Sweat Drops

In manga and anime, characters are often drawn sweating. This can happen for various reasons, with the sweat drops being drawn in various ways. Most of the time, the characters aren't physically sweating, the sweat merely symbolizes their mental state, like anxiety.

Top-left: Hinamatsuri ヒナまつり (Episode 1)
Top-middle: Hayate no Gotoku! ハヤテのごとく！ (Episode 11)
Top-right: Full Metal Panic, フルメタル・パニック！ (Episode 9)
Bottom-left: Nichijou 日常 (Episode 1)
Bottom-middle: Inu x Boku SS, 妖狐×僕ＳＳ (Episode 4)
Bottom-right: Bonobono ぼのぼの (1995) (Episode 1)

• Vocabulary
• Types
  
  • Large Sweat Drop
  • Cheek Sweat Drop
  • Multiple Sweat Drops
  • Spilled Sweat Drops
  • Flickering Sweat Drops
  • Shooting Waves of Sweat Drops

Vocabulary

For reference, how to say sweating in Japanese:

• ase
  汗
  Sweat.
  • ase maaku
    汗マーク
    Sweat mark. (literally.)
    The term for the large anime sweat drop symbol.
  • hiya-ase
    冷や汗
    Cold sweat.
    • hiyasu
      冷やす
      To cool. To refrigerate.
• ase wo kaku
  汗を掻く
  To let sweat surface.
  To sweat. To perspire.
  • kaku
    掻く
    To touch a surface with something pointy. To touch something with a finger. To scratch. To touch something with a blade.
    To let something unwanted come out to the surface.
    • kaku
      書く
      To write. (by scratching a paper with a pointy pencil.)
    • kaku
      描く
      To draw. (same way.)
    • haji wo kaku
      恥を掻く
      To let embarrassment surface.
      To feel embarrassment in public.
• ase wo nagasu
  汗を流す
  To let sweat flow. (literally.)
  To work up a sweat. To sweat due to a physical activity. To be dripping in sweat.

• kinchou suru
  緊張する
  To feel tense.
• aseru
  焦る
  To feel anxious, impatient. To feel urgency when things aren't going the way you want.
  • aseri
    焦り
    The feeling of aseru. (noun form.)

Types

In manga and anime, characters can be drawn sweating for various reasons. Some of them are real—like due to physical activity, or sickness, fever—while others are symbolic, in which case the sweat is merely a visual cue that hints the character's current mental state.

Large Sweat Drop

The "anime sweat drop," as it's typically called, is usually a single ridiculously large sweat drop drawn dripping from the side of a character's forehead, or from their hair, specially if their back is faced to the camera.

Anime: Ouran High School Host Club, Ouran Koukou Hosuto-Bu 桜蘭高校ホスト部 (Episode 4)

• Three characters witness some cringe-worthy stuff.

This symbol is used when the character is perplexed, bewildered, confused, or otherwise at loss of words.

Character: Haruno Haruka 春野はるか
Anime: Go! Princess Precure (Episode 1)

• An utterly confused Haruka, with the sweat drop and swirling eyes.

It's always used when the character is reacting at what another character said or did. In comedy anime, characters say absurdities constantly, so instead of making a remark every time, other characters may just smile nervously and shrug it off with s sweat mark.

Character: Maria マリア
Anime: Hayate no Gotoku! ハヤテのごとく！ (Episode 11)

The anime sweat drop is a symbol like the anger mark, and therefore can appear even on characters that should be incapable of physically sweating.

Anime: Choujin Gakuen Gowcaizer, 超人学園ゴウカイザー (OVA, Episode 1)

• Robots lack the sweat glands necessary to sweat.
• They physically can't sweat.
• That doesn't stop the sweat drop from showing up on robots, though, since it isn't actually sweat.

Small Sweat Drop

Besides the large sweat drop, smaller sweat drops are also constantly used in manga and anime. In fact, they're even more ubiquitous, appearing basically everywhere.

They frequently show up due to nervousness, anxiety, shyness, but sometimes they may appear due to excitement, too. This is also the style used in more realistic sweat, like from sickness or physical activity.

Character: Ikeda Kana 池田華菜
Anime: Saki 咲 (Episode 19)

• honoo-me
  炎目
  Flame eyes.

Often, small sweat drops are drawn on the cheek of characters to make their expression appears more tense than normal.

Character: Nitta Yoshifumi 新田義史
Anime: Hinamatsuri ヒナまつり (Episode 1)

The more sweat drops there are, the stronger the anxiety or excitement.

Left: Aguri 亜玖璃
Middle: Uehara Tasuku 上原祐
Right: Hoshinomori Chiaki 星ノ守千秋
Anime: Gamers!, ゲーマーズ！ (Episode 6)

These are sometimes compared to the shi し hiragana due to their shape.

Manga: Mob Psycho 100, Mobu Saiko Hyaku モブサイコ１００ (Chapter 55, 知らない)

• odoro
  おどろ
  (the term for this background effect.)

Dripping Sweat Drops

Typically, sweat drops drawn symbolically don't drip down the face of characters. Instead, they simply stay there. In some cases, however, the sweat drops are drawn dripping, or are drawn as if they were about to drip from the chin.

When this happens, it's probably because the character is sweating profusely, which means they're extremely nervous, shocked, frozen in fear, or in a state of absolute panic.

Character: Sena Izumi 瀬名泉水
Anime: Love Stage!! (Episode 1)

Left: Togashi Yuuta 富樫勇太
Right: Tsuyuri Kumin 五月七日くみん
Anime: Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! 中二病でも恋がしたい！ (Episode 2)

Character: Sagara Sousuke 相良宗介
Anime: Full Metal Panic, フルメタル・パニック！ (Episode 9)

Character: Asagaya Minoa 阿佐ヶ谷未乃愛
Anime: Animegataris, アニメガタリズ (Episode 1)

Spilled Sweat Drops

Drops of sweat drawn on the air, as if they're spilling away from a character, are called plewds.

Plewds are more common in manga than in anime, and they're used when a character is worried, flustered, timid or in relief.

Character: Akaza Akari 赤座あかり
Anime: Yuru Yuri ゆるゆり (Episode 1)

Character: Sakurai Izumi 桜井泉
Anime: Nichijou 日常 (Episode 1)

Flickering Sweat Drops

Drops of sweat drawn as circles flickering over a character's head are used when the character is flustered or panicking, typically when they're trying to explain something and fumbling due to nervousness.

Character: Hiraga Saito 平賀才人
Anime: The Familiar of Zero, Zero no Tsukaima ゼロの使い魔 (Episode 3)

Left: Hakubi Ryouko 白眉魎呼
Right: Masaki Tenchi 柾木天地
Anime: Tenchi Muyou! Ryououki 天地無用！魎皇鬼 (OVA, Episode 1)

Left: Watanuki Banri 渡狸卍里
Right: Shirakiin Ririchiyo 白鬼院凜々蝶
Anime: Inu x Boku SS, 妖狐×僕ＳＳ (Episode 4)

Shooting Waves of Sweat Drops

An exaggerated variant of plewds seen in some series are waves of sweat drops shooting away endlessly from a character.

Anime: Blend S, ブレンド・S (Episode 8)

Left: Bonobono ぼのぼの
Right: Shimarisu シマリス
Anime: Bonobono ぼのぼの (1995) (Episode 1)