Hair Antennae - Television Tropes & Idioms

Two strands of hair that stick up from the top of the head and curve forward like antennae, a style most recently popularized by Love Hina and other works by Ken Akamatsu. Probably will belong to someone... lighter in disposition or in general intellect. Yet another way to quickly and simply add another visual quirk to a character.

If the character has only one strand, it is Idiot Hair.

Examples

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Anime & Manga

Anything by Ken Akamatsu, like Naru and Mutsumi of Love Hina. Also appears in Mahou Sensei Negima! and AI Love you.
- More specifically, Mai in My Santa has prehensile ones which she refers to as her "unhappiness detectors".
- Saotome Haruna's from Mahou Sensei Negima! doubles as "Love Detector".
DearS: Ren. Manga omake plays with the idea of them being real antennae for laughs.
- Also Zombie Loan's Shito, with an omake of these two making some sort of friendship based on their antennae.
Ah! My Goddess: Belldandy may be the Trope Maker. And her current character design has six of them.
Tenjho Tenge: Maya Natsume
- You mean Roach Girl?
Saiyuki: Sha Gojyo. Lampshaded by Son Goku ~~on occasion~~. Whenever he gets tired of calling him "pervy kappa," he calls Gojyo a cockroach.
Sketchbook: Nagisa, who appropriately enough is an insect otaku.
Momo in Manabi Straight has antennae (and hair) long enough some fans affectionately nicknamed her "Cockroach-tan".
Vision of Escaflowne: Hitomi Kanzaki — though her Emo version from The Movie doesn't have them. She has them as a child and back in a more recent flashback. Apparently they symbolize her sunny disposition that a bad case of teenager's angst took away.
Yume in the first Somedays Dreamers. They even had an episode where it played a role in the plot.
Sakura from Card Captor Sakura.
Azuma from Yakitate!! Japan has these with his hairband on.
Gentoku Ryuubi (Liu Bei) from Ikki Tousen.
Tenma from School Rumble.
While Fullmetal Alchemist's Ed Elric has Idiot Hair (despite not being an idiot), his father ~~Hohopapa~~ Van Hohenheim has true Hair Antennae that stick out in front of his face. True to form, he's a Cloudcuckoolander.
- Kimblee, too, although as the resident sociopathic, Psycho for Hire Mad Bomber, he doesn't fit the personality type at all.
Yuri a.k.a. Angel Lily from Wedding Peach has hair like this, although she doesn't fit the ditzy personality part of the description.
Rei from Highschool of the Dead has two antennae.
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid has Rio, Vivio's energetic, martial artist friend. It stays there even when she accesses her personal Adult Mode.
Yosuga no Sora has quite a few: Haruka, Sora, Akira and Yahiro all have those, but Akira's the one and only Cloudcuckoolander to boot.
Shiemi from Blue Exorcist
Kanon Nakagawa from The World God Only Knows has these but is not really a ditz. The goddess inside her however...
Lettuce from Tokyo Mew Mew has these when she transforms. Though they also change size frequently.
Shishiwakamaru from Yu Yu Hakusho was a pretty boy opponent to Team Urameshi in the Dark Tournament. Being a demon who only looks human and has a hidden nasty side, he averts most of the lighter traits of this trope.
The titular Medaka from Medaka Box has these, though they're less noticeable than most.

Comics

Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Johnny C, after he comes back from hell and most of his hair falls out. Literally, all he has left is hair antennae. He's... not like most other examples...
- It symbolizes his newfound desire to shed his impulses and become icily efficient, driven by necessity rather than desire - like an insect.
Filemon from Mortadelo y Filemon. That's all the hair he has.
Monroe, a character from a long-running comic series in Mad Magazine, has hair like this, with the rest of his hair buzzed.
Quick silver has a backwards variant, though how much they stick up depends on who's drawing him.
Pallo from Lions Tigers and Bears. He has three coming out of his mane.
In The Tick comics, Barry Hubris (AKA the other Tick) has hair like this when out of costume.

Video Games

Kingdom Hearts: Larxene with a backwards variant. Unlike most of these examples, she's a Psycho Electro.
Apollo Justice, though they're not natural and he carefully gels them every morning. The form of his antennae are more like a double Idiot Hair, though, with both strands pointing straight up without making a curve.
Vagrant Story: Ashley Riot's antenna actually manage to give off a retro punk vibe.
Final Fantasy X: Seymour. Oh my dear God, Seymour — that is the craziest hair we have ever seen.
- Yunalesca has a more typical version.
Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog has grown a little one of these. He always had a tuft of hair on the front of his head, but since the post-Sonic Adventure redesign it's become long and thin like antennae.
Disgaea: Laharl uses it to cheat his height. Even when he's turned into a Prinny, he keeps them. Helps identify him, although the laugh helps.
- Hair Antennae appear to run in the family, as King Krichevskoy also had them. He loses them while assuming the identity of Vyers, but now they're back as of Disgaea 4.
Ryoji Mochizuki from Persona 3 has hair antennae, contrasting the rest of his hair, which is slicked back.
In his third form, Haseo from .hack//G.U. has this.
As befits a character who has butterflies as a motif, the muse Thaleia in SaGa 2: Hihou Densetsu: Goddess of Destiny has this type of hair.
The female player character in Pokemon Black And White sports a noticeable one.
Otacon sports a mild case in Metal Gear Solid 1.
Makoto Kikuchi and Ritsuko Akizuki from THE iDOLM@STER; the other girls sport mainly Ahoge.

Visual Novels

Clannad: Nagisa Furukawa, her dad Akio, and her mom Sanae (who has THREE strands of hair); seems to run in the family. Ushio , Tomoya and Nagisa's daughter did not inherit the trait though.

Web Comics

Human Aliens in I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space.
Girl in Cat And Girl. They have become progressively longer over the years.
Grace from El Goonish Shive. They actually are antennae. Interestingly enough, as large as they are, they get downright huge in her male form.
In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob, Princess Voluptua is a giant insect disguised as a woman. Consequently, her eyebrows arch up high above her head, resembling antennae.
A Miracle of Science: Dr. Haas. Definitely not the usual personality type, being a dead-serious Mad Scientist with Scary Shiny Glasses. (And the antennae are used as one of the two main visual signifiers of his insanity; they instantly gain their ability to defy gravity when he's infected with Science-Related Memetic Disorder.)
From The Order of the Stick, Elan the bard, his twin brother Nale, and their father Tarquin all have them.
Zukaru and Daisuke from Fiyora Nya
Miriam from Out There.

Web Original

When out of costume, Tumblebee of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe has a pair of hair antennae.

Western Animation

In a rare Western example, The Monarch from The Venture Bros. has antenna eyebrows.
- Well, considering his general motif...
- As does Biff.
Wakfu's Noximilien "Nox" Coxen had these before he went crazy.
Milo from Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire has rather antennae-like bangs, befitting a bookish fellow like him.