Oddly Visible Eyebrows

Hair is transparent in the world of Gaea, apparently.

This is not strictly speaking wholly limited to anime and manga, but one of the most noticeable artistic conventions—after the big eyes and small mouth—is the fact that most characters' eyebrows are always visible, even when hair, a hat, or a bandage ought to cover them up. It's not quite as extreme as the American cartoon breakfast cereal spokesman Cap'n Crunch, whose eyebrows are on his hat, but sometimes it does approach that level.

This is a borderline example of Acceptable Breaks from Reality, since it would be very hard to animate a part of the face and not touch the others when you can put the entire facial expression on the front-most layer and edit away to save a lot of time.

Not to be confused with Unusual Eyebrows, which are oddly visible for other reasons.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• Altair: A Record of Battles after Art Evolution happened, particularly since the protagonist has bangs.
• Arashi from Gad Guard's eyebrows are visible from her hair.
• Inuyasha
  • The titular Inuyasha's eyebrows are always visible through his bangs, which is especially jarring since he has Mystical White Hair while his eyebrows are black.
  • This applies to many other characters as well, particularly because nearly all eyebrows seem to be black — and hair, especially on the youkai characters, is not.
• Raimon "Monta" Taro of Eyeshield 21 takes it to nearly Captain Crunch-like levels. It's not that his hair is transparent, it's that his eyebrows simply go OVER his hair.

• Characters' eyebrows can be seen through their hair in MM!.
• K, particularly on Munakata and Weismann (when he has short hair, not so much when his hair is longer and combed back in the first season).

• The eyebrows of the characters in Amagami can be seen from their hair.

• In the K-On! manga, the girls' eyebrows are drawn over their hair. This is averted in the anime adaptation.

• In March Comes in Like a Lion, this is only noticeable with light-haired people, like Smith; everyone else's hair is usually inked completely black. Eventually, the same effect is also done with Rei's eyes whenever they're covered by the frames of his glasses; the covering sections of the frames will be transparent/omitted from the art to leave his eyes visible.
• In Valvrave the Liberator, particularly on A-drei, a white-haired Bishōnen who wears his long bangs over his Glass Eye and scar from when his possessed friend shot him in the second episode.
• Aoi "Inuko" Inuyama from Laid-Back Camp has Big Ol' Eyebrows which are drawn to look as though they're located over her hair rather than under it. They're even visible over the brims of the hats she wears.
• In Cap Revolution Bottleman, part of Hokari Ryo's eyebrow and eye are visible when his hair would otherwise obscure them.

Video Games

• Though generally not a problem in the Ace Attorney series, some sprites with lighter hair display this trait.
  • Most notably Klavier Gavin◊, with his dark eyebrows clearly visible behind his platinum blonde hair.
  • Also evident with Olga Orly's◊ eyebrows, which are surprisingly large for a female, and are able to be seen clearly through her hair.
  • Though not as obvious, this happens on both sets of Ema's sprites, her 16 year-old◊ self and her adult◊ self.
  • Maya's eyebrows can be seen in two of her sprites. In her confidant/cheeky sprite◊ and temporarily in her shock sprite◊.
• Axel from the Disgaea series has eyebrows that float over his hair. It's especially noticeable because A) they are a completely different color from the rest of his hair, and B) they are shaped like lightning bolts◊.
• The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker sets Link's eyes to be visible in front of his hair.
• Street Fighter:
  • Ryu's eyebrows generally overlap on top of his headband. This is perhaps most prominent in his appearance in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
  • Ken is generally drawn with his black eyebrows visible in front of his blond hair. When he appeared in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, this continued for his official render, but not his in-game model.

Web Animation

• RWBY Chibi: The chibi artwork relies on oversized faces that express through eye, eyebrow and mouth movements. Most characters have different types of fringes, but their eyebrows are always visible even when they should be hidden by hair. Eyes are not given the visibility treatment, resulting in characters such as Roman, Cinder and Winter, whose hair covers most of one side of their faces; their affected eyebrows continue to visibly emote over an eye that is either mostly or fully invisible.

Webcomics

• In The Church of Poisoned Minds, the author-avatar has hair that always covers his eyes - but this doesn't stop his eyebrows from showing up whenever they're needed to convey an expression.

• Dumbing of Age has Becky, whose floppy undercut is drawn this way. From certain angles (and constantly when she grows it out into bangs during the timeskip), she also has an Oddly Visible Eye.
• Most characters in Ears for Elves with a fringe have these, though the brows are just a single line, but it's particularly noticeable on Myari. In order for her hair in its high tails to cover the same amount of face as it does on other characters, she has almost no forehead. However, her eyebrows can still be seen◊ the right distance above her eyes — in the middle of her scalp.

• EVIL: Several characters have this, but it's especially noticeable on Gabriel, whose black hair results in their being outlined in white and seeming to hover over his hair.

• In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, Princess Voluptua's antenna eyebrows are usually visible despite her big pompadour of hair.

• A strip in Okashina Okashi parodied this. They were stuck in a Shōjo manga, and one of the guys was trying to make his eyebrows show through his bangs, like a Bishōnen.

• Ebbirnoth from Schlock Mercenary has (weirdly, two) eyebrows which seem to float independently of his single, giant eyeball. They remain external even when his 'head' is armored, and remain even when his eye has been blown off and is regenerating in a giant fishbowl.
• Cassiopeia Quinn includes the part-Xerran Madison Vrax, whose white hair and dark eyebrows exhibit this. Wren, another part-Xerran with a similar hairstyle, also shows this but Kettlehead doesn’t, for whatever reason

• In El Goonish Shive, Dan doesn't always follow this convention but he justifies the more extreme examples in The Rant:
  • Sybil's eyebrows are usually not visible unless showing extreme emotion.
  • Angel form Nanase being completely white didn't have visible eyebrows initially but do on the form's second appearance.

Western Animation

• Hanna-Barbera's Yogi Bear also had eyebrows that could be seen jutting up across the brim of his hat, and indeed, even his eyeballs followed suit, overlapping where a normal hat would clearly have covered part of them up.
• Several characters in The Fairly OddParents! have eyebrows on their hair and at the end of "Emotion Commotion!", Timmy's eyebrows were visible over his bandages.
• Dora the Explorer: Swiper's eyebrows are visible through his mask.

Examples in which all facial features can be seen

Anime and Manga

• The eyebrows and eyes of any character in Revolutionary Girl Utena with bangs that fall into their eyes can be easily seen as they are drawn on their hair.
• Umi Rengaya from the Excel♡Saga manga has hair which shows not only her eyebrows, but also her eyes, chin, and sometimes ears, to highlight both how transparent her attempts to flirt with Shiouji are, and how invisible she is to him.
• Count D in Pet Shop of Horrors has bangs that sometimes fall over his face, without affecting his eyes or brows in any way.
• Most of the characters (Van in particular, as he usually has bangs) in The Vision of Escaflowne, as pictured above.
• Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch
• In Saint Beast, loads of characters have bangs, leading to both eyebrows and eyes showing through their hair.
• Present in 7 Seeds, especially in the case of Mozu, whose baseball cap visor will sometimes become transparent so that his eyes and eyebrows can be clearly seen.

Webcomics

• Daughter of the Lilies: Thistle's eyes and eyebrows are always visible through the impenetrable darkness of her hood. Bonus Comics explain that out-of-universe, it's an artistic concession to show her emotions, and in-universe, it's Justified by the darkness being magical in origin.

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