What Is This Thing You Call Love / Anime & Manga

Robotic Examples

• Ken Akamatsu's A.I. Love You, where the main character (the brother) creates an A.I. that he falls in love with, and vice versa. Of course, hilarity ensues:
  Hakase: Wait... Robot capable to feel love = Nobel prize, right?
• Chobits has "persocoms" who express affection and happiness much like humans do. However, the manga has a partial subversion: Freya tells Hideki that despite rumors to the contrary, the Chobits (an affectionate name given to her and Elda, later Chi) cannot feel or love. Hideki accepts this with the reasoning that while Chi's love for him is not the same love that a human would feel, it is still a love that deserves to be treasured.
• In Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure, the love the cyborgized D has for Kazuki enables her to regain her humanity (as well unlock the full potential of the ultimate weapon).
• In The Galaxy Railways, Yuki is a sexaroid assigned to the SDF platoon and doesn't really feel like part of the team at first because she's just programmed to do her job and can be easily be replaced if she gets destroyed. Manabu, however, doesn't buy this and helps her to see that she's more than this.
• In Gundam Build Divers Re:RISE Episode 20, Par and Kazami are notably embarrassed when the EL-Diver May suddenly hugged and even gave a kiss on the cheek to the Not So Stoic Hiroto during his Heroic BSoD. May however doesn't seem to understand the potential implications of it, saying she simply did what her guardian said you should do when someone is sad.
• The Angeloids of Heaven's Lost Property do not understand love, instead interpreting the blushing and feelings in their reactors as "malfunctions". The Ax-Crazy Tykebomb Chaos, thanks to a bad logical interpretation of a line from Ikaros, eventually concludes that love is pain and promptly decides to share it with everyone.
• I'm Gonna Be an Angel!: Noelle many times asks people around her about stuff like love, hugging, kissing, happiness etc. because she's a 1/3 third of an angel soul and doesn't understand the concept of love. The same can be said in case of Mikael and Silky. This is a major theme of the series as well.
• Irresponsible Captain Tylor: Android spy Harumi hasn't been programmed for emotions like fear, guilt and eventually love, but finds herself experiencing them in the face of Tylor's bumbling good nature.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Negima has the Robot Girl Chachamaru, who is just one of the many girls in Negi's class to join his Harem. When her creator discovers this, she goes on a wild, rapid rant about the ethical and philosophical implications of a robot learning to love. See the quotes page.
• Schwi of No Game No Life Zero, an Ex-Machina who has been exiled from her collective due to her efforts to understand "the human heart" causing a critical error. She eventually succeeds thanks to her relationship with the main character, Riku. Right before Jibril blasts her to oblivion, Schwi manages to convince her collective to reconnect her — passing them her love and her understanding of the human heart and making them allies to Riku's cause.
• In SD Gundam Force, the question is the subject of a Zako Zako Hour... two of them. And they still don't figure it out.
• Juria in Yuria 100 Shiki literally doesn't know what love is—it's not in the dictionary that was programmed into her. Yuria turns out not to understand the word either, though it later becomes apparent that she feels something beyond mere lust.

Alien Examples

• The root of the conflict in DearS was that the title species is incapable of loving.
• Dragon Ball Z:
  • Downplayed with the Namekian Piccolo. He doesn't puzzle over it so much as get mildly annoyed by it.
  • Goku asks Chi-Chi what she meant when she said she loved him. Granted, Goku may know love in a friendship sense, but not in a romantic one.
  • In the backstory of Dragon Ball Online, Majin Buu created a wife for himself after reading one of Mr. Satan's adult books and getting lonely for companionship. Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 actually depicts the event, with Buu showing Satan the book and asking what it means, with an embarrassed Satan trying to retrieve the book and change the subject.
• The eponymous character of Eureka Seven, being an Emotionless Girl representative of Starfish Aliens, is extremely confused when someone suggests she's in love with Renton. However, she seems to have figured out familial love on her own, since she adopted children and is very affectionate towards them.
• Happens again in Genesis Climber MOSPEADA/New Generation with Aisha and Sorzie (Marlene/Ariel and Sera), the first Inbit/Invid to be in human forms. Eventually causes their High-Heel–Face Turn.
• Oasis in Kyouran Kazoku Nikki's last arc came to Earth specifically to figure out what love is. She tries to ask Chika and Madara for advice, but this doesn't end well.
• In Parasyte, Migi is baffled when Tamura Reiko, a fellow Parasite (a species of aliens who take over humans' bodies and sustain themselves by eating other humans) cradles her baby to protect him from a hail of bullets by police and dies from her injuries. Migi is confounded, almost angrily asking himself why she didn't fight back and escape; he's told Shinichi numerous times that human concepts like tender emotions and self-sacrifice mean nothing to him, so seeing a powerful Parasite willingly die so her child can live safely makes no sense to him.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • Kyubey is a member of a race of highly advanced Starfish Aliens with a Hive Mind, no empathy and a supreme emphasis on cold-hearted efficiency and logic, stating outright that they consider emotions as a form of mental disorder. "I just don't get it" is almost a Catchphrase for Kyubey, who cannot understand why humans would, for example, become distressed when their soul is displaced from their body into a magical trinket. Mind you, Kyubey is savvy enough about emotions to be aware that humans are experiencing them and even to exploit them to his own ends, but remains puzzled by them and considers humanity a primitive race that just doesn't get it. Due to operating in a Hive Mind, Kyubey's race fails to understand why humans care so much about specific individuals and even their own lives, exhorting Madoka to sacrifice herself for the sake of furthering Kyubey's goal of staving off the heat death of the universe. Ironically, in the end, his scheme is ruined by Madoka sacrificing herself, but in such a way as to save all other Magical Girls.
  • Love per se doesn't come up explicitly until Rebellion; Kyubey still doesn't understand it, but needs no further convincing of how powerful it is, as Homura dethrones the kind and benevolent God-Madoka to become devil-queen of the universe—ostensibly out of love for Madoka, screwing up his human power plants system even worse than before. The movie notably features a memetic scene of a whole group of Incubators all saying "I just don't get it at all!" in one voice before getting blown up.
• This is essentially the plot of Super Dimension Fortress Macross/Robotech. The Zentraedi know nothing of love or sex; their genders are divided at all times. A woman singing is a valuable distraction, a kiss can bring down fleets, and a mere child can sufficiently creep them out (Well, the kid was a half-Zentraedi with green hair, and that would freak anyone out).
  • It should be noted however that in the Macross franchise, humans and Zentraedi are closely related descendants/creations of the same precursor race: the Protoculture. So the series falls under the human variation of the trope as well.
  • Milia Fallyna Jenius (re-named Miriya Parina Sterling in Robotech) embraces the emotion after falling in love with Max, and uses the concept of mercy to provoke a Zentradi mutiny.
• In Tamagotchi, Melodytchi has absolutely no understanding of romantic love and how it works, so much so that in one episode of GO-GO Tamagotchi!, she's not especially fazed by the prospect of being forced into a marriage until Lovelitchi explains to her that she'll have to live with her new husband for the rest of her life if they do get married.

Human Examples

• Baccano!:
  • Chane Laforet from is roughly aware of love entails but, because of the way her father raised her, the idea that anyone could possibly care about her for who she is rather than for what she can do for them is so utterly foreign that Claire's proposal and Jacuzzi's unconditional concern for her nearly lead her to BSOD from the confusion.
    Chane: Why? Why do these people do this for me? Even though we've just met? Even though we're not family. Why!?
  • Szilard's homunculus, Ennis did not understand love at all at first. Firo more hopes she'll catch on without needing to be taught. After about 50 years she apparently understands.
• Because of how his commoner mother, the mistress of a noble, was treated and discarded, and because of how he was treated as a result, Glen of Bokura no Kiseki gained a cynical, skeptical outlook on love. He acknowledges that he likes Veronica, but he has no idea if those feelings are what would be called "love".
• In Brave10, Kamanosuke doesn't get what love/affection is, so he approximates it to what he likes most: killing. His relationship with Saizo is colored by this, although it gets really confusing when Saizo checks his temperature after he goes swimming in a river in winter and shows, perhaps for the first time, even a modicum of concern. Cue monologue trying to work through what he's feeling, while Sasuke fearfully sits by and watches him as he strokes Sasuke's pet weasel because it's therapeutic.
• In Call of the Night, the main requirement for a vampire to turn a human into their offspring is for the mark to fall in love with them before they suck their blood. Yamori expresses interest in becoming a vampire, but has no innate understanding of what it means to fall in love with someone (he even turned down another girl's confession at school because of this). Therefore, he strikes a deal with Nazuna: she can suck his blood whenever she wants, and as they spend time together he will learn to love her.
• Ceres, Celestial Legend: Subverted, seeing as it was an assumption rather than a question, between Tooya and Aya right after their official first kiss.
  Tooya: Before I knew it, I was worried about you. I unconsciously ran here to rescue you. This feeling I have for you might be what you call "love".
• Because of her inability to love, Anri from Durarara!! has a difficulty with understanding this concept, and therefore she cannot tell apart the feelings she feels for Mikado, Masaomi, and Mika.
  • Near the end of the first season, Izaya states that it's not so much she's incapable of it but using Selective Obliviousness to avoid any potentially painful situation like what happened with her parents. Then again, it's Izaya we're talking about here. Coin toss for whether he was bullshitting or whether it's true.
  • In later seasons, it appears Izaya may have been right in his deductions (or more likely had an Accidental Truth), as Anri loves Mikado, yet insists she is only a parasite incapable of love due to her own self-loathing. Kujiragi points out that by Anri's logic, monsters don't deserve to be happy, feel love or be loved, which makes little sense. Eventually, Anri does start a relationship with Mikado.
• Shigure in Fruits Basket — he says that he discovered a strange new feeling when he first met Akito in a dream. Considering what the Curse actually is, it must have been the first time he felt love for someone else.
• In Full Metal Panic!, Sousuke for the majority of the story. Having been literally raised as a soldier, he's grown up completely divorced from the idea of romantic love, is incapable of recognizing any of its associated norms and behavior, and is downright terrified of sexuality. It's bad enough that, while he winds up falling hopelessly in love within two weeks of being appointed as her bodyguard, it takes him another eight months to realize all the inexplicable sensations and mood shifts he's been feeling since then have anything to do with this "love" thing at all.
• In Gosick, Victorique (before she was freed from her prison and locked up in the tower) seems to have trouble understanding it.
  Victorique: Love... what's that? This is the first time I've heard that word since I was born.
• Yuri of I Think Our Son Is Gay doesn't understand the concept of romantic love. A flashback shows he understands friendship, but has no clue as to why a female classmate would "like [him] if [they] get along". At present day he seems to be able to recognize Hiroki's crushes, but hardly his own.
• In the Heart of Kunoichi Tsubaki: Because the Akane Class is a clan of kunoichi^note Female ninja and combined with the way they were taught and brought up, none of the students have any knowledge of what love or romance is, let alone have any actual idea of what a man is. The exception to this is Tsubaki, who was told the truth after her teachers accidentally slipped up.
• In episode 17 of Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse, Cryska asks Yuuya about why thinking about him is causing both her and Inia to have lapses in their concentration. Yuuya, for whatever reason, says that those feelings are the result of stress from their superiors in order to perform better. At first Cryska seems to accept this answer, but then after seeing Inia admiring some flowers, he buys some for both of them, and then Lt. Cui shows up, gets upset at him and hits him twice, it only further confuses her as to why she feels this way towards him.
• Naruto understands love, but not romantic love. He cannot tell the difference between romantic love and the love he has for ramen. This is largely due to his upbringing without parental figures or unconditional affection for most of his life. Thus, Naruto's main (and final) growth in The Last: Naruto the Movie is coming to terms with this idea of romantic love. It has a tremendous impact on his relationship with Hinata, who has loved him since childhood, because after he finally does understand, he can't look her in the eye afterwards. By that point, it's made patently clear to everyone that he's in love with her — everyone except for, ironically, Hinata.
  • Gaara Hiden reveals that due to having a similar childhood as Naruto, Gaara is very much the same. He understands friendship and familial love, but when it comes to romantic love he's incredibly dense. For example, Shikamaru and Temari's Everyone Can See It Belligerent Sexual Tension was something even Naruto noticed, and Gaara is the only one surprised when they finally get together.
• Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion had this trope happen when, while fighting the 16th angel, she asked herself what love is, realized that she loved Shinji enough to sacrifice her life for him, and promptly did, all within the space of about a minute. Girl is fast.
  • Kaworu also does this in the manga, after ironically having Rei's love for Shinji essentially Xerox'd onto him by the 16th. He asks Shinji if what he's feeling is love and tries to romantically advance on him after kissing Shinji while he was hyperventilating. It doesn't end well.
  • Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 handles the heavy Shinji/Rei subtext very well: at one point, Shinji makes lunch for Rei who reacts with a blush and thanks him; later on, she wonders why did she do that when she never thanks anyone. In another instance, Asuka questions Rei about her feelings towards Shinji and she responds that she feels "warm and content" around him but doesn't know why.
• Mashiro Shiina from The Pet Girl of Sakurasou basically says exactly this when she begins having feelings for Kanda Sorata. Her social inability due to her mental disorder has her inept, unnerving some the first time she expresses these feelings as "my chest hurts" and other such manifestations of her feelings.
• Pet Shop of Horrors: Count D, owner of titular shop, admits that love is beyond him. At least concerning people. Animals are something else entirely.
  Count D: I do not understand love between people.
• Hishiro of ReLIFE, by virtue of being Hishiro, has no idea how to understand certain emotions. She resorts to experimenting on Kaizaki, much to his discomfort.
• In Samurai Flamenco, when Masayoshi is told love is the ultimate weapon, he is completely lost, as he has spent his whole life training to be a hero and never paid attention to such a thing. He spends the rest of the episode wondering what love means. He finds out the answer in the next episode, when he realizes he is in love with his best friend Goto. Right after proposing marriage to him.
• Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove it: The premise of the series is two Spocks, Ayame Himuro and Shinya Yukimura, trying to answer the question of "what is love?" via the scientific method, experimenting with things like the Wall Pin of Love and charting how often one appears in the other's dreams and what they were doing.
• 7 Seeds has majority of Team A. They sort of know what love means but, given how they were raised, they don't really understand what it entails, what it feels like or how it could affect anyone. Some of them, like Koruri, know about and have fallen in love easily, where as Ayu is too cool to really know what it means and Ryo has no idea what Matsuri means when she confeses that she likes him.
• Shimoneta plays this for all the drama. Due to being in a society where anything relating to sex which range from words, gestures and materials can and will be punished to the full extent of the law, everyone slowly began to lose the ability to love.
• In Simoun, Aaeru has to be specifically told by Neviril what that painful feeling in her chest is. It makes their mutual declaration of love immediately afterward all the more touching.
• In Soul Eater, Stein tells Medusa that "people like you and me" aren't capable of love. Nygus says this, too, but it's somewhat contradicted a few pages later when he's seen physically comforting Marie.
• Shuu Tsukiyama from Tokyo Ghoul seems to understand concepts of Affection from an intellectual standpoint, being an avid reader. But he proves utterly incapable of comprehending his own feelings of affection towards others, deciding that his lack of interest in killing his Muggle Best Friend is because she must be a "pet". After his Heel–Face Turn and months spent trying to get close to Kaneki, he ends up In Love with the Mark but continues to think of his feelings as purely epicurean. After Kaneki is supposedly killed, his despair leaves him still in mourning two years later and ill as a result of his grief.
• Vinland Saga: When a Christian priest is asked in passing about what he considers valuable in the world, he answers that 'love is the thing that makes all other things valuable'. The Viking marauders and mercenaries he's traveling with not only are confused, but have NO IDEA what he's talking about, and a few more curious ones ask for clarification on this "love" thing he mentions. Part of the trouble is that the priest is using a definition of unconditional love for all people that would be pretty alien to their worldview.
• This is the primary driving point for Violet Evergarden's Character Development: she becomes a member of the Auto Memory Dolls Service because she wishes to know the meaning behind the supposed last words her military superior-slash-Parental Substitute told to her.
• In Wild Rose, Mikhail was raised to show no emotion in order that his markings wouldn't appear. As a result he doesn't understand what separates love and indifference. In contrast, not feeling love is the only thing Kiri can't understand, which makes him want to teach him.

Demonic Examples

• Ulquiorra in Bleach, although notably he isn't jealous of it...he's more annoyed by it. "You damn humans speak so easily of the heart... what is this "heart?" If I tear open your chest, will I see it inside? If I shatter your skull, will I see it there? As he dies, he finally figures it out: "What is that? Would I see it if I cracked open your chest? If I broke open your skull, what would I see inside? You humans say the word so easily. Just like...Oh. I get it. This is it. This here in my hand. The heart."
• In [C] – Control, Assets do not feel much emotion and do not understand most human concepts, though Q and Msyu do care deeply for Mikuni and Kimimoro respectively. When Msyu sees a kiss on TV, she's confused and asks Kimimoro about it. He awkwardly says it is what people do when they like each other 30 times as much as normal. In the final episode, Msyu and Kimimoro finally kiss, with her saying she likes him 40 times as much.
• Hanatsuki Hime: Siva, and any of the other devils involved in making contracts with humans, want to experience this trope because the devils do not have emotions (or the emotions that humans have). It starts out as a game to relieve boredom and simply ends that way for most — for some, however, the trope gets played straight.
• The youko (fox spirit) Tamamo from Hell Teacher Nube can't even begin to comprehend how or why Nube was so determined to protect his students, much less why such drive gives him power beyond more powerful entities. Therefore, he sticks around to see exactly how The Power of Love works, and also to annoy Nube as the school's physician. The interesting part is that he becomes just as attached to Doumori Elementary and its students without him ever realizing it, and gains the same kind of determination and selflessness as Nube. It comes to a head when Tamamo exorcises an emotion-parasite yokai from a little girl, and, still wishing to explore emotions, attaches it to himself. He is overcome with human feelings that overwhelm even his demonic side.
• In Kamisama Kiss Tomoe gets rescued by Yukiji actually Nanami posing as Yukiji and starts developing romantic feelings for her, something he had never experienced before. Given his normal attitude towards humans this leaves him rather conflicted and confused.
• In Unico, Unico falls into the ocean after befriending Mr Demon/Akumakun (Beezle in the 1981 movie) who tricks him into tasting hot soup that only demons can tolerate. After revealing to Unico that water is poisonous to demons while rescuing him from drowning. Unico tells Mr Demon that he "He loves him" much to his disgust. To prove that he loves him back, Unico rewards the demon child his own special horn much to his delight.
• Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun has a variant, where demonkind understands not just lust but romance as well, but the concept of platonic companionship is basically a foreign idea to them, to the point they don't even have a word for it. Everybody who meets Iruma and learns both the concept of and word for friendship from him comes to view it as a perfect term to describe the bonds he helped them form.
• In Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon, that's a real weakness for the half-demon Towa. She is inexperienced with romance and only knows the concept of liking someone. During romantic advances she is flattered, slightly nervous, blushed and speechless. Riku takes advantage of this by partially confessing his feelings and manipulating her to give him her silver rainbow pearl.

Villainous Examples

• In Hunter × Hunter, Meruem, a total Social Darwinist and someone who saw humans as merely food and his own kind as basically slaves, both had no idea why he enjoyed his games with Komugi, which he always lost and should have been annoyed by, but also did not understand why he felt the urge to protect someone as weak as her from any harm. When he begins to figure out his feelings, he undergoes major Character Development.
• An odd example with Seishirou from Tokyo Babylon and X/1999. As the current Sakurazukamori, he understands it in concept since the role is inherited when the predecessor is killed by the person whom they love most. Seishirou questions the previous title holder, his mother, who'll ever kill him as he simply can love no one. Her dying words recall how she once thought the same way until she met him. Despite being The Sociopath and claiming to see no difference between killing a person and breaking an object, his relationship with Subaru ends with him pulling a Thanatos Gambit that forces the kind-hearted Subaru into murdering him. Dying in Subaru's arms, he admits his feelings. Probably...

Other Examples

• In 3×3 Eyes, when Yakumo asks Amara if he loves Ushas, Amara replies that he doesn't exactly understand the concept (he's a plant-based lifeform, after all) but his whole existence is devoted only to her safety. Yakumo decides that's close enough.
• Dead Master from Black★Rock Shooter cannot figure out why the eponymous character keeps holding out her hand as an invitation to fight, after the fight has already started. She also freaks out when she receives a Cooldown Hug due to her not knowing what the hell her enemy's doing. Though she could have just been expecting some sort of finishing blow.
• Death Parade has one of the rare examples that's played for horror. This is pretty much the worst possible question to be asked by the judge of the afterlife when you're evaluating how he judged (and misunderstood) two people to be sent to the void and reincarnation; he doesn't realize the woman he sent to the void actually lied about not loving her husband in order to save him from guilt, meaning he sent her to the wrong place.
• The mermaids in Hekikai no AiON seems to have this case, but they know is used by humans to mate. One of them discovered what it is though, and also that Love Hurts.
• Dragons in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid have a very simplistic view on interpersonal relationships since they tend to be a solitary species. Things like romance or familial bonds are completely foreign to them, and it's specifically stated that those who express a desire for such things learned it from mimicking humans. One particular example of this would be when Ilulu gets a warm feeling in her chest after getting a headpat from Taketo and mistakenly believing that she's going into heat.
• The half-elf Emilia from Re:Zero is inexperienced in romantic love. She knows why each other is cared for, but she is innocent because she has been shunned all her life. Subaru is very important to her and she likes that he loves her. But Emilia is not sure whether she loves him too or just likes him.
• Demon Sword Ashgan in The Witch and the Beast is a sapient cursed blade which seems to only understand the emotion of "hate". After Helga took pity on him in his sealed state and began treating him like a friend, he developed a "feeling other than hate" for her which both confuses and disgusts him.

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