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The appeal of heterochromia?


zxdvas

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Heterochromia (particularly, eyes of different colour) has became a daily routine in anime/VN despite its rarity in life. Many find it attractive and charming. I try to locate the reason why people would prefer heterochromia, which is in principle a biological malfunction. I have yet to met a person who prefers a person with AIDS or genetic diseases. I failed to understand the difference that leads one to be prized and all others shunned.

Surely artists do not care as long the characters sell but the reason it sells elude me. The only reason I can think of is scarcity but that does not explain its origin. Having run out of arsenal, I have to ask.

Edit: Yes the AIDS example is bad and I would gladly take it back but my curiosity is not set back by it.

Edited by zxdvas
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This is meant to be an aesthetic question though. I did not make any claim such as heterochromia or malfunction is bad.

That said, I should have been aware that giving example and comparison would not help in some cases. It is much easier to refute an example than an argument.

But if you are subtly saying that comparing heterochromia and AIDS is offensive I would take notice.

Edited by zxdvas
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well, unlike aids, heterochromia wont cause you to slowly die. :michiru: as for its origins, im guessing its derives from real life. people irl can have two different eye colors and someone decided to add that into a vn.... why is this a discussion?

 

i dont really prefer it but i do like it. why have just one color eyes when you can have two? :mare: 

 

19193.jpg

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My 2 cents, heterochromia is just another moe aspect of a character. Just two examples about that: Steins Gate's Daru found the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) pretty sexy, and in Maitetsu you romance trains. Anything and everything can be moe-fied and made sexually appealing.

AFAIK David Bowie had this "condition", and it didn't bar him of living a full life... so what's the point of comparing it to actual crippling diseases?

At any rate, girls with heterochromia are something like "cute mutants"...

In

Miagete Goran - A sky full of stars, the eyes of the heroine with heterochromia are compared by the protag to a twin star, effectively kickstarting their relationship, that can end in a couple if you like.

Edited by Okarin
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1 hour ago, Kiriririri said:

Why do real life women dye their hair to be 2 different colors?

I honestly don't know. This is not sarcasm.

---

I recall some anime tend to use hair colour and eye colour to indicate some personality so having two eye colours could be a "condensation of variety". In some country flags different colours represent different ideology and I extend this notion to eye colours. This would appear to me that heterochromia is a physical metaphor for competing personality. Now this unstable psyche is certainly ideal for a writer or artist as much creativity is allowed without ruining the character. And to audiences, the competition of personality is romantic.

Edited by zxdvas
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      It's really a sort of charm factor. As someone else put it: "exotic" maybe? Personally I never really look for it, and if the eye differences are 'out there' or obvious it can kind of over-power the image. I also feel usually these characters are assigned quirky character archetypes, which are fine but usually also not my style. That isn't to say I don't get the appeal though, and sometimes I do notice it positively I guess. I can't say I've seen enough stories regarding characters with that particular personality trait though, so maybe I'm not qualified to speak much more about it. Basically, I think it's a visual metaphor saying "I'm different" or "I'm interesting" in a short-hand sort of way, as well as being a rare physical trait that can catch people's interest.

Edited by Optimistic;Nihlist
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Honestly there are probably a host of reasons as people have mentioned here. In some cases it might just be a random trait added to distinguish the character. Others it might be because the author thought it was cool looking. Some it's because it directly relates to some 'power' the character has (the eyes being an important symbol/container of power in lots of anime/visual novel and other media like that). Some because it makes the character 'stand out' just like crazy hair helps characters stand out from the noise in more crowded settings to help signify that "HEY, THIS CHARACTER IS IMPORTANT SO PAY ATTENTION TO THEM." Maybe the author thought it was hot or as the guy above me said it seems exotic/out there. Any number of these reasons could be why it is there, at the author's whim, you just have to sort of look at the context of it to try and decipher why a specific author used it. Is the character cool? Probably added because they thought it was cool. Is the character otherwise pretty plain looking? Maybe it was to help distinguish them from the riff-raff. 

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