In anime and manga, when a character's eyes become four-pointed stars, sparkling with excitement, desire or ambition, the most common term for that in Japanese is shiitake-me しいたけ目, literally "shiitake eyes," as in the shiitake mushroom.
Another way to describe them is me ga shiitake 目がしいたけ, "the eyes are shiitake." Since they also resemble stars, a less common term is hoshi-me 星目, "star eyes, "me ga hoshi 目が星, "the eyes are stars," or me ni hoshi 目に星, "stars in eyes." Alternatively, me ga juuji 目が十字, "the eyes are crosses."
Terminology
A question you may be having right now is: why in the world is this called shiitake eyes???
I mean, no matter how you look at it, these are star eyes. Or sparkling eyes. Not "shiitake eyes." That sounds stupid.
- me ga kagayaku
目が輝く
The eyes shine. - me ga kirakira suru
目がキラキラする
The eyes sparkle. - me ga shiitake ni naru
目がしいたけになる
The eyes become shiitake mushrooms
In case you've never seen a shiitake before, allow me to save you a Google search:
- When spelled with kanji, it's shiitake 椎茸, but as you can see, it's normally spelled with hiragana.
The shiitake mushrooms are basically the most mushroom-y, mushroom-shaped mushrooms in the mushroom kingdom ever. They look nothing like the sparkling four-pointed star pupils that this article about.
So why are the shiitake eyes called shiitake eyes? How does that make any sense?
As it turns out, it's common to add "decorative cuts," kazari-giri 飾り切り, onto the mushroom cap of the shiitake, and such cuts are often cross-shaped.
For the record, these decoratively cut shiitake aren't used as literal decorations. You don't cut a mushroom and hang it on a wall or something. It's food. It goes into hotpots and so on.
- sukiyaki
すき焼き
(this sort of dish.)
In other words: the term shiitake-me doesn't come from the shiitake mushroom itself, but from the cuts you cut into the shiitake mushroom.
Obviously, the shiitake don't have a monopoly on cuts—it's not like you couldn't cut a cabbage, or a tomato, or an apple the same way—and yet it's called shiitake-me, because it's the shiitake, and not anything else, that's usually decorated with these cross-shaped cuts.
Furthermore, it's not like the cuts need to be cross-shaped. You can cut them however you want.
- Here, the shiitake have eight-pointed stars cut on their caps.
Despite the seemingly endless possibilities for kazari-giri shapes, the term shiitake-me applies pretty much only to the four-pointed star pupils, and not to anything else. You can't call heart eyes shiitake eyes just because you can carve a heart into a mushroom.
Most shockingly, five-pointed star eyes don't count as shiitake-me.
- me ga hoshi ni natta
目が星になった
The eyes became stars. - me ni hoshi ga aru
目に星がある
There are stars in the eyes. - This is hoshi-me, not shiitake-me.
This is fine, though, because five-pointed star pupils are unusual in anime, and don't really mean anything, while the four-pointed star pupils are very common in anime, and usually mean a character is excited about something.
They're clearly different kinds of eyes.
Even more shockingly, it's pretty much obvious that the pupils are supposed to be sparkles, they're drawn like sparkles, not drawn like mushroom cuts, however, if there are sparkles in a character's eyes, and they're not one big cross, that doesn't count as shiitake-me.
- The pair of small sparkles in each of this Tiramie's eyes do not constitute shiitake-me.
- If it was just one big cross then it would be shiitake-me, but two small crosses don't count.
This is what happens when you let fans name things. Chaos. Absolute chaos.
- Does this count as shiitake-me?
- There's a big cross in it, so yes?
- But there are small sparkles, so no?
- I mean, this isn't how you'd cut the kazari-giri thing.
- If this is shiitake-me, then sparkles are shiitake-me, and sparkles aren't shiitake-me, ergo, this isn't shiiitake-me.
- WHY DOES THIS HAVE TO BE SO COMPLICATED???
- Fixed it.
Alright, but how about this:
- The sparkle is bigger than the eye now.
- Geometrically, there's no iris circle to represent the cap of the shiitake.
- Does this count as shiitake-me?
- Am I the only one here who cares about whether it counts or not?
- This is extremely frustrating.
- I probably should have been writing about grammar instead.
Examples
The shiitake-me are often used when a character is excited about something, when they're filled with "expectation," kitai 期待. What exactly they're expecting varies.
Maybe it's something they're going to get, or to buy.
Maybe they've already gotten the thing.
- me ga juuji ni naru
目が十字になる
The eyes become the 十 character.
The eyes become crosses.- juuji
十字
The character juu 十, which looks like a cross. The meaning of this character is the number"ten," by the way.
- juuji
Maybe it's edible.
Maybe it's intangible. Maybe they're just dreaming of the future.
- touzoku
とうぞく (盗賊)
Thief. - Context: Kukuri ククリ imagines the hero, Nike ニケ, as a thief.
- She thinks he looks cool any way.
- Nene 寧々 dreams of a prince charming.
Maybe they're even expecting anything, or excited about anything. Maybe they're just very glad about something that happened, or something they've heard.
Anime: Angel Beats! (Episode 4)
Anyway, due to the emotions involved with these sparkling eyes, they're pretty much always accompanied by a smile, and often accompanied by determination.
Constant
Although uncommon, some characters have shiitake eyes built into their design, so their eyes are shiitake no matter what emotion they're having.
- Mizunokouji Asuka 水乃小路飛鳥 and her family have permanent shiitake eyes, or rather, starry eyes.
Anime: Boku no Hero Academia, 僕のヒーローアカデミア (Season 5, 2021) (Episode 5)
- Context: a hero whose quirk includes spawning mushrooms also has mushroom for eyes.
Most of the time, however, unusual pupils that are part of a character's design and cross-shaped will have round corners, and best resemble a flower like the four-leafed clover, so they're called clover eyes instead of shiitake eyes.
- me ga kuroobaa
目がクローバー
The eyes are clovers.
References
- 目がしいたけ - dic.pixiv.net, accessed 2019-01-17.
Important to note: While not an anime, they're also seen in the Cartoon Network Original show Steven Universe.
ReplyDelete