Manga stories which openly espouse
shipping will usually at some point throw in a
Love Chart into the back pages. Usually simplified as much as feasible, with little portraits connected via color-coded arrows. Occasionally, some pithy or more detailed quote is put on the arrows to clarify. Outside
shoujo, this usually is done as parody or otherwise to reference a
convoluted love triangle in the story.
Colors usually include "romantic love", "friendship", "family", "rivalry", "hatred", and "who the hell knows?" A double-sided arrow means the emotion is shared by both, otherwise
two lines are used, with the individual feelings indicated.
Sometimes such a chart is drawn up
within the story by one of the characters.
Recently used in a lot of
Role Playing Games with a large cast of characters, as well. See also
Summers Family Tree, which also involves convoluted relationships - and usually prompts a similar chart as well. If characters are doing the
Dating Do Si Do - expect the
Love Chart to be more of a spiral or mobius strip.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Sora No Otoshimono features a chart. It includes the dog.
- Love Hina and Mahou Sensei Negima (both written by Ken Akamatsu) have at one time or another had a character draw up a chart which tallied up in numeric form the relative levels of attraction/love that a group of girls has for the series' male lead.
- Chamo tries to pull out his chart
◊ (see discussion) at two different points, only to be thwarted each time. The chart has separate categories for friendship, romance, lust, and so forth. The results aren't all that surprising for most, but Eva? Low affection + high lust = she just wants to rape the poor kid. Wait, that isn't surprising either.◊
- There's also this◊, which shows the various relationships between the characters, as of chapter 255, though only the pink arrows indicate romantic relationships *
The best that my non-Japanese-speaking self can do is- pink=romantic, red=pactio, yellow=friend/rival, blue=familial, green=master/student. Not sure what the dotted lines and other colors mean.
- Genshiken includes a love chart for Show Within A Show KujibikiUnbalance at one point. In a later volume, as a joke, it includes one for Genshiken itself, even though the relationships are pretty self-explanitory.
- Subverted in Monster. After about halfway through the series, volumes began featuring complex connection charts◊ between a mere fraction of the characters in the series...Yet there's rarely even one romantic entanglement shown.
- Nina is clearly very fond of Tenma, as shown by the last moments of the show. However, this may simply be non-romantic admiration and respect especially since, though looking quite young, Tenma is almost twice her age.
- Let us not forget Tenma's own proclamation of "what would I do without you" to Nina. Admittedly, he was desperately trying to stop her from killing herself, but it's still a rather strange thing to say considering their thus-far platonic relationship.
- The Love Dodecahedron in Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma 1/2 is fairly complex. Just look at the chart◊.
- Since Seven Arcs loves to tease the shippers, a relationship chart of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is released every now and then. Of course, since Seven Arcs loves to tease the shippers, anyone not married is listed as "best friends" at best. Much pointing and laughing are probably involved here.
- One of these is at the front of the manga Sgt. Frog. Usually featuring every minor recurring character. It gets a bit cramped.
Comic Books
- The back of the third issue of Scott Pilgrim.
- Not quite the same thing, but a long-running joke in X-Men fandom is the the nigh-impossibility of charting the kinship relations of the Summers Family Tree. The actual resulting graph looks something like a plate of spaghetti.
- For those not up on these matters, There's at least one edge labeled "Alternate Universe Far Future Clone."
Fan Fiction
- A version of this was used in The Mad Scientist Wars, in a non-romantic version. The Tinker Family, after discovering that The Tinker Twins had adopted Desius and that Vladimir was the long-lost father of Chic Geek, Wallace Cane set out to create such a chart- It took up most of a table.
Film
- Two of these are shown onscreen and described by the narrator partway through Brand Upon the Brain, giving to the fact that viewers are not geniuses. Each only contains three people, though, and each contains the same three people—the confusion comes from factoring in one character's Sweet Polly Oliver act.
Live Action TV
Video Games
- The Star Fox 64 player's guide included one of these for all the major characters.
- Used in Fire Emblem 10, albeit more to depict character's military allegiences/family treesecret identities, with only a few critical romantic/familial bonds depicted; several characters had Multiple Endings, after all.
- Several of these have been put out for Final Fantasy VII - most in the Anniversary Book which had one for every spin-off, but the most comprehensive one was in the original Ultimania guide which even included several minor characters such as Myrna, Elmyra, and Dio.
- A comprehensive chart◊ for Tsukihime, Kara No Kyoukai, Fate Stay Night and Melty Blood. Please note that even this horrible jumbled mess of relationships doesn't cover everything (No Rider -Love-> Shirou, Zouken -Love-> Justizia etc) and Fate Zero was never added to the mix. Argh...
Web Comics
- Parodied in these two Sluggy Freelance strips.
- And used straight in the same comic here. Of course it's gotten considerably more complicated since then.
- Lampshaded in Questionable Content in this comic and the next when Faye's psychologist has to make a Love Chart with thumbtacks and string.
- Played straight by Josh Lesnick, author of Girly (Although it is currently outdated by two years, and found only on his deviantART page here).
- Parodied by xkcd here: a particular nerd tries to use graph theory to find the "optimal" seating arrangement. And then again, where a couple decides to go out solely because it'll make their social group's graph symmetrical.
- The Walkyverse has a fan-drawn chart for the core cast◊. Surprisingly complicated for an action-based strip.
- Volume 4 of the collected Order Of The Stick, "Don't Split the Party", features a rather convoluted relationship chart.
- The Author of Amazoness! Recently made up one Here◊. It's fairly comprehensive too.
Real Life
- This troper did one for his town, only to find that everyone was a whore.
- This polyamorous troper made a chart once with her poly, by the end we had to redo it. Making the chart made the relationships stronger.
- This troper's college occasionally makes a Grand Unified Score Chart based on what happened during the year and print it in the yearbook.
- This troper uses these whenever she writes a fanfic or originalfic. It helps a LOT, she reccomends it.
