For when the sun itself just isn't enough to brighten the day.
"As I'm looking straight at the piercing sky, I can feel your presence,
And I hold out my hands at the warm sunlight of that sunflower of happiness-looking sun.
I was born here to meet you,
Even without saying anything, just being able to be by your side is enough.
I'm your flower, I want to shine for you, just gaze at me,
I want to shine with the strength of the mid-summer flower,
You're my sunshine, you're my every happiness, is this destiny?
I love you, who's like a dazzling sun!"
And I hold out my hands at the warm sunlight of that sunflower of happiness-looking sun.
I was born here to meet you,
Even without saying anything, just being able to be by your side is enough.
I'm your flower, I want to shine for you, just gaze at me,
I want to shine with the strength of the mid-summer flower,
You're my sunshine, you're my every happiness, is this destiny?
I love you, who's like a dazzling sun!"
A flower native to North America that's been transported all over the world where it readily grows in abundance, the sunflower holds a powerful cultural image. Being a beautiful and colorful flower that grows easily, but needs lots of sunlight to be at its brightest, it symbolizes energy and happiness. An endless field of sunflowers is quite a breathtaking view to hold. Sunflower seeds are also highly nutritious, and thus are attractive to small finch-type birds, as well as humans. Even sunflower oil is bright gold, and has its own nutritious uses.
The sunflower blossom was an emblem of the "aesthetic" movement of the 19th century; it came to symbolize connections between the sun, fire, and warmth — both physical and metaphorical. It was a popular motif because its bold color and simple shape could be stylized, much like the chrysanthemum of Japanese art, which had a strong influence on the movement.
In official sources, the sunflower has a meaning of adoration and constancy, since the sunflower always turns towards the sun throughout the day; in common knowledge and fiction, people associated with sunflowers are more often than not seen as cheerful, energetic, and happy-go-lucky people who brighten up everybody and everything else around them.
In a work of fiction that represent characters with a symbolic flower, the sunflower will very likely be attributed to the Genki Girl.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Full Metal Panic!, a short story is dedicated to Tessa spending some holidays at a peaceful farm in a remote location of Japan. She lives there some of the most wonderful moments in her life, and in the manga, one of the last shots of the story is herself in the middle of a large sunflower field, smiling happily.
- The first volume's cover of Yotsuba&! depicts Yotsuba holding a bunch of sunflowers plucked out of the ground. She later buys sunflowers (and a whole lot more) from Jumbo's flower shop and, as the tsukitsukiboushi fairy, pulls up another to use as a magic wand.
- Subverted in one short story printed in the Halloween manga magazine. There, the sunflowers turn out to be anthropophagous and mobile, at the end of the story marching down Main Street and eating people as they go. (And this was not the most preposterous event in the story, either.)
- In one of his more deredere moments, Russia from Hetalia: Axis Powers mentions that he dreams about living in a warm place surrounded by sunflowers. Naturally, Fanart hardly shows him without them.
- Aside from the symbolism of warmth, there may be another possible, more pragmatic explanation for this sunflower motif: sunflower seeds are a very popular food item in Russia.
- Interestingly enough, sunflowers are said to be the national flower and one of the chief crops of Ukraine. Make of that what you will.
- Aside from the symbolism of warmth, there may be another possible, more pragmatic explanation for this sunflower motif: sunflower seeds are a very popular food item in Russia.
- An early arc of Get Backers revolved about the retrieval of a 13th painting of Van Gogh's Sunflowers series that emerged recently and got stolen by Kaitou Clayman. Throughout this arc, the painting gives a powerful and heartwarming impression to all the main characters that see it, with Ginji even saying the following: "I don't know anything about art, but... How to say... When looking at it, I can't take my eyes off it..."
- Sunflower is the motif of two Pretty Cure heroines, Cure Bloom in Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star and Cure Sunshine in HeartCatch Pretty Cure!.
- An aversion: in Rosario + Vampire, episodes 9 and 10, "Summer Vacation and Vampire" and "Sunflower and Vampire", the Newspaper club discover a gorgeous beach in the human world overlooked by a huge field of sunflowers. It turns out to be the home of Dark Magical Girl Ruby, who sees the looming loss to developers as an End of an Age.
- In Samurai Champloo, Plucky Girl Fuu is looking for "the Samurai who smells of Sunflowers". This samurai actually is Fuu's father, and her only memory of him is a departing figure shifting through a field of sunflowers. In the series, sunflowers seem to be associated with memory, youth, and Christianity.
- Himawari!, and its similarly-named main character, both mean "sunflower", and the symbolism of the flower is especially prominent, as Himawari herself is the happy-go-lucky go-getter sort of heroine who wants to save everybody.
- Hidamari Sketch x Hoshimittsu uses floral motifs for its video releases, assigning one to each of the six tenants. The ever-bubbly and inquisitive Miyako gets the sunflower.
- ×××HOLiC: Himawari (the Japanese for sunflower) looks like a Genki Girl at first, but dig deeper and one discovers that she's actually a Stepford Smiler.
- Kamio Misuzu from AIR is associated with sunflowers, especially in the official art. She gave her very best before she Go Out with a Smile.
- Hana-Kimi has a flower motif for each character. Guess what flower is associated with Mizuki.
- The opening of Bamboo Blade begins with a row of sunflowers popping into the screen, the flowers rotating quickly and the last one filing the entire screen used as a frame for the main characters, with team captain Kirino Chiba to start it off. Kirino also owns a somewhat gaudy umbrella with a sunflower pattern.
- Digimon Data Squad sort of plays with this trope - Sunflowmon is the Adult form of Yoshino's partner Lalamon, but Yoshino has a crippling inferiority complex which prevents her from fulfilling this trope. She gets over it, but by then, Lalamon has gained access to a stronger evolved form which isn't sunflower-themed.
- From Boruto, Naruto and Hinata's youngest daughter, Himawari Uzumaki (whose name also means "sunflower") always has a cheerful disposition that matches her name. She is also associated with sunflowers, like when Ino gives get a pair of these as a gift.
Arts
- In a likely Trope Maker, Vincent van Gogh famously made several spectacularly vibrant paintings of sunflowers
. Personality-wise, though, Van Gogh himself was not always so cheerful.
- Inverted by artist Lee Brown Coye (known for his illustrations for Weird Tales): he put sunflowers in the foreground of houses that were not exactly sweet and sunny places, like Nahum Gardner's farmhouse.◊
Card Games
- In the Tarot Cards, sunflowers appear in some versions of The Sun, representing happiness, optimism, and accomplishment.
Comic Books
- Tintin: In The Adventures of Tintin, the original French name of Professor Calculus is "Professeur Tournesol", tournesol being the French name for sunflower. The pun was not lost, as a Fruit D'Or, a famous French producer of sunflower-based products, most notably sunflower oil, made ads showing Calculus promoting the beneficial effects of said oil for a balanced diet, so much that it makes him fly.
Films — Animated
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: Miles Morales is a bright, passionate kid full of potential, and throughout the movie, he hums "Sunflower" by Post Malone.
- Tangled has Rapunzel, who is the princess of Corona, a kingdom with a sunflower as its symbol. She's The Pollyanna, of course. Eugene also calls her Sunflower as a term of endearment in Tangled: The Series.
Films — Live-Action
- In Harold and Maude, cheerful Blithe Spirit Maude is associated with sunflowers.
Literature
- In the picture book The Garden Of Happiness, Marisol finds a seed and plants it in her local community garden. After dutifully watering and caring for it, it grows into a huge sunflower that makes everyone who sees it smile. Sadly, its time comes, and it wilts and dies, leaving Marisol sad. But one day, she looks down the block to see that the teenagers have painted sunflowers all over the brick wall across the street from the garden, filling her with joy once again.
- In Harry Potter Luna Lovegood is typically very cheerful and optimistic. She wears a sunflower to a wedding, believing that bright yellow ("sun colors" as she puts it) will be good luck for the bride and groom.
Live-Action TV
- Kaylee of Firefly is quite associated with sunflowers as shown in the pilot, and is by far the most cheerful of the main crew of Serenity.
- Subverted in The Librarians 2014 "...And the Curse of Cindy": Cindy has a sunflower motif to everything in her cult, to hide the fact that she's miserable and hates everyone. Double Subverted when we learn she wore a sunflower when she was a cheerful Naïve Newcomer on a reality show, before the cruelty of the show changed her, and when Ezekiel reminds her who she used to be.
Music
- Tears for Fears: Sunflowers are the Flower Motif of The Seeds of Love, and they're used as the late 1980s equivalent of the 1960s flower power movement. The sunflower is thus an emblem for hope, peace and love.
Myths & Religion
- Averted in Classical Mythology. Clytie was a maiden who fell in love with Helios, the sun god. He would have nothing to do with her, so she spent all her days sitting outside watching him cross the sky. Eventually, she wasted away and became a sunflower, always turning to watch the sun, and shedding tears (i.e. dropping seeds) over his rejection. (Different versions of the myth name different heliotropic or sun-following flowers.)
Video Games
- In Super Mario Sunshine, the outside section of Pinna Park has a field of sentient sunflowers that will give Mario gold coins if he waters them. It's a needed source of coins if the player wants to get the level's 100-coin award Shine.
- In Parappa The Rapper, the title character's girlfriend, Sunny Funny, is a cheerful anthropomorphic sunflower-like flower.
- In both the game and the tie-in manga of Boktai, the hero's sidekick is a talking sunflower.
- Endless Nightmare: Prison: Sunflowers are noted to be the favorite flowers of Viola, the hero Scott's wife, a dedicated spouse and mother who loves her family, prior to her passing. From holding a huge bouquet of sunflowers on her wedding day, to decorating the house with sunflowers for bringing in a sunny ambience, right up to Scott's flashback of her death - Viola's blanketed corpse in a morgue has a sunflower on it.
- In Mother 3, Lucas associates sunflowers to his beloved mother (they were her favorite flowers, and there is even a patch of them near her grave), causing the flowers to appear many times during the game. This even goes as far as Lucas eventually meeting the ghost of his mother in a field of sunflowers.
- Onmyoji: Hiyoribō has a sunflower motif. She is also a yōkai with The Power of the Sun who only goes outside in sunny weather, is a healer-type and has a pleasant personality.
- Pokémon Gold and Silver has Sunflora, based off a sunflower. In the main games, it can become a Lethal Joke Character when under Sunny Day or Trick Room conditions. In the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, one of the members of Wigglytuff's Guild is a Genki Girl Sunflora.
- In Plants vs. Zombies, the sunflower (and the twin sunflower upgrade) supplies sun, which is used to place most types of plants. Fitting the personality description above, the sunflower is a smiling, bouncing, happy looking plant.
- The final shot of Kohaku's True Ending in Tsukihime has her waiting for Shiki in a sunflower field with outstretched arms and a bright smile. Considering her past history, this symbolizes the huge internal journey she made from a Shrinking Violet to Stepford Smiler and then a to a true Genki Girl, thanks to Shiki.
- Averted with Yuuka Kazami from Touhou Project, a youkai of flowers who live in a field of sunflowers and uses them in her attacks. The canon version is a Troll who loves rubbing people the wrong way. In fanon there are several popular depictions: youkai moe, Ax-Crazy genocider, or the "Ultimate Sadistic Creature" .note
- In Persona 3 Portable, Yukari asks the female protagonist what flower she likes during a Social Link event. If you choose sunflowers, she remarks that it fits you, since the main character is apparently a very happy, energetic girl.
- As you might expect, this trope is present in Sharin no Kuni. Played with, though, as the titular "sunflower girl" is the antithesis of this trope at first.
- League of Legends champion Leona is nearly a sun goddess incarnate, and her playful "Pool Party Leona" alternate costume depicts her lounging in her bathing suit, festooned with sunflowers.
- Standing near a sunflower in Terraria gives Player Characters the "Happy" buff, which slightly increases their movement speed and lowers enemy spawn ratio. They are also apparently "happy" enough to serve as a barrier to the Corruption.
- In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, one of Petra's preferred gifts is a sunflower, suiting her optimistic, hard-working, and cheerful personality.
- Ensemble Stars!: The 'Summer Flowers' gacha set pairs a number of characters with flowers that suit them, and upbeat, energetic, always-smiling Hinata gets sunflowers.
- In the self-help app game Finch, one of the micropets is Sunny the Seedling, a smiling sunflower in a pot. Her flavor text reads, "Sunny hopes your day will be as bright as her smile! She loves the sunshine, but she also knows some rain helps us grow even stronger."
Visual Novels
- Subverted with Juniper Woods in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies. She always wears at least one sunflower but is incredibly meek and often sickly. If she gets too nervous or excited, she starts coughing and uses her sunflower as an inhaler.
- Tokimeki Memorial
- The first Tokimeki Memorial has Yumi Saotome getting the sunflower as her symbolic flower◊. She too is the Genki Girl of her game, and also has the highest bombing rate between all the girls.
- Tokimeki Memorial 2:
- Hikari Hinomoto, the heroine of the game and childhood friend of the main protagonist, is the game's resident Genki Girl, and her symbolic flower is the sunflower. She's regularly shown holding sunflowers in official arts. She also fits the adoration symbolism, as she can be quite the Clingy Jealous Girl if the protagonist sets his eyes on other girls, most notably their Cool Big Sis Kasumi, and is more prone to "bomb" him out of jealousy and yearning than other girls.
- Ironically, the same game has an aversion to the trope: the Bad Ending's theme song is named "Himawari", which means "sunflower" in Japanese; the song is a reflection of the protagonist having failed to score the girl he loves, saying that "he's a sunflower, and she's his sun", but will now only meet her in his dreams.
- The first Tokimeki Memorial has Yumi Saotome getting the sunflower as her symbolic flower
- In Doki Doki Literature Club!, Sayori is also the protagonist's childhood friend and a Genki Girl who brightens the atmosphere at the titular club by cheering up the others when they are in conflict. No actual sunflower appears in the story, but one official piece of art by the game's artist Satchely has her holding a sunflower and saying "It will be all right!".
Web Comics
- In Koan of the Day, the sunflower is an actual character who is introduced in this koan.
