In Japanese, tangan 単眼 means "one-eyed," like a cyclops.
See sekigan 隻眼 for "one-eyed" in the sense of having lost one eye.
Anime: Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou: Hobo Mainichi ____! Namappoi Douga, 「モンスター娘のいる日常」ほぼ毎日○○！生っぽい動画 (ONA)
Meaning
The word tangan 単眼 is formed by two morphemes:
- tan
単
Simple. (as opposed to complex.)
Singular. (as opposed to plural.) - gan
眼
Eye.
The term is used to refer to something that only has one eye. It's synonymous with:
- hitotsu-me
一つ目
One eye. - monoai
モノアイ
Mono-eye.
These terms can refer to four different things:
- Animals that only have one eye.
- Simple eye, or pigment pit, a kind of arthropod eye.
- A birth defect.
- Fantasy characters that only have one eye.
Now, here comes a public service announcement:
DO NOT GOOGLE tanganshou 単眼症, "cyclopia," which is the term for a fatal birth defect in which you're born with just one eye in the middle of your head so your cranial structure is all messed up and you probably can't survive that way. I'm not actually sure, to be honest, because I noped out of the Wikipedia page as the images started loading.
In fact, do not even google tangan 単眼 either. That looks dangerous, so I wouldn't recommend it.
You can search for tangan 単眼 on Pixiv, where it's all illustrations of fantasy characters, but on google, where there are photos of real life imagery, you don't want to do it.
The cyclops is one of the most well-known one-eyed fantasy character. There are two ways to say "cyclops" in Japanese:
- saikuropusu
サイクロプス
A katakanization of cyclops, the English word. - kyukuropusu
キュクロプス
A katakanization of κύκλωψ, the Greek word for cyclops.
Of course, Greece isn't the only culture with one-eyed mythical characters. Some Japanese youkai 妖怪 are also one-eyed. Not to mention there are one-eyed characters based on other things. For example:
Anime: Gravity Falls (Episode 19)
- purobindensu no me
プロビデンスの目
Eye of Providence, also known asthe Illuminatiall-seeing eye of God, is a triangle with a single eye on it, and the basis for the design of Bill Cipher.
Right: Honda Hanako 本田華子
Anime: Asobi Asobase あそびあそばせ (Episode 8)
- Context: Hanako worries about God's wrath against virgins. The triangle with an eye on it in the background is the eye of providence.
In Arthropods
In arthropods, insects, and so on, tangan refers to a "simple eye." The opposite term is fukugan 複眼, "compound eye."
- The design for Killa キーラ, a killer bee monster girl, includes:
- zenshi
前翅
Forewing. (of an insect.) - koushi
後翅
Hindwing. (of an insect.) - shokkaku
触覚
Antennae. (not to be confused with ahoge アホ毛.) - tangan
単眼
Simple eyes. - fukugan
複眼
Compound eyes.
Consequently, you can end up in a situation where a character that has multiple eyes technically has tangan 単眼, because those eyes are "simple eyes."
Anime: Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou: Hobo Mainichi ____! Namappoi Douga, 「モンスター娘のいる日常」ほぼ毎日○○！生っぽい動画 (ONA)
- Spiders aren't insects, but they are arthropods, and they have simple eyes.[Simple eye in invertebrates - en.wikipedia.org, accessed 2020-02-15]
Naturally, when talking about anime characters, illustrations, tangan 単眼 means "single eye," not "simple eye," so a multi-eyed spider wouldn't count. See tagan 多眼 for characters with more than two eyes.
Monster Girls
Common Japanese terms for one-eyed monster girls are:
- tangan-musume
単眼娘
One-eyed girl.
Monoeye girl.
Cyclops girl. - tangan-shoujo
単眼少女
Left: Roku 六
Right: Nana 七
Anime: Jingai-san no Yome 人外さんの嫁 (Episode 7)
- Roku, Nana, and their wife, Tsuchikiyose, part of an inter-species, role-reversed, polygamous marriage.
- jingai-san no yome
人外さんの嫁
A wife [that] {is non-human}. (no.)
A wife of a non-human. (yes.) - See also: no-adjectives.
- jingai-san no yome
Examples
For reference, some examples of one-eyed characters.
Fantasy Races
One-eyed monster girls are often just some a kind of fantasy race or monstrous species.
Right: unnamed receptionist
Anime: Ishuzoku Reviewers, 異種族レビュアーズ (Episode 5)
- Megalo, who works in a brothel specialized in cyclops girls, tangan-musume 単眼娘, being introduced by the receptionist.
- In the series, the one-eyed race finds eyeballs of larger sizes attractive.
- The terms kyogan 巨眼 and hingan 貧眼, literally "giant eye" and "poor eye," are used to refer to larger and smaller eyes, respectively.
- Although kyogan is a word in Japanese, hingan is not. These terms were made up from two common terms for breast sizes: kyonyuu 巨乳 and hin'nyuu 貧乳, which refer to large and small breasts, respectively.
Aliens
Some one-eyed characters are one-eyed because they're aliens coming from outer space, other galaxies, and that sort of stuff.
Anime: One Punch Man, ワンパンマン (Episode 11)
- Boros is an alien, hence why he has a single eye, and blue skin, and elf ears.
Anime: Star☆Twinkle Precure, スター☆トゥインクルプリキュア (Episode 16)
- Aiwarn is an alien, hence why she has a single eye, and purple skin, and elf ears.
Anime: Futurama (Episode 2)
- Leela is an alien, hence why she has a single eye, and skin-colored skin, and ears.
Apparitions
Some one-eyed youkai 妖怪:
Anime: Gegege no Kitarou ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 (2007) (Episode 91)
- The most well-known one-eyed youkai.
- He has his own Wikipedia page.
Anime: Nurarihyon no Mago ぬらりひょんの孫 (Episode 1)
- hitotsume-nyuudou 一つ目入道 is part of the Japanese folklore.
- He has his own Wikipedia page, too.
Anime: Gegege no Kitarou ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 (2018) (Episode 2)
- miage-nyuudou 見上げ入道 is part of the Japanese folklore.
- He also has his own Wikipedia page.
Anime: Youkai Watch, 妖怪ウォッチ (Episode 21)
- A monster girl whose eye has the power to cause "insomnia," fumin 不眠.
- She doesn't have her own Wikipedia page, because she's not part of the Japanese folklore, she's just a character Youkai Watch made up.
Anime: Jujutsu Kaisen 呪術廻戦 (Episode 6)
- A "cursed spirit," juurei 呪霊, that has a single eye.
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