A Heart Symbol that, instead of love, indicates the other positive emotions of generalized happiness.
Usually overlapping with Pictorial Speech-Bubble, but may occur with Say It with Hearts too, if not just the symbol is displayed. When used in conjunction with villainous acts, this is a Wicked Heart Symbol as well, since the symbol is used for villainy.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Bleach: Gin's cheerful 'Bye-Bye!♡' after kicking the gang out of Soul Society and cutting off the gatekeeper's arm in the blink of an eye.
- Good Luck Girl!: While fighting with Momiji, Ichiko accidentally throws her out a window and runs to the balcony looking concerned. Her "Did I go too far?" is slightly marred by the big happy heart at the end, however.
- Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-: Once, Kurogane, the gruff Ninja, says "Kurogane is very happy ♡!" It doesn't fit the description of his personality because it's actually the Team Pet Mokona imitating Kurogane's voice.
Video Games
- ANNO: Mutationem: In several moments, there's a brief instant where a heart appears overhead a character when they're overjoyed, such as when Sigrid received a teddy bear in her Surprise Santa Encounter, and when Ayane leaps onto Ann to grab her chest.
- Boxxy Quest: The Healing skill, "Handheart", referencing the gesture. Its Flavor Text is shared across games and indicates it's a Magical Gesture that has the heart mean both love and happiness, where the party member is "Spherian" in BoxxyQuest: The Shifted Spires and "ally" in BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm:
Heal one [party member] with a gesture of love and happiness!
- Dragon Age: Origins: The Relationship Values meter, available for all party members, even non-Love Interests, have the right side, the positive side, be marked by a gold heart symbol.
- Epic Battle Fantasy 3: One of Natalie's victory animations has her saying a pink heart symbol.
- Genshin Impact: Played with during character hangout quests. While hearts are used to keep track of character happiness value, the double meaning of them as romantic was not lost on the developers. The "hangouts" straddle a middle ground as dating sims with enough plausible deniability to be interpreted in either direction.
- Hades: Zagreus' platonic relationships are tracked via red hearts, with a separate (more ornate) heart used if the relationship becomes romantic.
- LunarLux: Colony Affinity, a.k.a how much people of a Colony like Bella, is marked by heart symbols that fill in for each level of Affinity.
- Khimera: Destroy All Monster Girls: When some characters are really happy, a Heart Symbol appears in the corner of their character portrait. Such as at the end of Harvest Event, when the mayor talks about not needing an insurance policy anymore.
- Paleo Pines: Each animal's happiness is represented by a heart that gains more outlines as their relationship with the player increases.
- Soma Spirits: Heart is the Guardian Spirit of Joy, the counterpart to Soul, the Guardian Spirit of Sorrow.
- Stardew Valley: The player's Relationship Values with the locals of Pelican Town and its environs is measured through meters made of heart symbols.
- Super Sized Family: The button to cheer a sad kid up is represented by a heart labelled "Comfort".
- Touhou Project: Touhou Kaeidzuka ~ Phantasmagoria of Flower View: Kazami Yuuka, a long-lived and dangerously powerful youkai who is being accused of causing the bloom of supernatural flowers that kicks off the plot of the game, caps off a threat with a heart, since she's openly amused by the game's cast (understandably) jumping to the conclusion that she had something to do with it, with a happy quote from her to start her boss battle:
In a few hours, you'll become a mist of atoms. ♡
- A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: When the Battle Arena attendant signs up the party for a battle, she says a heart, presumably due to joy at finally signing someone up.
- In Virtual Kitten, a Licensed Game for The Aristocats, you earn hearts by making the cat happy and lose hearts if you make it unhappy.
- Yoshi's Story:
- When the narration talks about spreading cheer, the Yoshis on screen are saying hearts.
- The Super Happy Tree, the central MacGuffin of the story and the magical source of happiness on Yoshi's Island, is marked by the giant smiling Heart Fruit prominently growing on it. Eating a smaller version of the Heart Fruit will make a Yoshi enter a "Super Happy" state granting them invincibility and greatly increased capabilities.
Websites
- Dribbble: The design oriented community, has a ♡ that shifts in color to ♡ and animates in size once clicked. It is meant to indicate a like or approval, they get collected in each user's like directory. Some advertising for the community shows that clicking it initiates a wellspring of hearts like a geyser.
- Instagram: The "like", AKA upvote, symbol is the heart symbol.
- VK.com, the Central Asian social platform that serves as a counterpart to Facebook, uses the heart instead of the latter's thumbs up to symbolize likes due to thumbs-up being offensive
, in some of its target countries.
- On YouTube, the creators of videos can "heart" comments that they enjoy.
Web Video
- Stampy's Lovely World: First created by Crimson Azoth in the 7th episode, "White Chocolate Paradise", the Love Garden is the place where Stampy gives his shout-outs to friends and fans, is represented with a pink heart.
- The titular character in Koishi Komeiji's Heart-Throbbing Adventure has such hearts a lot at the beginning since she's insanely happy. Not only in her own speech, but on the screen itself... and said hearts might have eyes in them too.
Real Life
- The "hand heart" gesture which has been around since the '80s and has been popularised in anime and manga to denote happiness or love.
- The "finger heart" gesture is a Korean celebrity's way of showing appreciation and love to their fans. It has been popularized in the K-Pop community and then spread across the world thanks to the Korean Wave.
