To-do list:
- Move examples for cute/shy/sweet characters with glasses and/or glasses used to emphasize a character's cuteness and vulnerability from Meganekko to Bespectacled Cutie if they fit, and remove them if they don't. Remove any Zero Context Examples. References to the Meganekko Fan Speak term can stay, but bulleted wicks are not allowed in example lists.
Namespaces cleaned (Sandbox.Meganekko Wick Cleaning)
- Main
- Namespaces M-V
- VisualNovel/
Original post:
So, Meganekko has been misused for "any girl with glasses" for years now. There has been at least one TRS thread about this issue but it closed without a resolution.Here’s a wick check that me and Orbiting did for Meganekko.
- Characters.Mushoku Tensei Jobless Reincarnation: She's the soft-spoken, cute, glasses-wearing maid (later second wife) of the household.
- Anime.Waiting In The Summer: Ichika and Nanami are sweet, glasses-wearing girls.
- Science Hero's Babe Assistant: Chitose is the clumsy Meganekko assistant.
- Anime.Macross Frontier:Nanase
- Characters.Cavalier Of The Abyss: Just the trope name.
- Characters.Stand And Deliver: Just the trope name.
- Recap.ALZI Production Batgirl: Veronika.
- YMMV.Metal Slug: ZCE pothole
- Characters.Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch Villains: Mimi, as "Mari".
- Beginner's Luck: First, in the team tourney, she slams Kiyosumi's Mako with a Suuankou (4 concealed triples, a rare Yakuman hand worth max points).
- Characters.Violinist Of Hameln
- VideoGame.Zone Of The Enders: Dr. Rachel Links and Robin O'Connell.
- Characters.Sequential Art
- Manga.Lucu Lucu: Shiki Tohn—Harry Pott—I mean, Rokumon.
- Manga.Happy Lesson: Fumitsuki and Mutsuki at the house. Kanna as well.
- FanficRecs.Ah My Goddess: This results in our Heroines entering a Forced Prize Fight of Calvinball. Also, Hasegawa apparently Took a Level in Badass by reading The Zombie Survival Guide and is now a Badass Bookworm Meganekko Wrench Wench.
- Characters.Valkyria Chronicles III
- Characters.Dreams Of Death
- Webcomic.So What Im Still A Monster: Destiny, Savina, Bridgit, and Naomi.
- Manga.Bungo Stray Dogs: Louisa May Alcott.
- Characters.Inazuma Eleven Supporting Characters: In GO.
- Characters.Shirobako Musashino Animation Various Departments: Commented out ZCE that’s just the trope name.
- GameBreaker.Trails Series: With speed around 125, Diabolos Gem and Cast 2 quartz (both have casting delay reduction effect), you'll officially turn out cutie Meganekko into badass Fireball spammer burning everything in sight.
- Characters.Ghost Hound: Just the trope name.
- Sandbox.Dangan Ronpa Danketsu: Just the trope name.
- Characters.Randy Cunningham Ninth Grade Ninja Faculty Adults: Just the trope name.
- Kämpfer: Akane’s normal mode.
- Characters.Corpse Princess: Just the trope name.
- Recap.Leverage S 01 E 05 The Bank Shot Job: Sophie goes for this look as part of her cover.
- Series.Dream High: Baekhee and Pilsook, although Baekhee quickly loses hers.
- Anime.Hamtaro: Kana. Also, Dexter (well, they're marks on his fur that look like glasses, anyway...)
- Manga.Wakaba Girl: Nao.
- Characters.Alan Wake: Goes great with her lab coat and Little Black Dress.
- Characters.Arknights Vanguards A To M: She wears glasses in her alternate costume.
- Characters.Dead Or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation: The only character who wears glasses by default.
- Characters.The Magic Roundabout: In the post-2005 era, Coral now wears glasses as part of her redesign
- Characters.The Powerpuff Girls The Heroes: When she gained glasses in "Bubblevision".
- Characters.Cardfight Vanguard V Series Anime: She wears glasses.
- Characters.The Quintessential Quintuplets: Wears glasses while in class and when studying. Her vision doesn't seem to be as bad as Nino's since she doesn't wear them otherwise, hinting that she's most likely just nearsighted and needs them to read print. As an adult, however, she appears to wear them full-time.
- Characters.Inazuma Eleven Managers: She usually wears her glasses on her head, but sometimes she wears them normally.
- Characters.Hololive Japan Generation Three Fantasy: Implied, since Pekora wears glasses.
- Characters.Grim Tales From Down Below: Uses glasses while reading or looking information on internet.
- Characters.El Chavo Del Ocho: Wears horn-rimmed eyeglasses.
- Manga.I Dont Like You At All Big Brother: Iroha, when she's not sporting her twintails.
- Anime.Mon Colle Knights: Guuko
- Anime Accent Absence: A strange example is Ana from Strawberry Marshmallow, a young British immigrant who is linguistically and socially more Japanese. Here the trope is justified, as she's more or less forgotten any English, and has to learn it from the show's (Japanese) glasses girl. Naturally, Ana speaks in a slower, formal tone, which coincidentally fits her being the gang's equivalent to The Ojou.
- Characters.Danganronpa 3 Despair Arc: Wears glasses with thin frames.
- Characters.Corpse Party: Wears square, black-rimmed glasses.
- Characters.Estoy Vivo:Sports big glasses.
- Manga.Yubisaki Milk Tea: Kurokawa, again. Sometimes, particularly when she's studying in later chapters, Hidari also wears glasses.
- Series.Yo Soy Betty La Fea: Betty's makeover transforms her into this archetype.
- Theatre.Firebringer: Emberly
- Western Animation.Grossology: Petunia Archer (Season 2) and Naomi are both shy-natured girls who are treated as quite pretty, glasses and all. Says nothing about them being kind/sweet
- Characters.Mr Bean: She wears glasses and looks attractive. Nothing about her personality is mentioned.
- Characters.Bonkers: Wears big, round glasses and is a major cutie. The character seems to fit the trope judging by the surrounding trope entries but the example doesn’t say anything about her personality
- Characters.Fate VRAINS Allies: Her glasses actually have scanner functions, and by god does she make them work.Googles Do Something Unusual
- Manga.Uzaki Chan Wants To Hang Out: Basically every random female store attendant in the series is one, along with being quite bosomy. Ami's also quite attractive and pretty much always wearing glasses, but her cuteness is more debatable with her rampant relishing in Eating the Eye Candy. Personality is not mentioned
- All Guys Want Cheerleaders: In "You Belong with Me," Taylor Swift just knows that she can't compete with her crush's girlfriend, who is of course cheer captain. Although according the video she can because she's Taylor Swift and looks freaking gorgeous including with the glasses it's idealistic. Personality is not mentioned
- Characters.Zits: She normally wears contacts, but in one strip had to wear her glasses. Jeremy was visibly into it. Personality is not mentioned
- WesternAnimation.Groj Band: Mina is very cute and wears large spectacles. Personality is not mentioned
- WebOriginal.Vividly ASMR: Annabelle in "C-Can I Sit Here...? The Girl on My Train is a Shy Megane! is a shy but sweet glasses wearing girl. Attractiveness isn't mentioned.
- JustForFun.Trope Title Shows: A documentary on cats, including the various roles, and ways they have affected mankind throughout history. JFF page
- Pantheon.Anti Heroes: Sheele: Apologetic Killer, Anime Chinese Girl, Badass Adorable, Meganekko, Purple Hair and Eyes, Cute Clumsy Girl, Parental Abandonment, Big-Ass Scissors Pantheon page
The only solution I can come up with to fix the issue would be to turn Meganekko into a Fanspeak page and then spin off Cute Glasses Girl / Sweet Glasses Girl into it’s own trope (similar to what we did with Kuudere and Sugar-and-Ice Personality).
Edited by MacronNotes on Jun 5th 2022 at 11:46:50 AM
(she/her)
I don't think anyone was digging merging Sexy Spectacles and "cute, shy/sweet person with glasses" together?
I also think "character is considered more attractive with glasses than without them" isn't an inherently Japanese specific thing.
Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 9th 2022 at 11:00:13 AM
Macron's notes
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Who are you responding to? I don't recall anyone suggesting merging Sexy Spectacles with this (but doing something else isn't out of the question since there's a wick check), and I was saying "cute person with glasses, but in a Japanese work" is The Same, but More Specific. I don't recall anyone saying anything regarding Japanese usage of Sexy Spectacles.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 9th 2022 at 10:09:57 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
(she/her)
I was addressing Memers but I guess I might have misinterpreted their post.
Macron's notes
Proposals
- Make Meganekko a fanspeak term; un-redirect Cute Glasses Girl and either use that title for Bespectacled Cutie trope or redirect that into Bespectacled Cutie trope, where the examples with context will go
- Require in-universe acknowledgement and/or ogling camera for Sexy Spectacles
the Retromancer
both sound good to me
Sexy Spectacles already requires that it be acknowledged in-universe (or have ot be an inherent part of the characterization, but I saw no examples of that in the wick check). The misuse in the wick check is from tropers ignoring that part of the description and using it for any attractive glasses-wearing character.
Edited by Orbiting on Feb 9th 2022 at 12:22:16 PM
(she/her)
At a glance, most of the on-page examples appear to be correct. Maybe we can get away with just renaming Sexy Spectacles and cleaning up the wicks.
I think your suggestion of Sexualized Spectacles would be a good name if we decide to rename the trope.
Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 9th 2022 at 12:29:23 PM
Macron's notes
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I think renaming Sexy Spectacles should be an option in addition to requiring in-universe acknowledgement or camera focus.
I do think replacing "Sexy" with "Sexualized" would make it more clear that it's coming from within the work rather than being an Audience Reaction.
Edit: And I think every current redirect for Meganekko could be a redirect to the new trope rather than being redirects to the Fan Speak page, except maybe we could dewick and cut Glasses Girl because it might be contributing to the misconception that the trope refers to any girl with glasses.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 9th 2022 at 11:36:05 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
I guess I don't see the point of having a vote on whether to require Sexy Spectacles be acknowledged within the work when that's already a requirement. If it fails, does that mean we change the description to get rid of that?
And I agree on getting rid of Glasses Girl; I don't think it's contributing anything of value.
(she/her)
Glasses Girl exists because that's literally what Meganekko means in English so I think we can keep it but kill the wicks.
Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 9th 2022 at 12:44:14 PM
Macron's notes
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
Yeah, let's leave that off the crowner for Sexy Spectacles, and just focus on renaming.
I suppose Glasses Girl could redirect to the Fan Speak page and the other three redirects could redirect to the new trope (or Cute Glasses Girl could be the actual name of the trope and the other two could be redirects).
Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 9th 2022 at 11:56:16 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
(she/her)
Yeah, we can have Glasses Girl be a redirect to Meganekko and give the other two redirects to the new trope.
Macron's notes
So I'm a bit confused. Meganekko is just "a cute girl who wears glasses". How is this not a chairs thing? Like I feel like Meganekko is a Japan-specific version of Endearingly Dorky when it it's tropeworthy and when it's not, i.e. the character isn't dorky, they just wear glasses, it's just PSOC.
I don't think it's an actual trope in of itself, which is why there are so many ZCE that amount to "girl in glasses."
Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 9th 2022 at 3:21:57 PM
Well, I think the term is being moved to fanspeak (because it is a little chairsy), or at least proposed to do that, which would then lead to dewicking.
Oh? it looked to me like the plan was a new trope. If I'm wrong and the whole thing is being dewicked and moved to fan speak, then excuse me for the misread!
(she/her)
Well, I think the concept of "cute shy/sweet glasses wearing person" isn't chairs so I think we could split that off. That's what people were discussing as the new trope. I don't know if the examples with context can be neatly folded into Endearingly Dorky.
Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 9th 2022 at 3:47:15 PM
Macron's notes
It's a thing. If it helps, here's a video example from Beyond the Boundary I was going to add many moons ago but forgot about, but now won't because we're about to overhaul it:
Prior to this they were discussing whether Buxom Is Better or glasses are better, and their friend is extolled for her petite frame, delicate demeanor, cute face, and glasses.
(she/her)
Yeah, I agree. I think glasses add a layer of vulnerability to the character which why they are seen as cute or endearing.
Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 9th 2022 at 3:53:28 PM
Macron's notes
I just don't see the difference between this and Sexy Glasses, I suppose. Like yes, sexy and cute are different forms of appeal, but at the end of the day both are just more specific versions of "glasses are appealing", which I'd argue is the actual trope here as it counters the notion of that glasses aren't appealing because of their association with Nerds.
And there is a difference between other people having an idea that glasses are appealing in-universe, than just "Cute Girl With Glasses" which can be used to describe literally any female character that wears glasses so long as they aren't deliberately portrayed as ugly or Gonk. Which is what it has been used to do in the past and why we're here now.
If the trope is that glasses make a character cute by making them seem vulnerable, then make that the trope. Because at least that narrows the field and puts actual meaning on to the glasses.
Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 9th 2022 at 4:02:59 AM
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
Well, here's what I think the difference is:
- Cute: The glasses highlight the character's big eyes and makes them look Adorkable. They're not conventionally attractive, but they're adorable, and the glasses make their features look bigger and rounder. Think Mirabel from Encanto, whose glasses make her stand out but also give her a cute, dorky charm she shares with her father.
- Sexy: The glasses play up how smart and sophisticated the character is, especially if they're more narrow and sleek. Think Hot Librarian, where the "hot" part exists in part because of how intelligent and mature they are.
^"not conventionally attractive but they're adorable" to who? in-universe or the audience? If the former, the trope page image includes Anthy from Revolutionary Girl Utena and Fuu from Magic Knight Rayearth, both of which are depicted as being beautiful and (physically) desirable in-universe. If the latter, then this is a YMMV minefield that is prone to the "[[insert preferred character]] wears glasses" kind of ZCE.
To be clear, I don't necessarily mind that differentiation and I think it actually pinpoints the problem I'm seeing. Right now the trope is trying to be a stock character trope, (the Meganekko character) but there isn't really anything distinct about this other than the outward appearance. If we lean in further into the appearance trope aspect in the name and redefine, then I think it can work. nothing snappy is coming to mind right now.
Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 9th 2022 at 5:28:26 AM
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
Well, to the audience, but that's one reason why certain art styles and appearance tropes exist- to make the character look more appealing to the people looking at them. It's not YMMV to say that this is why this trope is used, any more than it's YMMV to say that Blonde, Brunette, Redhead exists for aesthetic appeal or that those two anime eye-tropes are used to make them look innocent or intimidating.
In this case, saying that Mirabel's glasses serve in part to make her cuter is objective- they draw attention to her eyes and face, while also making her look somewhat dorky and young.
Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 9th 2022 at 5:35:47 AM
Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
I don't contest that. My final point is that, that's an appearance trope and right now this is trying to be a stock character trope. And there just isn't enough in terms of consistent characteristics outside of "wears glasses, is cute" for it to be a stock character. a characterization trope that's specifically done to appeal to Moe, sure.
(Also I don't think that the consensus that is coalescing fixes the issue of it being a ZCE magnet since it retains "Cute Glasses Girl" as the name, which doesn't say anything about the the purpose of the glasses i.e., see Bald Woman's disambig into Baldness Means Sickness, Bald Head of Toughness, and Bald Mystic, all of which connect the specific meaning in the name)
Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 9th 2022 at 5:52:24 AM
(she/her)
Well, if we want the new trope (if it gets made) to be more personality based, there's the redirect Sweet Glasses Girl that we can use for a name instead.
Macron's notes
Crown Description:
Consensus was to turn Meganekko into a Fan Speak page and create a new trope for both cute shy/sweet characters with glasses and glasses used to emphasize a character's cuteness and vulnerability. What should the new trope's name be?
I feel like Sexy Spectacles problems might be solved pretty easily by changing the name to something like Sexualized Spectacles.