Mechanical Anime Reviews

Welcome to my post for Mel’s special event for Megane Day. It sounded like an especially fun and unique event, so why not throw my hat in the ring too. Why not?

As a non-glasses wearing person, besides sunglasses sometimes, I am not going to say that I am jealous towards people who have to wear glasses in real life. I say that knowing that I am the only person in my immediate family and general vicinity that doesn’t wear glasses. I like having my natural 20-20 vision still and I like pointing out details that my glasses wearing family members in far distances away from me and seeing around in all directions and not a narrow field of vision centered around a certain point.

In reality, not wearing glasses, besides sunglasses, is preferable. Especially since I don’t want to scatter the vision of my hazel green eyes to anyone that looks at me. In anime, glasses are different. While glasses can fall off of a character and automatically ruined a person’s vision, there are no other downsides really. Scientific evidence proves it after all.

This is just me, but the best thing about anime character designs have been their eyes. The colors and designs of anime eyes. Even the most basic anime characters have a great eye design that you can’t see anywhere else. What classes does is put a frame around these eyes that brings more attention to them. I mean, let’s look at this example.

I think we can all agree that Uraraka is cute. But which version of Uraraka is the most adorable? Obviously the glasses wearing version, right? Here is some more proof with a lot of other MHA characters wearing glasses including All Might. Scientific Evidence is great, isn’t it?

Added Intimidation

I don’t feel like I have to prove this one at all. I mean, LED lights in glasses. Not a scary thing in concept at all really, but it’s always an added point of emphasis at dramatic moments. They give at least a +2 to a character’s intimidation check. I mean, look at these for evidence.

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t mess around with any of them. Each person has their own level of frightening to them. Even if they are nice characters like Hiroe in Log Horizon, he really does have some very scary moments.

Added Distinctiveness

Only so many characters wear glasses in each particular anime series. Perhaps only a male and a female character of different hair colors. Yousuke and Nozomi in Planet With are an example. Then there are Sasada and Hitori in Natsume’s Book of Friends. So many other examples of this too. Boom, automatic characer defining trait. So easy to find in any crowd of anime character.

Extra Keepsakes

There is added bonuses to this too. Let’s talk about Evangelion. Rei keeping keeping Gendo Ikari’s broken glasses as a reminder of him saving her out of a time of crisis. The one sign that Gendo has a heart and isn’t just a terrible dad. It’s obvious that Rei and Gendo have a little bit of a thing going on.

Plus, it’s obvious that Gendo has more glasses. He’s wearing another set after all and I am sure he has a lot more. He’s the director of Nerv after all.

Conclusion

I think that you all know where this is going. Wearing glasses in anime is awesome. From a character design perspective and so many different perspectives, why wouldn’t you be an anime character that wears glasses? You can always point them out in a crowd of characters, they get even more attractive when they wear them. It’s all here in my scientific thesis. Thanks for reading this, guys.