In anime, a loli ロリ is a little girl or underage female character. The male variant of loli is shota ショタ. It's also romanized rori.
Warning: this term is often associated with pedophilia.
Middle: Koshigaya Komari 越谷小鞠
Right: Koshigaya Natsumi 越谷夏海
Anime: Non Non Biyori のんのんびより (Episode 1)
Definition
There are two different definitions of loli:
- A little girl.
- An underage girl.
Little Girl
Typically, a loli isn't just any underage character, but specifically characters that are little girls.
Most anime is set in high school, so if loli meant underage girl, then most anime girls would be lolis.
- shoujo 少女 is a term that means any underage female person.
- youjo 幼女 is a term for a little girl.
- osanai
幼い
Young, in the sense of a time period when a child needs parents, adults. For humans, that's around 8 years old.(dictionary.goo.ne.jp:幼い)
- osanai
It's unlikely for an anime to feature a character of elementary school age, so characters that appear under 12 years old are more likely to be labelled lolis, and those of middle school age may or may not be a loli depending on whom you ask.
Right: Kamui Kanna カンナカムイ
Anime: Kobayashi-san Chi no Maidragon, 小林さんちのメイドラゴン (Episode 4)
- Context: two loli characters wearing items typical of an elementary school student.
- randoseru
ランドセル
A sort of school backpack. From the Dutch word "ransel." - tsuugakubou
通学帽
A yellow "hat," boushi 帽子, worn by students "commuting to school," tsuugaku 通学. Its purpose is to prevent traffic accidents.
There's no exact age range for loli characters, so it's impossible to determine if a character is a loli or not from numerical age alone.
There are practical and philosophical reasons for this.
- She may not have an age disclosed canonically.
- Deriving her age from her school year assumes she has never repeated a year.
- Her disclosed age, physical age, and/or mental age may not seem to match.
Since you can't tell if a character is a loli or not by age alone, there must be some other way to figure this out, which is by appearance and possession of child-like features.
Problematically, this makes the whole thing a lot more subjective. One person may say a character is a loli for one reason, and another may end up disagreeing with that for another reason.
Some common features of loli characters would be:
- kodomoppoi
子供っぽい
Child-like. - dougan
童顔
Baby faced. Having a child-like face. - tei-shinchou
低身長
Short stature.- se ga hikui
背が低い
"The back is short."
To be short in stature. - kogara
小柄
Having a small body. Petite.
- se ga hikui
- hin'nyuu
貧乳
Flat-chested.- mune ga chiisai
胸が小さい
"The chest is small."
To have small breasts. - See also: terms for breast sizes in Japanese.
- mune ga chiisai
- rori-goe
ロリ声
Loli voice. High pitch, lisping. Also called "anime voice," anime-goe アニメ声. - Says oniichan お兄ちゃん a lot. This word means "older brother," so it's used by "younger sister," imouto 妹 characters, but it can also refer to an "young man" in general, making it typically used by young children in anime to refer to an older male protagonist.
A character that isn't prepubescent but has a stature much shorter than average for her age and a neotenous head to body ratio sometimes gets called a "loli" by fans, the same thing can occur with a character that is flat-chested.
This can be considered offensive by some. In real life, there are adult women who are short in stature or flat chested, so by labeling these characters lolis, one is also seen labeling those women children.
- Context: Kuroki Tomoko 黒木智子 wonder how she's unpopular.
- shikashi busu janai nara naze motenai!!
しかしブスじゃないなら何故モテない！！
But if [I]'m not ugly then why [I] am not popular!!? - chibi de hin'nyuu dakara ka!?
チビで貧乳だからか！？
Because [I]'m a shorty and flat-chested!? - iya, demo rori-zuki niwa mushiro pointo φ takai daro!?
いや でもロリ好きにはむしろポイント高いだろ！？
No, but to [guys] that like lolis [something like that] would [be great], wouldn't it!?
- pointo takai
ポイント高い
Having high points. High score. Scored high. - She's saying she'd be a 10/10 to guys that like little girls for being shorty and flat-chested, i.e. she should be popular to a certain sort of people, at least.
- pointo takai
Some series' use of a moe 萌え art style may make all characters look like little girls regardless of age, which complicates even further figuring out which characters count as a loli and which ones do not.
Anime: Lucky☆Star, らき☆すた (Episode 4)
- Context: Izumi Konata 泉こなた, 18 years old, quoting a line from the game SHUFFLE! [貧乳はステータスだ!希少価値だ! - dic.nicovideo.jp, accessed 2020-02-29]
- hin'nyuu wa suteetasu da
kishou-kachi da
貧乳はステータスだ
希少価値だ
A flat chest is a status symbol.
It's a precious rarity.- kishou-kachi
希少価値
Rare and valuable.
- kishou-kachi
vs. Lolicon
The terms loli and lolicon refer to different things.
A lolicon is a pedophile, i.e. someone who is into little girls (lolis).
- Context: a lolicon attempts to lure a loli into a van using candy.
- You can tell it's candy due to the Peko-jita ペコ舌.
In English, the term lolicon is also used as a genre for drawn pornography (hentai 変態) featuring underage characters (lolis).
Due to this, some people may believe the term "loli" to be exclusively NSFW, in spite of memes saying things like "don't lewd lolis," which imply the term isn't intrinsically lewd.
- Context: Satou Tatsuhiro 佐藤達広 clears up something for Yamazaki Kaoru 山崎薫.
- rorikon wa ningen janai... kedamono da......
ロリコンは人間じゃない･･･ケダモノだ･･････
Pedophiles aren't people... [they] are animals......- ningen - "human," "person."
- kedamono - "beast." See also: kemono 獣.
Underage Girl
Sometimes, loli means an underage girl, for logical reasons.
The English slang loli comes from the Japanese rori ロリ, which comes from rorikon ロリコン, "lolicon," which is an abbreviation and katakanization of "lolita complex," which is like the term Oedipus complex, except for lolis, except originally it wasn't, and comes from the critically acclaimed 1955 novel called Lolita, written by Vladimir Nabokov, about a pedophile infatuated with a 12 year old girl called Lolita.
This means that if someone is called a lolicon, they're into lolis, which means they're a pedophile, which means they're into underage girls, which means lolis are underage girls. For example:
- Context: a kemono lioness and a gorilla JK are in a train with a toucan salaryman.
- chikan----!!!
痴漢ーーーー！！！
Molester!!! - kono tori no ossan oshiri sawatta!!
この鳥のオッサンおしり触った！！
This bird old-man touched [my] butt!! - e' nani?
えっ なに？
Eh, what? - saitee!! rorikon!!
サイテー！！ロリコン！！
[You're] the worst!! [You] pedophile!! - chigaimasu kedo jidankin-meate desu ka?
違いますけど示談金目当てですか？
[You got it wrong], is [your] objective settlement money?- chigau means "[it] differs," it's used to say someone is wrong when they claim something different from the reality.
- me-ate refers to what someone has set their eyes on, their aim, in this case the settlement money.
Above, two high school girls called the guy who (allegedly) touched them in the train a lolicon, which would make the high school girls lolis.
Sometimes, this term is used in the sense of "likes little girls" instead:
- In Beastars, Legoshi レゴシ, who is a large wolf, gets called a lolicon by Rokume ロクメ, a.k.a. "Hexeye," for liking Haru ハル, who is a small rabbit, despite Haru being 18 years old and Legoshi being 17.
Lolita
In English, "lolita" means "a precociously seductive girl." This term is based on the character from Nabokov's book.(merriam-webster.com)
Since lolicon abbreviates lolita complex, loli abbreviates lolita, and some characters called lolis may be called so due to the definition above.
Fashion
Sometimes, loli refers to fashion styles, like "gothic lolita," gosurori ゴスロリ. This has nothing to do with the rest of this article.
Right: Hanazono Yurine 花園ゆりね
Anime: Jashin-chan Dropkick, 邪神ちゃんドロップキック (Episode 5)
- Context: Yurine, who wears gothic lolita fashion and has chuunibyou 中二病, punishing Jashin-chan with an old torture method called ishidaki 石抱.
Other types of lolita fashion are also abbreviated to loli ロリ. Examples include:(wunderwelt.jp, see cited article for images)
- goshikku roriita (gosurori)
ゴシックロリータ（ゴスロリ）
Gothic Lolita. Gothloli. - kurashikaru roriita (kurarori)
クラシカルロリータ（クラロリ）
Classical Lolita. Claloli. - hime roriita (himerori)
姫ロリータ（姫ロリ）
Princess Lolita. Himeloli. - kajuaru roriita (kajurori)
カジュアルロリータ（カジュロリ）
Casual Lolita. Casuloli.
Types
For reference, some types of lolis.
Most of them are a subversion of the typical loli, making them examples of gap moe ギャップ萌え.
Legal Loli
A "legal loli," gouhou rori 合法ロリ, is a loli character that's not underage.
Right: Okabe Rintarou 岡部倫太郎
Anime: Steins;Gate 0 (Episode 2)
- Context: Maho, 21 years old, 140cm, gets mistaken for a child multiple times in-universe, and is canonically referred to as a gouhou-rori.
This doesn't make a lot of sense, but, in anime, age is just a number. Sometimes an author draws a girl and says it's a guy, other times the author drawn a little girl and says she's a 500 year old vampire, because apparently vampires stop aging when they get bitten or something like that.
- In Touhou 東方, Remilia Scarlet レミリア・スカーレット is a loli vampire around 500 years old.
- In the Monogatari Series 物語シリーズ, Oshino Shinobu 忍野忍 is a 598 year old loli vampire with the appearance of an 8 year old.
This trope, of course, isn't limited to anime.
- In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Babette was a ten year girl when she was bitten by a vampire, becoming immortal by stopping aging. In the game, she still looks like a ten year old girl, despite having lived for hundreds of years, using her appearance to get her targets to lower their guard, as she works as an assassin member of the Dark Brotherhood.
The term for this is:
- furou
不老
Un-aging.- furou-fushi
不老不死
Un-aging and un-dying.
Immortal.
- furou-fushi
Any character that doesn't age, or ages slower than humans, can fall into this trope.
Besides vampires, angels, demons, and other monster girls are typical targets of the legal loli trope.
It's a trope that elves live far longer than humans. If they lived three times longer, for example, you could end up with a 30 year old elf that has the appearance of a 10 year old human.
Exceptionally:
- Context: in this series, the plot is about how angels travel back in time to kill the protagonist, who is a middle school student, for allegedly inventing immortality twenty years in the future, when, invested in his research to create a lolicon paradise on Earth, he stopped the external appearance of all women at 12 years old, accidentally making them immortal.
Illegal Loli
An "illegal loli," ihou-rori 違法ロリ, is a loli character that's underage.
In spite of these terms being about legality, they're made up by anime fans, not lawyers.
Some countries have laws against drawn pornography featuring underage characters. Since I'm not a lawyer, I have no idea if just saying a loli character is actually an adult would somehow evade such laws. I'd imagine not. In any case, these aren't legal terms, they're anime slangs.
The Japanese terms gouhou and ihou would be in reference to Japanese laws, in which someone is considered "underage," miseinen 未成年, if they're under 20 years old.
There's a factoid spread around the internet that Japan's legal age is 13 years old, which may mislead someone into thinking that 14 year old character is legal by Japan's standards.
The 13 year old mark refers to articles 176 and 177 of the Japanese penal code.[for reference: PENAL CODE (Act No.45 of 1907) - cas.go.jp, accessed 2020-12-31]
A separate law, the child welfare act, forbids sexual activity with persons under 18 years old.
It's also possible to get charged with kidnapping a minor if you're dating someone 19 years old and take her somewhere without notifying her parents, since, technically, someone under 20 years old is a minor in Japanese law.
Oppai Loli
In English, an oppai loli is a loli character that has "breasts," oppai おっぱい.
- Context: a normal reaction.
- nandesu ka kono kyara-dezain!
なんですかこのキャラデザイン！
What's this character design! - chuugakusei desu yo!
中学生ですよね！
[She] is a middle school student! - nande konna ni mune ga ookii-n-desu ka!?
なんでこんなに胸が大きいんですか！？
Why are [her] breasts so big?!
ロリ巨乳
The term oppai loli in Japanese would be rori-kyonyuu ロリ巨乳, "loli large-breasts."
To elaborate: although the term "oppai loli" is made up out of two Japanese words, it's actually an English anime slang, so oppai rori おっぱいロリ doesn't mean anything in Japanese.
See also: eisei-wago 英製和語.
In Japanese, a character that is a loli and has large breasts is called rori-kyonyuu instead.
- Context: Amakusa Shino 天草シノ, who has a complex about her flat chest, talks to Hagimura Suzu 萩村スズ, who has a complex about her height.
- Hagimura, ureshi-sou da na
萩村 嬉しそうだな
Hagimura, [you] seem happy, huh. - kinou, hakattara chotto ookiku nattemashite
昨日 測ったらちょっと大きくなってまして
Yesterday, [when] [I] measured [it], [I] had gotten a little bigger. - *gestures over her head*
- kono choushi de watashi wa dondon seichou suru koto deshou
この調子で私はどんどん成長することでしょう
At this pace I'll keep growing up, [won't I]. - shikashi rori-kyonyuu wa {baransu φ warui} zo?
しかしロリ巨乳はバランス悪いぞ？
But rori-kyonyuu {the balance is bad}. (literally.)
- In the sense of the person's size and the breast size is unbalanced.
- nanka hanashi tsuujitenakatta
なんか話通じてなかった
[It looks like you didn't get what I meant].- Hagimura was talking about growing up in height, but Shino understood it as growing up in breast size.
- tsuujiru
通じる
For the meaning of something that is said to be understood by someone else. In this case, the meaning of what Hagimura said wasn't understood by Shino. - tsuujitenakatta - contraction of tsuujite-inakatta.
The order of the morphemes is inverted: loli kyonyuu means the kyonyuu is loli, not that the loli is kyonyuu, i.e. someone put a loli on a pair of large breasts, rather than putting a pair of large breasts on a loli.
Middle: Fujinoki Nene 藤ノ木寧音
Right: Hashiba Junichi 羽柴ジュンイチ
Anime: Hajimete no Gyaru はじめてのギャル (Episode 5)
- Context: no, she isn't kneeling.
- Nene is canonically called rori kyonyuu in the anime, by what seems to be a group of desperate virgins.
- She's 140cm tall, with a 98cm bust, and a high school student, so she should be around 16 years old.
- See also: gyaru ギャル.
Problematically, how large is considered kyonyuu varies as much as what characteristics a character needs to be considered a loli, so it's uncertain which characters the term refers to exactly.
There are terms for breast sizes beyond kyonyuu, e.g. bakunyuu 爆乳, literally "explosive breasts." If the threshold for what counts as kyonyuu is lower, then a loli character with very large breasts like Nene would be rori-bakunyuu ロリ爆乳 instead.
For reference, some problematic examples of kyonyuu characters whose loli status is dubious:
Right: Uzaki Hana 宇崎花
Anime: Uzaki-chan wa Asobitai! 宇崎ちゃんは遊びたい！ (Episode 1)
- Context: Uzaki Hana, 19 years old, 150cm tall, 96cm bust.
- She's an annoying, loud character to complement her senpai 先輩, who is quiet, and was given large, round eyes that contrast with his unfriendly small irises, consequently giving her a neotenous appearance of someone much younger.
- Fans who don't consider her an oppai loli do so either because she's canonically not underage, or because she's just a short character with large breasts.
- A short, curvy girl in English is sometimes called a "short stack."
- toranjisuta guramaa
トランジスタグラマー
Transistor (small) glamour (attractive).
A Japanese term for a woman that's both small and curvy, e.g. Hestia ヘスティア, from DanMachi ダンまち.
- ?sugoi dekai
すごいでかい
?Incredible big. (literally.)- This sentence appears to feature improper grammar: sugoi must be inflected to the ren'youkei 連用形 to modify dekai.
- sugoku dekai
すごくでかい
Incredibly big.
Anime: Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, 天元突破グレンラガン (Episode 1)
- Context: in spite of being drawn with a more adult head ratio proportion than Uzaki Hana, Yoko Littner is canonically 14 years old.
- In spite of her age, it's unlikely anybody considers her a loli, oppai loli or otherwise, given her design appearance-wise is very similar to Revy from Black Lagoon, whom nobody would consider a loli either.
Noja Loli
A noja loli のじゃロリ is a loli that has archaic speech mannerisms, such as ending her sentences with no ja のじゃ.
This is an example of "role language," yakuwarigo 役割語. How the character speaks hints what sort of character they are.
In this case, if the character speaks archaically, that means they're extremely old, so they're probably an immortal character, or perhaps a time traveler, or they've lived in some secluded, anachronistic place that uses an archaic dialect, for some reason, etc.
Normally, a character that speaks with noja would be an old man, with a gray beard, perhaps a king handing a quest to the hero in a JRPG, or something like that that.
Lolibaba
A loli babaa ロリババア, also romanized loli babā, lolibaba, is a loli character who is a "old woman," babaa ババア. What this means exactly varies.
If a character is a legal loli, an old woman drawn as a loli for some reason, then that's a loli babaa. It's likely such character also speaks like an old woman, being a noja loli on top of being a loli babaa.
- In Masamune-kun no Revenge 政宗くんのリベンジ, Masamune calls his own mother a loli babaa.
- In Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu Ｒｅ：ゼロから始める異世界生活, Subaru Natsuki ナツキ・スバル calls Ryuuzu リューズ a loli babaa.
- In Tatoeba Last Dungeon Mae no Mura no Shounen ga Joban no Machi de Kurasu You na Monogatari たとえばラストダンジョン前の村の少年が序盤の街で暮らすような物語, Alka アルカ is called a loli babaa by several characters whom she has caused great trouble.
Left: Masamune's mother, Hayase Kinue 早瀬絹江
Bottom-right: Makabe Masamune 真壁政宗
Anime: Masamune-kun no Revenge, 政宗くんのリベンジ (Episode 9, Cropped)
- Context: Kinue is in her 30's in this picture, considering she's 42 year old when her son is in high school.
Some characters are old women that transform into a loli temporarily.
- In Hunter x Hunter, a certain important character does this.
There's also the question of what counts as an old woman. At most extreme, every character that isn't a loli is an old woman.
In some cases, a character who is a young girl somehow ages without growing up. This could happen if the development of the body stops, but the character still ages, or there's some magical power or the work of an enemy stand that makes everybody age quickly to death.
Middle: Kiyoko キヨコ
Right: Takashi タカシ
Anime: AKIRA アキラ (Movie)
- Context: the ESPers from Akira underwent laboratory experiments that stopped their physical growth. In spite of having the stature of a child, and being mistaken for a child sometimes, they're all of advanced age, having white hair and shriveled skin. They're voiced with children voices, however.
Illegal Baba
An ihou-babaa 違法ババア, "illegal old woman," "illegal baba," is a character who looks like an adult woman, but is canonically underage.
Right: Mitsukai Dokuro 三塚井ドクロ
Anime: Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan 撲殺天使ドクロちゃん (Episode 4)
- Context: Zakuro-chan, Dokuro-chan's younger sister, is 9 years old, but is drawn as an adult woman, making her look older than her older sister.
This would be the true (diagonal) opposite of legal loli.
| Loli | Baba | |
|---|---|---|
| Legal | Maho | (irrelevant.) |
| Illegal | Renge | Zakuro |
Loli Mom
The term rori-okan ロリおかん refers to a "loli mom," that is, a legal loli, or loli baba, that's also the mother of a character.
Bottom-left: Yagami Nomi 八神野美
Bottom-right: Yagami Youji 八神陽司
Anime: Yagami-kun no Katei no Jijou 八神くんの家庭の事情 (Episodes 1, 2, 1)
- Context: a series about a boy who fell in love with his mother that looks around his age, prompting his classmates to call him a lolicon, and him to call himself a mothercon, and then plot to try to get his parents to divorce so he could marry his own mother, with the help of his teacher who also likes his mother, and one of his father's coworkers that likes him.
- rorikon
ロリコン
Pedophile. (attracted to lolis.) - ore wa mazakon
オレはマザコン
I'm a mothercon. (attracted to one's own mother.)
Lolification
The term rori-ka ロリ化 means "lolification," the process through which someone, or something, becomes a loli character somehow. This includes:
- A character turns into a little girl for some magical or sci-fi reason.
- e.g. Natsume Maya 棗真夜, from Tenjou Tenge 天上天下, is a 17 years old girl who usually transforms herself into a loli in order to conserve energy.
- Fan art of a character features a loli version of them, similar to peachification, Piichi-hime-ka ピーチ姫化.
- The gijinka 擬人化, "anthropomorphization," of something is done by drawing it as a loli character.
- e.g. the female platelets in Hataraku Saibou はたらく細胞.
Anime: Maoujou de Oyasumi 魔王城でおやすみ (Episode 4)
- Context: Aurora used an item that turned her into a child, making her already loose sleeves become even larger, relatively speaking.
- See also: overly long sleeves (moe-sode 萌え袖).
If a character is gender bent to female in the process of turning into a loli, that's also called nyotaika 女体化, "female-body-fication."
- In Youjo Senki 幼女戦記, the loli protagonist is a salaryman who dies and gets reincarnated in another world as a female baby.
Kemololi
The term kemorori ケモロリ, "kemololi," is a "furry loli," in the sense of a loli that is anthropomorphized animal. It's a portmanteau of loli with kemono ケモノ, "beast," term that refers to furry art and characters in Japanese.
Right: Juno ジュノ
Anime: Beastars (Episode 12)
- Context: Juno using a hijidon 肘ドン on Haru, who is 18 years old.
- Since Legoshi was called a lolicon for liking Haru, and both are kemono characters, then technically Haru is a kemololi.
Pairings
Pairings with loli characters are sometimes called by an abbreviation like:
- one-rori
おねロリ
A pairing of an oneesan お姉さん character with a loli, that is, an older girl with a loli character.
See oneshota おねショタ for details.
References
- Lolita - merriam-webster.com, accessed 2021-04-29.
- ロリータの種類一覧 特徴まとめ - wunderwelt.jp, accessed 2021-05-19.
- 「幼い」の類語・言い換え - dictionary.goo.ne.jp, accessed 2021-06-11.
Only reason I'm searching is to prove to people I am not in fact a loli
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