Polite Dissent

5 Responses to “ Your Weekend Nosebleed Moment of Zen, part 2 ”

1. Sleestak
   August 28th, 2006 at 5:29 am
   

   Didn’t Stephen King start this gimmick in Firestarter?

2. Anonymous
   August 28th, 2006 at 10:30 am
   

   How about nosebleeds in manga…?

3. Scott
   August 28th, 2006 at 11:34 am
   Official Comment

   Manga nosebleeds — while equally medically unlikely — tend to represent crushes or unrequited love. So in American comics, nosebleeds imply mental strain, while in Japanese comics they imply love. I’m not sure which is worse.

4. Ian Myles Slater
   August 28th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
   

   There have been claims that the manga nosebleed convention is actually an allusion to blood rushing to umm, other extremities; love may not be quite the right word.

   This view is certainly reflected in some translations, and dubbed versions of anime; so far as I have noticed, in the mouths of exceptionally coarse characters.

   I have no idea if the Japanese originals justify this. I haven’t seen objections on the grounds that they don’t, but they may exist.

   Others suggest that we should draw conclusions from the enormous eyes of the characters, indicating that the surrounding tissues must be under a considerable strain from the same volume of blood being forced to flow in a more constricted space, so that sharp increases in blood pressure need an outlet; without excluding the other explanation. (See “100 Rules of Anime” at http://www.cs.utah.edu/~duongsaa/more_htm/jk_100animeRules.htm, rules #8 and #40.)

5. Anonymous
   August 29th, 2006 at 5:45 pm
   

   “There have been claims that the manga nosebleed convention is actually an allusion to blood rushing to umm, other extremities; love may not be quite the right word.”

   Viagra’s linked to nosebleeds too:

   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2165870.stm

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