Warning signs of a character about to become Gonk with love include floating hearts, dislocated jaw bone, profuse sweating, panting, noodleing, redness of the face, and the heart attempting to escape their chest at high velocity. If you or a loved one have become gonk with love, do not be alarmed. These symptoms are often momentary and the affected individual will return to their usual artistic style soon. In extreme cases, it has been known to last for a full montage, but will undo itself as the character becomes tired.
Compare Love Makes You Dumb, when the character's brain is the one that starts malfunctioning instead of their body, and Wild Take, which is when The Take warps someone's face beyond anatomical possibility.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Sanji of One Piece is rather prone to this unfortunate condition, enough that even his new wanted poster (rather than the previous Facial Composite Failure) has a picture of him in such a state, which he isn't too thrilled about.
- A very mild Plot Device in The Seven Deadly Sins, as King thinks that Diane would prefer his Gonkish human form, rather than his child-like faerie form.
- In Gokusen, Kumiko does this when ever she is fawning over Shinohara. Her eyes go from their usual fixed glare to big, sparkly, bishojo-standard and can flick back and forth between panels when the situation calls for it.
- Shuichi of the Boys' Love manga, Gravitation, does this on the rare occasion when something good happens with Yuki.
- In Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan's anime adaptation, Sakura gets all of the mentioned traits whenever he's charmed by a cute girl, and he even snorts like an aroused stallion.
- In Bakuman。 Takagi's face sometimes turns into a weird grimace when his girlfriend Miyoshi does or says something nice, or when she compliments him. Funnily enough, Mashiro occasionally has the same reaction in these moments.
Films — Live-Action
- The Mask: This happens in a scene which pays homage to Tex Avery, with Eye Pop, Jaw Drop, jumping heart and eventual wolf-head whistling (that as the Mask hits his own head in praise, even gets mangled with the hat...).
Live-Action TV
- Sister, Sister: As a reference to zany old cartoons such as those done by Tex Avery and the like, Tamera briefly reacts like this in the intro of one episode when she sees Tia's attractive old friend, by having her eyes bulge and stretch to giant-size and her mouth take the form of an oversized klaxon horn, so as to verbally make the "Aooga" noise so frequently heard in such reactions. It can be seen here.
Web Comics
- Walky falls prey to this in Dumbing of Age when he first sees Dorothy, gaining bug eyes, red cheeks and floaty hearts. He is accompanied by a bar showing his fall into buffoonery.
Web Original
- "7 Awesome Pickup Lines I Learned From Cartoons" is another Tex Avery homage.
Western Animation
- In old Tex Avery cartoons, men would often bug out and even literally turn into wolves at the sight of an attractive woman.
- Starfire of the Teen Titans cartoon is known to do this when coming across something too cute for words.
