that. Tia is different because she was seven years old when she went into the shell. However, her friend says that after a decade or two of service and experience with "softshells", Long-Lived shellpeople loosen up. The other viewpoint characters in the series are all more traditional shellpeople and while they all tend to be The Spock and try to conceal feelings, they do have rich emotional lives.
  • In the first book of The Shattered Kingdoms, the Mongrel/Meiran/Lahlil is perceived to be this, although she actually just has very good self-control (the more impressive for the fact that Norlander telepathy normally transmits emotions, making them hard to hide). It contributes to everyone's fear and uncertainty as to what she actually wants. Her motivations are less hidden in the second book, although that might just be because readers now get substantial sections from her point-of-view (unlike the first book).
  • In the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels, Winter Celchu (an aide and childhood friend of Leia's), an Intelligence agent with a holographic memory, has lost her composure perhaps once in the entirety of her appearances—when she thought her boyfriend had been killed and his fellow pilots didn't seem to care (because, of course, he was still alive).
  • Sunday Without God has the gravekeeper Scar. When she does start to experience emotions after adopting Ulla's twin sister, it leads to a Freak Out.
  • Kahlan of Sword of Truth has this as a public persona: A voice to freeze water. Another example is Nicci, who is more in the idea of an impassive Dark Magical Girl hardened by an unpleasant life until she no longer cares about life anymore. Richard does manage to get through to her in the sixth book, though, shortly before she does a High-Heel–Face Turn.
  • ThĂ©rèse herself of ThĂ©rèse Raquin becomes emotionless over the course of her childhood due to living with her overbearing aunt and her sickly, petulant cousin Camille. Then she and Camille get married and it gets worse.
  • Maria de Alva in Victoria is a sympathetic version, not so much weird or socially inept as simply quiet and reserved. It seems the massive tragedies she has endured throughout her life have given her a sort of objective, philosophical way to view life that allows her to endure most anything with stoic calm.
  • Coira, the protagonist of White as Snow never shows emotions as they were, symbolically, bled out of her after a childhood illness caused by her mother rejecting her love. She is sometimes stated to feel things, such as disgust when her drunken brother asks to dance with her, but the emotion is so distant and she accepts the offer so coolly that nobody can tell. In a twist on the usual When She Smiles, the big sign of Coira opening her heart to someone is crying.
  • In the Wicked Lovely series, Leslie becomes a literal emotionless girl when she is acting as the dark court's shadow girl (her emotions are channeled into Irial) and this is part of Sorcha's mask.
  • The Witch of Knightcharm: Gelila, a rookie witch at an evil Wizarding School, rarely raises her voice, expresses an emotion, or speaks in anything besides a flat tone. This is true even when she's promising to kill another student if that student interferes with her plans. Even when a third student taunts Gelila over badly injuring Gelila's goat Familiar, Gelila leads her goat away but does not otherwise react.
  • In The Young Diana, middle-aged spinster Diana takes a youth serum that the scientist Dimitrius created with the power of the sun and air. The serum works, but it also dilutes Diana's humanity so much that she loses all feeling regarding other human beings. The only thing she still feels connected to is nature.

    Live-Action TV 
  • On The 100, Lexa wants to be this, believing that feelings are a weakness. She's fooled many people into believing she's heartless, but Clarke sees through it and is able to get emotional reactions out of her.
  • Ahsoka: Shin's default expression is blank, with a flat and unsettling Kubrick Stare. At most, she occasionally shows anger or empathy briefly.
  • Martha in Baskets is always unfazed and casual at anything which contributes to the recurring dry humour in the show.
  • Averted in Boston Legal. In the episode "Smile", lawyer Alan Shore tries to get a prestigious school to accept a little girl (actually a child prodigy) lacking the facial muscles to smile. The child has strong positive emotions, she's just completely unable to express them facially.
  • Control Z: Sofia acts very emotionless initially, though it's really hiding her deep-seated trauma.
  • Defiance has two borderline examples: Irisa, the Apocalypse Maiden, rarely if ever shows emotions during the first two seasons, while Doc Yewll is more Deadpan Snarker.
  • Doctor Who:
    • Zoe, when we first meet her; as the serial progresses, she becomes concerned about how undeveloped her emotional side is.
    • Gia Kelly in "The Seeds of Death" resembles a grown-up version of Zoe in this respect. The novelisation remarks that her co-workers think of her as a 'cold-hearted witch'.
  • The Actives in Dollhouse, when in their wiped state. Although they seem happy in a non-thinking way most of the time. Although this is deliberately encouraged by keeping them in a calm and peaceful place. If exposed to more dramatic stimulus they gain emotions quite quickly - terrified and freaked out.
  • Aeryn Sun in Farscape has shades of this character early on due to her military training that advocated against feeling pain or showing emotion. It is commented on in "Twice Shy" when each character's strongest trait was amplified: Scorpius says Aeryn is colder than usual.
  • Fringe's Agent Olivia Dunham became this when being experimented on as a child caused her to suppress her emotions in preparation of becoming a cross-universal supersoldier.
  • Law & Order: Organized Crime: Jet's default is very low-key, with little expression and no visible emotion most of the time. She does care however, it just doesn't show that much-Stabler is taken aback somewhat when Jet abruptly hugs him in concern when a hit is put out on him, saying how she "feels funny", which appears to be her way of saying she's worried.
  • Parker on Leverage is a bizarre example in that while she does show emotions, they are typically wrong for that situation. Played with in "The Twelve Step Job" when she goes on anti-depressants as part of her cover and suddenly becomes a more or less normal, well-adjusted human being. In "The Snow Job", Parker has to pretend to be a patient dying of a brain tumor and Sophie is trying to help her prepare for the role.
    Sophie: Think about something sad. Like, think about when your father died.
    Parker: [laughs hysterically]
  • Parks and Recreation: April Ludgate-Dwyer usually has a stoic expression on her face and often talks in a tone of voice that lacks emotion.
  • Person of Interest: Shaw. Justified as she's revealed to have a disorder affecting her this way. One flashback shows her being in a car accident where her father was killed, and calmly asking for a sandwich from the fireman who rescued her afterward, unaffected.
  • Jerry on Seinfeld once dated a woman who appeared emotionally normal in most ways, but never laughed. Needless to say, as a comedian this bothered him. At one point he even tells her a joke, and she responds in a dead monotone that "That's very funny."
  • Star Trek sports a couple examples, such as:
    • Seven of Nine from Voyager was, in her words, "raised by the Borg", with an emphasis on completing tasks efficiently rather than reacting to situations emotionally. In a typical day, her emotions range all the way from "mildly annoyed" to "mildly confused". In the seventh-season episode "Human Error", #264, it's learned that Seven's cortical implant is specifically designed to function as a kill switch to shut down her higher brain functions if she experiences strong emotions. This is presumably to prevent Borg from regaining too much individuality after being separated from the collective.
    • Just about any female Vulcan fits this. T'Pol from Enterprise provides a slight twist by being a Vulcan whose annoyance with humans isn't veiled as well as it could be. Jolene Blalock has claimed this is intentional, and this claim fits with the show's general depiction of Vulcans as being arrogant, hypocritical, and easily annoyed. She also becomes a bit of a crackhead in later seasons, addicted to a substance that breaks down her ability to control her emotions.
  • Cameron, the female Terminator of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles fits this quite accurately, though she is quite capable of simulating human emotions when she needs to. The rather sudden shift from emotionless blankness to a laughing, smiling teenage girl is...creepy.
    • Cameron's creepy stoicism gets played brilliantly in the premiere for the second season when John is trying to remove her processor chip after it gets damaged and she goes berserk. She slowly switches from an emotionless, Implacable killer to begging and pleading with John to not remove the chip, even going as far as to cry out that she loves him. The simulated emotion is disturbingly real, and even more so because the audience and John know it's simulated yet real. And according to Summer Glau, who plays Cameron, that might not have been simulated...
    • This is further pronounced in the same season's eighth episode. Before Cameron enters John's room to discourage him from seeing Riley, she removes her jacket, leaving her in shorts and a tight white shirt with a visible red bra underneath. She then lies on his bed next to him. The audience and John know that neither of these actions is casual, but a calculated decision by Cameron's internal logic. It is this knowledge that creates tension in the ensuing exchange.
    • Prior to this, there are a very few but very deliberate moments where Cameron shows inexplicable emotion - for example, when she hits Charley with a Death Glare for calling her a "very scary robot" in "Dungeons & Dragons", and a momentary tightening of her lips and nervous flicker of her eyes in "Vick's Chip" when John is removing her processor.
    • Then it gets completely inverted in "Allison from Palmdale," where Cameron adopts the personality and memories of Allison, a girl her personality was based around. Seeing Cameron suddenly acting like a normal person, showing honest emotions, just amplifies the creepy factor.
  • Irina from Vintergatan 5B, a Swedish children's sci-fi comedy show. Lampshaded in this dialogue:
    Henrik: But— how can you be so cold?! Don't you have any feelings?
    Irina: Cosmonauts don't have any feelings, Henrik!

    Manhua 
  • In Goddess Creation System, Xiaxi specifically takes this attitude to intrigue the crown prince by never reacting emotionally to anything, which he finds fascinating. She claims to be a Daoist sage in training and coupled with her emotionless attitude it gives her a slightly inhuman feeling to the people around her. The catch is that this is just a facade she uses in the imperial palace: When she meets people she knew before entering it, she reverts back to a completely different and equally fake attitude.

    Manhwa 
  • Vera Linus, in Veritas, generally shows no emotion except when dealing with something that has to do with Lightning Tiger, the guy who taught her the meaning of "fear".

    Music 
  • The narrator of Within Temptation's "Frozen."
    I can't feel my senses
    I just feel the cold
    All colors seem to fade away
    I can't reach my soul

    Roleplay 
  • In Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, Vivian uses her reality-warping to briefly give herself the power of Raven from Teen Titans (2003). Not only does she get magic spells at her disposal, but her emotions are severely repressed so that she seems incapable of expressing herself beyond perpetual moodiness. Once this power goes away, she's back to her highly emotive self.
  • Dino Attack RPG has Silencia Venomosa and Michelle Glados. The former uses this trope to heighten her terrifying nature, due to being in part inspired by the Terminator. The latter believes that emotions are weakness and so appears to strip herself of emotions.

    Theater 
  • A Justified example can be found in the character of "Jane Doe" in Ride the Cyclone. Of the six teenagers who perish in the horrific roller coaster crash that kicks off the plot, five turn up in limbo looking no worse for the wear. Jane Doe, whose decapitated body was found in the wreckage, shows up with a creepy doll's head as a replacement for her missing cranium, having lost all her memories and personality when her head was severed. As a result she doesn't emote when in conversation, and she doesn't appear to understand the nuances of body language or verbal sarcasm. Even the character notes in the script describe her as a someone who "reacts in a literal way and largely without emotion, almost robot-like; the other contestants are totally freaked out by her."

    Video Games 
  • Jacqli of Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica semi-subvert this. Main plot-wise, she looks and acts like one, but when you're getting to know her in Cosmosphere or in synthesis scenes, she's become a sarcastic Tsundere. She was created to be emotionless by scientists, only to slowly develop earnest feelings anyway. Their less-than-pleased reaction to that started a chain of events that quickly made her lose all faith in humanity, becoming the genocidal Big Bad of the first game and later the snarky, aloof party member of the second.
  • BlazBlue's Murakumo units (namely Lambda-11, Mu-12, and Nu-13) have varying shades of this. Lambda and Nu are the most obvious and only become expressive when near Ragna but it isn't a good sign for the latter. Mu-12, in her first appearance, only experiences emotions of nihilistic hatred during her Villainous Breakdown. Once she's freed from Terumi's influence, she acts more or less like her base form, Noel Vermillion.
  • Shanoa in Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. Justified in that her emotions (and memories) were blown away at the beginning of the game. In fact, when told by a villager that she should smile more often...
    Shanoa: "I do not smile."
  • The only reason people know for sure that Valciane, one of your potential cult members in Cultist Simulator, is not in fact a machine, is because she can be seen making human errors. That really says something about the emotional state (or rather the lack of thereof) of the woman.
  • A plot point in the Darkstalkers series of fighting games. Donovan, a half-vampire monk meets Anita, a young girl who is also a half-vampire, who has lost the ability to feel emotions. He decides to try to slay the world's supply of monsters to cure her. He succeeds in restoring her emotions and humanity but becomes a full vampire himself. This leads to a climactic flash-forward cliffhanger showdown between her as the messiah of the human race and him as her main opposition. Especially notable because the creators of the series were sometimes criticized in interviews for using this trope, which was at its peak at the time.
  • In Ensemble Stars!, Nazuna used to be like this, back when he was part of Valkyrie and was treated by Shuu as nothing more than a doll to be dressed up and moved however he liked. Once he left he became the friendly, reliable Big Brother Mentor to Ra*bits he is in the present day.
  • Fire Emblem:
    • Marisa from Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones is an emotionally repressed version. She at first seems to be a stoic, emotionless Blood Knight. Turns out she just doesn't know how to act around people. She opens up to whoever you pair her off with in support conversations.
    • Sue of Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade also fits the trope quite well, though this is mostly because she'd much rather speak to nature than people. Seeing as she's the daughter of The Stoic nomad Rath from Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, this should come as no surprise. There's also Idunn the Dark Dragon and Thea the Pegasus Knight also count; the first simply doesn't know what emotions are like, while the second is the emotionally repressed type with some dashes of Defrosting Ice Queen.
    • Limstella of Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade very much fits the bill despite being officially genderless, being a feminine-looking being who is unfazed even by the prospect of their own death. Some of this can be attributed to them being a morph artificially created by Nergal.
    • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, a female Byleth very much fits the bill, being so emotionally restrained that even as a child she never once cried. A semi-major subplot is her discovering her emotions through her interactions with the students and staff of Garreg Mach Monastery.
  • In Grandia II, Tio is an Automata, a humanoid robot built to fight in ancient wars. After the group defeats her and removes the claws of Valmar (read: Devil), Mareg takes the emotionless machine under his wing, believing that she does in fact have emotions. In the end, it turns out he was right, but she only really starts to display these after Mareg dies saving the group .
  • Amoretta from GrimGrimoire, a recently made homunculus with an angel for a soul. She has emotions, but she's quiet, composed, and probably very depressed by the emptiness of her existence up to that point, so it's understandable that she's less lively than the ghosts who show up.
  • Valentine of Guilty Gear 2: Overture counts as one, and regularly speaks in a calm, monotone voice without changing it. However, when she gets her Villainous Breakdown once Sol stops the process of the Key by destroying it, that's where she gets her first emotion ever.
    • This trope also extends to her successor in Xrd, Ramlethal, who sees her purpose as being an emotionless tool to be used by her "mother". At first, she only has two major expressions; complete stoicism and a Cheshire Cat Grin. However, much like the original Valentine, Ramlethal eventually begins to show emotion (especially thanks to the efforts of Sin and Elphelt), and moves further away from this mindset.
  • Eriko Christy from Illbleed; her father put her through so many scare tests when she was just five years old that she lost her sense of fear.
  • One of the staple character traits of Leona Heidern in The King of Fighters is how much she represses her emotions. This is mostly due to the fact she once killed her entire village in a berzerk frenzy, and has major concerns about losing control of herself again. It's also why one of the staples of her team endings revolve around her comrades getting her to smile or laugh with their antics.
  • In Kingdom Hearts, trapped in the Realm of Darkness, that same darkness dampened Aqua's ability to feel her own heart. She remarks in Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth by Sleep -A fragmentary passage- that, after ten years in the darkness, she couldn't remember the last time she felt her heart stir.
  • In Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, both Lightning and Hope are now physically unable to feel emotion (which is confusing since this Lighting default state anyway). This condition was forced on them by Bhunivelze so they could complete their mission without emotional hangups
  • Noah from Lost Smile and Strange Circus appears as if she is this, mostly due to her not being able to smile and being really shy.
  • Pandora from Mega Man ZX: She's in every way opposite to her berserker comrade, Prometheus.
  • Samus in Metroid: Other M almost makes Lighting look lively. She speaks in an apathetic monotone throughout the game and only shows emotion in flashbacks when Ridley triggers her PTSD and Adam Malkovich blasts her in the back. The reason for this boils down to the voice direction for Jessica Martin from Yoshio Sakamoto; in Japanese, a stoic and non-expressive character would come off as cool and nonchalant, but in practice (and in English), it makes Samus sound robotic and submissive. In other games and media, Samus tends to be more expressive, even when she's a Heroic Mime.
  • Mighty No. 9 brings us Call, a somewhat monotoned Robot Girl created by Dr. Sanda who serves as the "Roll" to Beck's "Rock".
  • Izanami is this in Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, when met in Tatsuya's Scenario in Kadath Mandala's Tower of Emotion. She wears a magical mask that completely crushes her emotions, as though her burning rage has faded, her sorrow has not, and she waits until she can meet with Izanagi again to remove it.
  • Elesa from PokĂ©mon Black and White was meant to come off as an Emotionless Girl. Additionally, all of her official artwork and sprites have the exact same face, implying she's rather expressionless too. After you win the gym battle, she has a Not So Stoic moment but quickly becomes embarrassed by it. For whatever reason both the anime and PokĂ©mon Adventures have her being considerably more emotional, to the point where she's a Genki Girl in the anime. The animated trailer for PokĂ©mon Black 2 and White 2 also has her less stoic than usual.
  • Eifer Skute of RosenkreuzStilette could also count as an Emotionless Girl, since she often appears to be cool-headed and mature and rarely smiles. However, she can sometimes get violently-fluctuating emotions and therefore sometimes act out of character. Plus, she seems to carry strong emotions towards Freudia. There's a perfectly good reason for this; she's actually a clone of Freudia created by Iris, hiding her true hair and eye colors (which are exactly identical to Freu's own) until the time is right.
  • Eleanor, the "Cold Princess" in Rule of Rose - the least developed of the Aristocrats, almost nothing is known about her except that she loves birds and fantasizes about flying away from everything. When her beloved pet bird dies in the "Bird of Happiness" chapter, she just throws its corpse back in the cage without the tiniest speck of visible emotion and walks off.
  • Somewhere in between this and a fully-fledged Robot Girl is Aki Zeta-Five, leader of the Cybernetic Consciousness in the expansion pack to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. She would pretty much count as a Nagato expy if the game wasn't 8 years older. She's fully human (born Aki Luttinen in Norway—don't ask why she has a Finnish name) who was merged with/possessed by an artificial intelligence like the rest of her faction.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Sonic meets a princess named Elise who has clearly suppressed her emotions (though she is much nicer to others than the standard). Throughout the course of their story, Sonic gets her to eventually open up, which leads to an apparent attraction towards Sonic. It's eventually revealed that the reason she suppressed her emotions was that her father told her not to cry, or else she would unleash the fire beast Iblis on the world.
  • Amy from SoulCalibur can come off as one of these, although it was stated that she locks her emotions away, so it's possible that it's all a facade.
  • Vasilios Cosmos (a guy) of Space Colony, withdrawn and doesn't consider himself human.
  • In Suikoden V, Sagiri manages to stand out due to this trope. Rather than having a perfectly straight face, her expression is frozen in a permanent creepy smile, no matter how she feels. Combined with the way she speaks, she comes across as rather spooky, even BEFORE you learn her backstory: She's a former member of the Nether Gate, a clan of fanatical assassins who don't recruit new members - they raise them. Trained from infancy to be an assassin, she was taught to put on a childish, innocent smile to help her approach her unwitting targets... even though she's a grown woman now, and even though she escaped from the cult more than 8 years ago, her face remains set in that same smile.
  • Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 features a male variant in Ace Gozzo, who considers himself a machine. When he's dying and asked if he finally feels anything, Ace asks why he has to feel anything. He failed in his purpose and his life will end soon, and there's nothing wrong with that.
  • Presea Combatir of Tales of Symphonia was, among other side-effects, robbed of her emotions when implanted with an Exsphere without a Key Crest. She became so robotically narrow-minded that she didn't even notice her father had died in his bed years ago, though his body lay there decaying the whole time. She gets better when she joins the heroes, who give her a Key Crest, but then she has to deal with the pain of everything that's happened while she was like that. She still gives off the impression of being emotionless even in the sequel, though she proves she's found a sense of humor within moments of her first appearance.
  • Ashley from the WarioWare series. The most emotion she shows outside of her theme tune is a tiny smile at successfully turning a plant into a giant monster.
  • Princess Katrina of Wild ARMs XF. Although she's said to only not understand the concept of fear, she doesn't seem to feel much in the way of anything else, either.
  • Yandere Simulator
    • The intro has the Villain Protagonist explain that she's never experienced emotions before, up until she met her Senpai. At which point, she experienced love for the first time. She soon felt rage when she met Osana, the first rival. What she does next is up to the player and how they choose to eliminate the rivals. It's eventually revealed that she has an unnamed medical condition that causes her to be emotionless, and she fakes having them around her father because she knows it bothers him.
    "I can't feel anything. For as long as I can remember, I've never been able to feel emotions. I pretend to be normal when I'm around other people, but on the inside, I feel nothing. It's not as bad as it may sound. I know that I'm broken, but I don't care. This is normal for me. But everything changed when I met him... my Senpai."
    • Yan-chan's mother Ryoba was very similar to her daughter, if not to the extremes Ayano gets to: she's capable of feeling annoyance, nerves, and pity, but only after meeting her Senpai, Jokichi. Like Ayano, she faked her emotions as well to seem like a sweet innocent girl in order to get away with murder. This is why she's unconcerned with her daughter's emotionless state (she figures Ayano will be just like her and start experiencing them once she meets her Senpai) and why Jokichi was desperate to find some sort of cure for her, leading Ayano to fake it for his sake (he doesn't want anyone else to go through what he did as Ryoba's Senpai).

    Visual Novels 
  • In Ascension (2013), there's two races whose females are this. First are the female Nobles, and second are the female Moon elves. However the first is because they have no feelings whatsoever, while the second simply don't show them.
  • Aselia and the minor spirit Nanaru in Aselia the Eternal - The Spirit of Eternity Sword are both rather emotionless. The latter isn't even an exaggeration or merely based on her behavior since her profile indicates that her sword has eaten away most of her personality. She genuinely feels very little until she gets to know Yuuto.
  • The player character, Cardia, starts out this way in Code:Realize. Actually, she did develop emotions once in the past. She started off as emotionless, then gradually grew curious about the outside world and eventually wound up befriending a woman named Elaine and her daughter, Etty. Elaine took Cardia in when she was being chased by an angry mob, and so Cardia gradually grew to care for Elaine and Etty. Tragedy strikes, however, when Elaine falls ill due to Cardia's poison. After that, Cardia returns to the mansion where she first awoke and succeeds in killing off nearly all her emotions so that she could live her life as a harmless doll and never harm anyone ever again, making this simultaneously a subversion and played straight. Eventually, she does develop feelings for one of the eligible bachelors after spending time with all of them and becomes a full-fledged person.
  • Danganronpa:
    • Kyoko Kirigiri of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc has a calm voice and blank face at almost all times. She mentions, if the player decides to get to know her better, that she actually intentionally evokes this image, as it both makes her hard to read and gives other people someone to lean on in times of emotional stress. As the game goes on, this gets subverted and she begins opening up to others more.
    • Maki Harukawa of Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony is an even stronger example, as she was trained as an assassin and her line of work caused her to gradually lose her emotions. Regaining them through her connection with others is a huge part of her Character Development.
  • fault - milestone one has the original Rune as she is completely incapable of feeling any emotion.
  • The Fruit of Grisaia has Sachi Komine, who only seems to have one emotional setting: polite friendliness. And nothing else. She was formerly a Genki Girl, but this part of her personality was utterly destroyed when she watched her parents get run over by a car in front of her.
  • Mio from Little Busters! is almost always found stoically reading books on her own away from others, and even when she's brought into the group she speaks with a very soft, calm bordering on apathetic tone and very rarely shows any extreme emotion. It does happen now and then, though, and Mio is an example of the Emotionally Repressed subset as deep-down she holds a shit-load of guilt based on an imagined sin she committed against an old friend of hers.
  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney:
    • Lana Skye, who had shut herself off to the outside world. Her control cracks when it appears her sister Ema is being accused of murder; she throws herself on the witness stand in a desperate panic. At the very end, when everything is settled she finally smiles.
    • Vera Misham in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is of the repressed type. She never changes her facial expression, instead drawing smilies on a notebook she always carries with her. In the good ending, she gives a proper smile at last.
    • Agent Shih-na in Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth always wears a stern, vacant expression and speaks in very short, to-the-point phrases (presumably in a very flat voice, if the game had real voices). This is to mask the fact she is actually a mole who infiltrated Interpol and her actual personality is quite jovial.
  • Whatever emotion Kakuya from Spirit Hunter: NG claims to experience is not reflected in her perpetually stoic expression and voice.
  • Tsukihime:
    • Hisui seems to follow this trope at first, though it becomes apparent fairly quickly that she just suppresses her emotions very well. The real emotionless girl is actually the ever-smiling Kohaku. Shiki discusses this at the end of her route, saying that despite Hisui seemingly emotionless demeanor, she actually shows a full range of emotions from sadness to fear to occasionally happiness, while Kohaku can barely express herself beyond her smile.
    • You also learn in the first route that Arcueid Brunestud started out as one, until Shiki killed her and, by her own admission, broke 'something' inside her, resulting in the energetic, friendly version we're familiar with.
  • Bernkastel from Umineko: When They Cry is this, having literally no expression on her face aside from her eyes moving. But starting at the end of EP4 she becomes more expressive, and her true nature is revealed.

    Web Animation 
  • Dreamscape: Keela is an Emotionless Girl mostly as a result of having her soul destroyed. She never really shows much of a reaction to anything.
  • DSBT InsaniT: Killdra is one on the outside, but deep down she has a passion for singing and is a little insecure.

    Webcomics 
  • Archipelago: Lucinda, who became one of those by a Deal with the Devil after a mysterious man seduced her and broke her heart. She is now the second-in-command of the villain crew, mostly as the Only Sane Woman among pirates who'd rather Rape, Pillage, and Burn than follow a boring goal.
  • The main character of Armless Amy tends to react with absolute indifference towards all the horrifying things happening in each chapter. At worst, she seems slightly shocked by something, but nothing more than that.
  • Bomango: Cora May has the attitude of a cold pragmatic businesswoman. One strip shows her to be Not So Stoic, though.
  • Wanda Firebaugh from Erfworld, who also lampshades her status.
    Wanda: I don't laugh.
  • Sara Amraphel from Errant Story, often lampshaded, and made disturbing in a sequence where for the purposes of subterfuge, she assumes an appearance and attitude that are very out-of-character for her.
  • In Flipside:
    • After The Reveal Maytag herself is shown to be this since childhood, eventually learning to feign emotional reactions to fit in and deflect suspicion. Whether she's Becoming the Mask and developing genuine emotional bonds to people is something not even she is sure of.
    • The Creepy Enfant Terrible Melter is a rare male example, showing no emotion even when committing murder or kidnapping people for experimentation. Justified in that he's an Artificial Human that the Thin Man created in an attempt to get into an area that's protected by a devastating Emotion Bomb field.
  • Flore in Frivolesque never smiles, and has heavy bangs hiding her eyebrows, making her look quite emotionless and distant, and a tad creepy as well. Everyone in-universe seems to think she is totally adorable though.
  • Susan, from El Goonish Shive shows very little emotion most of the time, though it's less extreme than most examples and there have been a number of cases of explosive rage. Notably, her emotionlessness has a Freudian Excuse of being nearly killed by a vamp...aberration, then having the supposedly benign immortals recruit her, as a young girl, to kill said aberration. The event, understandably, left her mildly traumatized. She's recently been shown getting better and has even been seen to smile.
  • Gunnerkrigg Court:
    • Antimony is both stoic due to a recent tragedy and unflappable in the face of weirdness due to a very unusual childhood. She soon begins opening up to her best friend, but her unnervingly emotionless demeanor shows no sign of abating. Recent events suggest that the appearance of emotions on Antimony's face is directly related to her friendship with Kat. Because she gets really creepy when Kat is in trouble. Also, it turned out that there is a limit to how far she will try to look blank, but pushing her to this point is not only mean, it violates basic fire safety.
    • Then there's Jones, who is even more of a blank slate. Whether she's expositing, flirting, intentionally ticking her student off, or even affirming that something was "hilarious", her expression does not change. Antimony herself has speculated that Jones might be a robot masquerading as a human, but Jones denies this. Later developments have shown that Jones is neither robot nor human, but an immortal being who's been around since the planet's birth.
      a forum fan: It almost looks like Jones is doing something somewhat resembling the idea of a smile in that second panel.
  • Aradia in Homestuck. Because she's dead. Later on, she seems to be recovering after being transplanted into a robot body, but this ends up not particularly helping: most of the time she's just as flat as before, but occasionally she'll get angry and violently flip the hell out. Even later, however, her dreamself's awakening and ascension to the God Tiers causes her to genuinely begin feeling and emoting again.
  • Jack: The American Ghost: The main character, Go-Eun, doesn't feel things very strongly, and can keep a cool expression in even the most frightening situations (although even she has her limits). It's to the point some characters call her scarier than any haunted house. Although, she does begin to eventually express herself more and more as the series goes on.
  • In Luminary Children, the author even made a note that Aurelia's lines are spoken in a cold, emotionless voice.
  • Shigeo "Mob" Kageyama from Mob Psycho 100 starts out trying to be one of these, due to his powers growing more unstable as his emotions build up inside him. As he gets a better handle on his powers, he starts letting himself express himself more.
  • Violet from Monster Pulse is introduced as such, implied to be a product of the monsterization of her brain (as a picture from before shows her smiling). She's actually forced to suppress her emotions because they are now amplified to unhealthy levels.
  • Ozy of Ozy and Millie has been mistaken for this at times. He tries to be The Stoic, although part of it may be that he just enjoys playing a foil to Millie. And sometimes his father. And then there's his family...
  • For an example of an Emotionless Girl who doesn't overlap with the Shrinking Violet in romantic situations, see the 'Su Cool' LovSit story from the Tsunami Channel. Saki dearly loves the protagonist, but doesn't see why being embarrassed about it - or indeed, why calmly confessing in the middle of the classroom when everyone is having lunch - is likely to give Kei a heart attack.

    Web Original 
  • Alysia Morales from Arcana Magi must remain emotionless or she will suffer physically.
  • Killerbunnies' Oleander Cloris (otherwise known as "Imogene"), whose personality can be described as "vague and dull" has some shades of this. One could chalk it up to her experiences or the head injury she sustained (which, weirdly enough, the scar from said injury is where her frontal lobe is).
  • Helen, from Twig, is an interesting variation in that she is actually a nonhuman Tyke Bomb designed to look like a child, who is out of necessity a Master Actor. She feels emotions, but as they're disconnected from her instinctive physical reactions, she's actually at her most genuine with the people she cares for when she speaks in flat tones without emotion, and her friends consider it extremely worrying and unsettling if she feels the need to display emotion with physical cues while alone with them.

    Web Videos 

    Western Animation 
  • From the Avatar series:
  • Daria is a rare emotionless main character. She's naturally very stoic, a perennial Deadpan Snarker, and by her own admission, pushes people away to avoid getting hurt. Trying to open up at least a little and express how she feels is her major arc over the course of the series.
  • Mandy in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy seems to have only three major emotions: Indifference, disgust, and anger. The rarity of her smiles, especially in the later seasons was lampshaded in "My Fair Mandy", where her attempt at a cheerful smile ended up destroying the universe, and put them in one of McCracken's, specifically, The Powerpuff Girls (1998). Giving a look of genuine sadness is even rarer; she's only done it once. She's also shown shock and confusion, but that's understandable given the kind of people/things she hangs out with.
  • Maud Pie in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, who is about as emotionless as the rocks she is obsessed with, which is a sharp contrast to her sister Pinkie Pie. She does show slight emotion whenever she talks about how much she loves her sister, or when Pinkie Pie is in extreme danger. Some lines from her seem to subvert it, suggesting Maud might be just as emotional as others but simply be unable to express those emotions in a way that ponies (other than Pinkie) can identify.
  • Downplayed with Sapphire in Steven Universe. She normally has a calm exterior but also is seen laughing when being Sickeningly Sweethearts with Ruby, embarrassed when called by her pet name, and crying when she realizes how she's been unintentionally insensitive to Ruby's feelings and by extension upsetting Steven. By the time of "Hit the Diamond", she's just as flirty and distracted as Ruby is.
  • Raven from Teen Titans (2003) (emotionally repressed out of necessity more than choice). She becomes more and more open as the series progresses. Though Raven can actually be intensely emotional — you do not want to see her angry. She needs to stay repressed in order to avoid losing control of her powers and/or unleashing her Superpowered Evil Side.
  • Soundwave and Shockwave from The Transformers series get an honorable mention. Not specifically girls but robotic geniuses who put fear into this trope as one of Megatron's most intelligent and powerful allies. These two are infamous for concealing their emotions and any foolish Autobot who underestimates them should prepare to run and run fast.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Emotionless Boy, Emotionally Repressed Girl

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Mrs. Rogers

Mrs. Rogers' ordinary demeanor is so emotionless it's almost robotic.

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