Have you ever wondered what the true meaning of the word Ahegao is? Or perhaps other words like gesugao, torogao, and kuzogao? In this article, we will conduct a complete investigation and explanation of the Japanese facial expressions present in manga and anime that are called ahegao, gesugao, and torogao.
Both the words ahegao, gesugao, torogao, kuzogao, and others are composed of the ideogram kao/gao [顔] which means face, expression, look, visage, and countenance. In this article, we will focus on the word Ahegao, which gave rise to the other terms that define strange facial expressions presented in manga, anime, and games.
It is believed that the face, especially the eyes, is the window to the soul and can convey feelings to the viewers. The big difference is that Ahegao conveys problematic feelings.
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Table of Contents
What does Ahegao mean?
The word Ahegao [アヘ顔] literally means strange face, where the word ahe derives from the onomatopoeia “aheahe” [アヘアヘ] which describes a blushing woman, panting, easily expressing her sexual excitement. The expression “ahegao” eventually became a hentai genre, but it is present in all types of anime and manga.
Ahegao is literally when a woman makes a strange face expressing an intense amount of pleasure during a sexual relationship. However, these strange faces can appear in various situations outside of sexual relations. It seems like a strange topic to write about, but it has a huge search rate on the internet?
This viral phenomenon occurs constantly in anime, manga, and has even turned into memes showing a close-up of a character’s face displaying lust and orgasm with wide eyes and tears and sweat streaming down. Most of the time with a crooked and open mouth with the tongue sticking out.
How did the term Ahegao originate?
This word has been used since the 90s to refer to the pleasure faces of pornographic actresses, even serving as a tag for magazines, videos, and websites. This trend caught on in erotic anime and manga around 2003, showing abnormal orgasm faces of women who were having unwanted sexual relations.
Over the years, “Ahegao” has defined itself as a hentai art technique to create orgasm faces. Things didn’t stop there; these double-meaning faces can appear in different forms in normal anime and manga, regardless of whether it is Shoujo or Shounen.
These strange faces appear in anime like Danganronpa with the character Touko Fukawa, and even in idol anime like Love Live with the character Honoka Kousaka. The face that Yuri from Doki Doki Literature Club makes is considered an Ahegao.
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Different types of strange faces
With the art style spreading to other different genres of hentai, with the vast majority being fan arts, various categories began to emerge. See some below:
Gesugao [ゲス顔] – Literally means sordid and deformed face, when a character makes a statistically distorted facial expression to represent “evil” and “insanity.” This face is not used in sexual contexts or extreme pleasure, unless when they discover true pleasure in evil.
Torogao [トロ顔] – Means hot face and can carry a slight sexual context, a bit softer. This face represents a person who is melting with pleasure, like when experiencing a favorite food or being close to a loved one.
Kusogao [クソ顔] – Literally means trash face, these reddened faces represent an intoxicated euphoria, like, for example, a drunk person’s face.
Ahegao Double Peace – When anime characters give the peace sign and make faces for photos and other situations. This happens quite often in Netorare genre anime and manga. Even the mascot of the city of Kanie has adopted this trend.
Ahegaokin [アヘ顔菌] – The fetish of making montages and memes of characters and random fanarts making ahegao faces. A very popular fetish in Japan and the West, just as we wrote in the article: Pantsu and Panchira – The history of panties in Japan.
What have we learned from Ahegao?
Perhaps you are wondering what the purpose of this article is? Our goal is to clarify the meaning of these words gesugao, torogao, kusogao, and other faces that are quite common on the internet, in anime, and manga. We should not forget that the best face is egao [笑顔] which is simply a smile, they even make memes with that.
Remembering that this visual resource used in anime and manga is not interesting and beautiful to see in real life. The most interesting thing is to note that as simple as the Japanese language is, it can aggregate and create words and expressions for things that previously did not exist.
Knowing about these faces can also help us detect something double-meaning in anime and manga that appear to be innocent, but always try to include something sexualized behind.
Ahegao on social media
We have reached a point where several girls post videos and photos on social media like TikTok making this indecent face. We don’t know if it’s for memes or because they are just perverted, but these faces in real life are not as pleasant as in anime.
Recently a girl named Belle Delphine became famous on the internet for making Ahegao videos on TikTok and earning a lot of money from donations in exchange for benefits like her own Snapchat. Belle Delphine generated a lot of controversies receiving monthly income only from Patreon.
We recommend reading: Belle Delphine – The girl of Ahegao and bathwater
The most bizarre thing is to see the number of followers and collaborators that this Belle Delphine or even other similar girls are gaining money just with these strange ahegao faces. It is believed that Belle Delphine generates at least $15,000 a month with her over 2,500 sponsors and 2.5 million followers.
The video from Goularte talked a bit about this, we recommend watching below to understand more. It’s amazing how popular Ahegao is; it’s no wonder that over 1 million people search for this term every month.
What do you think about these strange faces? We appreciate the comments and shares.
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