Nosebleeds in Anime

When you start to watch anime, you naturally encounter some concepts that may seem strange at first. Like those giant, emotion-filled eyes, the way a character will get a huge sweat drop on their head to show they’re frustrated, or the strange phenomenon of sneezes being caused by people gossiping about you. As you watch, you learn some of the more subtle nuances, like the concepts of senpai and kohai I talked about last time, or the way certain characters will become enamored of someone of the same sex in an extremely dramatic and/or entertaining way without warning. Another odd concept that took me a while to figure out were the nosebleeds that happened whenever a character (usually male) suddenly sees a female in a provocative situation. The joke, which has its origins in gag manga from the 1960s like Dokonjo Gaeru and Inakappe Taisho, is a euphemism for blood flow to another region of the body entirely, and it’s a fun way to express the concept on-screen. Today, the anime nosebleed has come to be a meme all by itself — there are even anime/manga in which nosebleeds are a central part of the story.

What weird anime thing confused you at first?

The anime nosebleed took me a while to get used to.