5 1/2 Essential Meganekkos (and Glasses Guys)

What is eternity doing tonight? has become Mega Megane Moé. For the latest posts, please change your links accordingly.
I'll be the first to profess that my main moe obsession, if you may put it that way, are meganekkos, a.k.a 'glasses girls'. Perhaps it's something about their character that usually goes along with the glasses, the shy and quiet, or perhaps strong and silent personality that goes along with it. Perhaps it's that air of intelligence that it conveys. Perhaps it's that vulnerability that the glasses - and following lack thereof ("I forgot to reconstruct glasses.") - conveys, the same way that there's such a difference between Hair Up and Hair Down, there's a difference between Glasses and Not Glasses. Perhaps it's because I wear glasses.

But the fact of the matter is, girls with glasses in anime are 99.9% of the time (I can't even really think of an exception right now) utterly adorable, there's been volumes written on the matter (especially in the linked blog post above that I commented on). And since I'm not really in the mental state to do a 500-picture recap of Shuffle! 18 - because that episode is huge, here's a filler-ish list.

To be honest, though, it didn't end up the way I intended it to be. Despite my rampant adoration for things with spectacles, I found out that I don't really know that many characters in anime with glasses. There's a gigantulous list over at Wikipedia but I can count the amount of characters on that list I recgonize on my hands, and the amount that I really care about is even less than that.

So I've had to make a few...augmentations to the list (hence the title), but still, let this be a monument to glasses. Contacts can go burn in hell.


5th (tie): Eriol Hiiragizawa (Cardcaptor Sakura), Itsuki Midoriba (Shuffle!)
See what I mean? Guys. In a meganekkos list. Alright, guys with glasses - what's the official term for that? - may not be even a tenth as moe as their female counterparts, but in this case the glasses definitely contribute greatly toward the badassery rating. These two are proof that not all guys with poor vision have to wear ugly coke bottle glasses with swirly things over their eyes.

Itsuki The Harem Master is one of the strongest secondary males I've ever seen in a harem/eroge series, and definitely destroys the bad reputation the name Itsuki has (see: Itsuki Koizumi, Itsuki Takeuchi). He, unlike many runner-up guys, is witty, quite successful with the ladies, and, uh, decent looking at times too.

Eriol's the closest to a proper villain that the CCS series will ever get, and he gets bonus points for being cool-headed and calculating in only the way that a Bond villain can. Why do the glasses work with these two here? The ability to make them shiny and opaque at will - a clear sign of "I'm plotting something incredibly awesome."


4th - Miyuki Takara (Lucky Star)
Well, Miyuki's technically got a lot of moe aspects down, as that's part of her character. It's like, if you took every aspect that you could think of (that doesn't conflict with another), and boiled it down to its essence, you get Miyuki. Glasses girl, clumsy, well built, smart, rich girl, clumsy, sort of reserved, and clumsy. It's a shame that she hasn't got as much development as the other Lucky Star girls, as right now Miyuki's sort of a hollow shell. She has the elements, but hasn't really put them to work in a masterpiece of mind and heart melting charm yet. I have little doubt that she will one day though.


3rd and a half - Tsukasa Hiiragi with 5 Minute Photoshopped glasses (Lucky Star)
I guess, Tsukasa would be the opposite of Miyuki in that case then. It's on the record that I didn't think very highly of Tsukasa at the beginning, as she didn't really have any special to her, but 5 episodes later, she stands head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd as the cutest character in personality in the series. It's probably that naive element combined with her face that isn't afraid to show all sorts of emotion. ...Yes, I know I just devoted 5 lines to someone who doesn't really wear glasses at all. Ever. It was a tough find for meganekkos today.


3rd - Mai Kawasumi ver. Nagato (Kanon)
See? Certainly you can't say that my picks are getting any more valid. Mai really only wore glasses for one scene in one episode in Kanon, but the pickings are scarce and the Mai is awesome, so, there you go. Mai would really fit the meganekko stereotype, with the intense strong and silent personality, which is probably why she got this minor scene in glasses. What's left to say about Mai? She's got a sword, looks great in a dress, and has a brilliant (if not very heart-wrenching) story. I'm biased.


2nd - Ciel-senpai (Tsukihime)
OK, so I could only really find three meganekkos on short notice, so here's the second. Ciel's a bit of a questionable choice in herself, and I'll try to explain this while spoiling as little as possible: Ciel doesn't always wear glasses, nor that school outfit, she's got a bit more of a deeper story than that. Why? It's Tsukihime, an eroge visual novel that rivals Kanon in terms of deep, depressing stories. And although Ciel seems to get a lot of flak from the Tsukihime community, at least compared to the idols of Hisui, Arcueid, maybe Kohaku and Sacchin (which I won't deny myself), you can't really call Ciel a bad character. Picking the worst of the Tsukihime lot is like picking the worst of the Ferraris. You can't make too bad a choice.

In conclusion, I think the game says it the best: Ciel-senpai isn't Ciel-senpai without her glasses!
In context, the line is even more hilarious, though...


1st - Yuki Nagato (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya)
Could there be any other? I find myself saying this for pretty much every character so far, but...it's Yuki. Do you need an explanation? Look up at that banner there. The one with Mai. And Yuki. I'm a fanboy. A meganekko fanboy.

That's probably the other point I forgot to mention about meganekko. Given the silent personalities so many of them have, isn't it when they finally open up, if not only a little, that makes them so adorable?

Those human moments that Yuki has, the ones where she forgets to reconstruct glasses, or where she 'jokes' with Haruhi in the mansion, the lines in Melancholy IV ("I also feel personally that I wish you to return", or, the famous one, "Let's go to the library again some time"), those are what make Yuki what she is. And what she is, is top notch, adorably awesome.

Not to mention the undeniably 'cool' moments such as the baseball game and the entire second half of Melancholy IV.

And of course, who could forget Alternate Yuki from the 4th book?

So, there you have it. 3 true meganekkos, 1 half meganekko, 2 glasses guys, and 1 photoshopped glasses girl. Perhaps not the best strike force of moe, but a very dangerous storm of awesome. Maybe the time would've been better spent writing up an entire post on Yuki or Mai at the rate I was fanboying, but I'll keep the floor open to other characters as well.

Now to go stick some frames on some more characters... (for some reason this is cueing up scenes of Haruhi costume-rape again)

-CCY