Things are cuter in Asia. American comic books have gym rats in spandex slicing people up or shooting cosmic rays out of their eyes. Asian cartoons have characters who shudder with emotions and have eyes that glisten underneath blue hair that gently twirl in the air. They have larger eye-to-cranium ratios, which are amplified by larger cranium-to-body ratios. Take Hello Kitty, for example, Asia’s Mickey Mouse. She has a gigantic head perched on a soft condensed body. Though her eyes aren’t of the I-can-swim-in-them scale, those of many of her sidekicks are. And they’re all rather saccharine sweet and irresistibly adorable. Why they’re so adorable they even get me to use the word adorable and serial punctuation marks like a teenage schoolgirl. Who says adorable???? OMG!!!

Even the emoticons in Asia are cuter. Why it’s enough to make me >_<. American emoticons get the point across but they’re rather bare and abstract, aren’t they? Take the classic : ) for example. Yes, I can see that it’s a smile, like the one you see on a happy face but on its side and without the circular shape that indicates the silhouette of the head. The small eyes, however, are mysteriously blank, disconcertingly indifferent, even as the mouth curves up to indicate happiness. Isn’t ^_^ better? Can’t you just feel the smile, like peppermint hot chocolate flowing down your esophagus on a cold winter night? Are you sorry for having hurt your friend? Well don’t just : (. Why don’t you T_T instead; your friend is more likely to forgive you if they see tears streaming from those big puppy dog eyes of yours. Aw, who can stay mad at a face like that? Come here, you…

For a full comparison of Western and Asian emoticons, check out the Wikipedia article on emoticons.

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