Hair Antennae

aka: Antenna Hair

Something is bugging me about your hair.

Two strands of hair that stick up from the top of the head and curve forward like antennae, a style popularized by Love Hina and other works by Ken Akamatsu. Probably will belong to someone... lighter in disposition or in general intellect. Yet another way to quickly and simply add another visual quirk to a character.

If the character has only one strand, it is Idiot Hair. Not to be confused with Devilish Hair Horns, which is a more villainous permutation.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Ah... and Mm... Are All She Says: Oshigiri has these. Norush describes her as a "mantis woman".
• Ah! My Goddess: Belldandy may be the Trope Maker. And her current character design has six of them.
• Megumi Oki from Arachnid has hair antennae as part of her cockroach motif. She can even sense changes in air pressure and currents by using them.
• Isogai from Assassination Classroom has short hair antennae that corresponds to his health; it wilts when he's feeling ill and springs back to normal after he has taken rest.
• Bleach: Giselle Gewelle, a Quincy Sternritter, has two of these, making her otherwise ordinary appearance slightly odd.
• Anything by Ken Akamatsu, like Naru and Mutsumi of Love Hina. Also appears in Negima! Magister Negi Magi and A.I. Love You.
  • More specifically, Mai in Itsudatte My Santa! has prehensile ones which she refers to as her "unhappiness detectors".
  • Saotome Haruna's from Negima doubles as "Love Detector".
• Shiemi from Blue Exorcist.
• DearS: Ren. Manga omake plays with the idea of them being real antennae for laughs.
  • Also Zombie Loan's Shito, with an omake of these two making some sort of friendship based on their antennae.
• Sakura from Cardcaptor Sakura.
• The majority of the cast from Cross Ange. Titular main character Ange has them especially prominent.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • While Edward Elric has Idiot Hair (despite not being an idiot), his father Van Hohenheim has true Hair Antennae that stick out in front of his face. True to form, he's a Cloudcuckoolander.
  • Kimblee, too, although as the resident sociopathic, Psycho for Hire Mad Bomber, he doesn't fit the personality type at all.
• Mikoto Utsugi from GaoGaiGar looks like she has these. In actuality, it's her sides pulled up that way by an item called the Invisible Hairband.
• Rei from Highschool of the Dead has two antennae.
• Gentoku Ryuubi (Liu Bei) from Ikki Tousen. Myosai Kakouen also has this, though she isn't a ditz.
• The Red King, Mikoto Suoh, in K - most likely a sort of reference to the Saiyuki example, as he is a very Saiyuki-like character, and emphatically not a ditz.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid has Rio, Vivio's energetic, martial artist friend. It stays there even when she accesses her personal Adult Mode.
• My-Otome has Arika's two long, skinny braids, which writhe in time with her emotions. She even earns the nickname Arinko-chan, i.e. Anty.
• Momo in Manabi Straight! has antennae (and hair) long enough some fans affectionately nicknamed her "Cockroach-tan".
• Made fun of in No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular! when the heroine tries to give herself antenna hair but everyone just thinks she didn't brush her hair that morning.
• Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General: GG has a pair as part of her cockroach motif. They may actually work too, since she's shown reacting to a Visible Odor wafting past them instead of under her nose.
• Rurouni Kenshin: Saitou's hair, so much so that Yahiko arranges his own hair to look like Saitou's when asking for his whereabouts.
• Saiyuki: Sha Gojyo. Lampshaded by Son Goku. Whenever he gets tired of calling him "pervy kappa," he calls Gojyo a cockroach.
• Tenma from School Rumble.
• Sketchbook: Nagisa, who appropriately enough is an insect otaku.
• The Vision of Escaflowne: Hitomi Kanzaki — though her Emo version from The Movie doesn't have them. She has them as a child and back in a more recent flashback. Apparently they symbolize her sunny disposition that a bad case of teenager's angst took away.
• Yume in the first Someday's Dreamers. They even had an episode where it played a role in the plot.

• Lettuce from Tokyo Mew Mew has these when she transforms. Though they also change size frequently.
• Milly Thompson from Trigun, and she is indeed quite ditzy.
• Azuma from Yakitate!! Japan has these with his hairband on.
• Yuri a.k.a. Angel Lily from Wedding Peach has hair like this, although she doesn't fit the ditzy personality part of the description.
• Kanon Nakagawa from The World God Only Knows has these but is not really a ditz. The goddess inside her however...
• Shishiwakamaru from YuYu Hakusho was a pretty boy opponent to Team Urameshi in the Dark Tournament. Being a demon who only looks human and has a hidden nasty side, he averts most of the lighter traits of this trope.

Comic Books

• Billy Whizz the fastest boy in the world from The Beano has a variant of this trope. The character has his hair shaved apart from two long hairs on the top of his head with lightning shaped patterns at the end.
  • In a 1960s annual it was revealed that he has this bizarre style because he rushes away from the barbers before the barber finishes his hair leaving him with two long hairs.
• Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Johnny C, after he comes back from hell and most of his hair falls out. Literally, all he has left is hair antennae. Unlike most other examples, it symbolizes his newfound desire to shed his impulses and become icily efficient, driven by necessity rather than desire — like an insect.
• Princess Victoria in Bryan Talbot's graphic novel Heart of Empire has two strands of hair going down and out from the top of her forehead.
• Pallo from Lions Tigers and Bears. He has three coming out of his mane.
• Monroe, a character from a long-running comic series in MAD, has hair like this, with the rest of his hair buzzed.
• Filemón from Mortadelo y Filemón. That's all the hair he has.
• The Flea from PS238. When he's in costume they look like a mask detail, but when he takes off the mask they're still there. In addition to being a Friend to Bugs, he's a Fun Personified character.
• In The Tick, Barry Hubris (AKA the other Tick) has hair like this when out of costume.
• The Avengers: Quicksilver has a backwards variant, though how much they stick up depends on who's drawing him.

Film — Animated

• Milo from Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire has rather antennae-like bangs, befitting a bookish fellow like him.

Literature

• Kuroyukihime from Accel World, whose "antennae" add to her Butterfly of Transformation motif.
• Akeno from High School D×D has two of them going backwards. Rossweisse has the more traditional ones (which also often express her feelings).
• Sunday Without God: protagonist Ai has three hair antennae, and when she was younger she only had two.
• In the Land of Oz books, illustrator John R. Neill sometimes drew the Wizard of Oz with long hair antennas, with the top of his head bald. He particularly had fun doing this in Little Wizard of Oz Stories by L. Frank Baum.

Video Games

• Bravely Second: Cryst-Fairy Anne spots some antennae.
• The player character in Devil Survivor has them.
• Disgaea: Laharl uses it to cheat his height. Even when he's turned into a Prinny, he keeps them. Helps identify him, although the laugh helps.
  • Hair Antennae appear to run in the family, as King Krichevskoy also had them. He loses them while assuming the identity of Vyers, but now they're back as of Disgaea 4.
  • Laharl's self-proclaimed sister Sicily from Disgaea Dimension 2 also has them, though she tied them into a bow.
• Final Fantasy VII has a whole clan of them: Sephiroth, his father Professor Hojo, and his "mother"/genetic donor Jenova (at least its graphically-updated incarnation in Crisis Core).
  • Aerith's gravity defying fringe fits too.
  • Final Fantasy X: Seymour. Oh my dear God, Seymour — that is the craziest hair we have ever seen. Guado hair typically grows into intertwined shapes, much like dreadlocks. But Seymour's half-human genes causes it to sprout all over the place.
    • Yunalesca has a more typical version. Her appearance borrows more than a few beauty tips from VII's Jenova.
• In his third form, Haseo from .hack//G.U. has this.
• Makoto Kikuchi, Ai Hidaka, Akizuki and her cousin Ryo from The iDOLM@STER; the other idols sport mainly Ahoge.
• Kingdom Hearts: Larxene possesses a backwards variant. Unlike most of these examples, she's a Psycho Electro.
• Otacon sports a mild case in Metal Gear Solid.
• Ryoji Mochizuki from Persona 3 has hair antennae, contrasting the rest of his hair, which is slicked back.
• The female player character in Pokémon Black and White sports a noticeable pair.
• Puyo Puyo: Sig has these, though they're on the back of his head and point away.
• As befits a character who has butterflies as a motif, the muse Thaleia in Final Fantasy Legend II has this type of hair.
• Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog has grown a little one of these. He always had a tuft of hair on the front of his head, but since the post-Sonic Adventure redesign it's become long and thin like antennae.
• Riddle Rosehearts from Twisted Wonderland has two locks of hair curving down from the top of his head to form a heart shape. When he's surprised or shocked, the two hair locks shoot up, making him look similar to a rabbit.
• Vagrant Story: Ashley Riot's antenna actually manage to give off a retro punk vibe.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice, though they're not natural and he carefully gels them every morning. The form of his antennae are more like a double Idiot Hair, though, with both strands pointing straight up without making a curve. Trucy Wright has a much smaller but similarly-shaped set of antennae beneath her hat and happens to be Apollo's half-sister.
• CLANNAD: Nagisa Furukawa, her dad Akio, and her mom Sanae (who has THREE strands of hair); seems to run in the family. Ushio, Tomoya and Nagisa's daughter did not inherit the trait though.
• Reinhard Heydrich from Dies Irae has these and the anime adaptation makes them even more prominent. Unusually for this trope however, he is the Big Bad.
• Seinarukana: Ruputna and Narukana.
• Yosuga no Sora has quite a few: Haruka, Sora, Akira and Yahiro all have those, but Akira's the one and only Cloudcuckoolander to boot.

Webcomics

• Biff has antenna eyebrows.
• Girl in Cat and Girl. They have become progressively longer over the years.
• Taito from Consolers has two antennas sticking straight up.
• In Drowtales, Sarv'swati Vel'Sharen has very prominent hair antennae, but completely inverts the usual personality type, being a dead-serious Blood Knight with no known sense of humor.
• Grace from El Goonish Shive has rather thick ones. They actually are antennae. Interestingly enough, as large as they are, they get downright huge in her male form.
• Zukaru and Daisuke from Fiyora Nya
• In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, Princess Voluptua is a giant insect disguised as a woman. Consequently, her eyebrows arch up high above her head, resembling antennae.
• Human Aliens in I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space!!!.
• A Miracle of Science: Dr. Haas. Definitely not the usual personality type, being a dead-serious Mad Scientist with Scary Shiny Glasses. (And the antennae are used as one of the two main visual signifiers of his insanity; they instantly gain their ability to defy gravity when he's infected with Science-Related Memetic Disorder.)
• From The Order of the Stick, Elan the bard, his twin brother Nale, and their father Tarquin all have them.
• Miriam from Out There.

Web Original

• Whateley Universe: Seems to run in Dr. Diabolik's family, though they more like horns than antennae, and none of them (except, arguably, Malachai) fit the character type at all.
• Matara Kan of VShojo is an extraterrestrial humanoid cockroach with two long strands sprouting from her forehead. She can remove them, but it makes her feel like she is wearing earmuffs.

Western Animation

• Luan Loud of The Loud House has two long hair strands sticking out from the middle of her forehead.
• Kole from Teen Titans (2003) has them alongside bright-pink hair.
• The Monarch from The Venture Brothers has antenna eyebrows. Well, considering his general motif...
• Wakfu's Noximilien "Nox" Coxen had these before he went crazy.
• Besides having a Wizard Beard, Maestro from the Il Était Une Fois... franchise has two strands of hair sticking out from the top of his head.
• Inverted with Angel (Experiment 624) of the Lilo & Stitch franchise; her antennae resembles long human hair that stick up a bit before curving down, then curving back up near the tips.

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