Glasses on a girl are not always a plus.
But they are never a minus.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of reputation I have around the otakusphere. The taste for harem shows that I developed early in my anime-viewing career, starting with Key’s crying shows and fluff-drama pieces like Shuffle and Da Capo, has become what appears to be my defining feature of sorts, as “that guy who likes to deconstruct harem shows”.

And that’s probably not too far off the truth, because although I pride myself on also being a GARmbler (see: Kaiji, Akagi, One Outs, Liar Game), as well as a far of pretentious crack (insert Shaft here) and random slice-of-romance shows, my basis remains grounded in the simple formula 5girls1guy + a lot of moe = a good time. And with the right show, a very wordy, passion-filled, tl;dr time.

Perhaps I am a bit more discerning now than in my youthful days of … a year ago, but, y’know, the harem genre swings back and forth between absolute genius and complete pandering rubbish, faster than a bossy Rie Kugimiya flat-chested character swings between tsuntsun and deredere.

The other trait that easily gets tacked on to me is that of an unnaturally strong appeal to glasses, and again, I’m entirely unsurprised. When you look at the title of a blog and see “Mega Megane Moe”, which I could translate as, “glasses have mega charm”, what else are you going to think?

Sometimes, as always, though, I am left to wonder if that is true.

For although I still can have a good time ransacking a glasses girl thread at a Touhou imageboard (incidentally, the damage count last time was about 40 images), those days are becoming increasingly sparse.

(“????? You should be working on your Toradora 16 post instead!”)

Perhaps the best way to describe it, is that the appeal of glasses to me is not an active appeal, but rather a passive one. If I wanted to cover myself in the most politically correct way I could say ‘it’s not developed to the point of a fetish’, which as far as I understand is a good thing.
A good analogy is probably that of any consumer with a casual brand preference. Let’s say I like drinking Coke. I don’t actively live and die on Coke – I don’t run around wearing Coke-branded shirts and baseball caps (if there are such things), and I can drink beverages that are not Coke.

In fact, I wouldn’t like all beverages that are Coke-branded, because my apathy towards lemon-flavored drinks overrules my preference towards coke. But if I’m in the mood for a standard carbonated soft drink, I am more likely to pick Coke over Pepsi or RC, unless of course there is another mitigating factor, such as there being a 2-for-1 sale on a rival brand.

(And all that soda reference without a mention of Akikan.)

In a similar way, I’m brought to the opening lines of this post, a mantra that now I feel I believe in:
Glasses on a girl are not always a plus.
But they are never a minus.

You can’t really decrease the appeal of a girl, at least in anime, by adding glasses. At the worst it just has a neutral effect, like most other physical but non-body-orientated traits of anime girls; for example, hairstyles or hair colors.

However, done right, with the right glasses on the right girl, works fantastically. And damn right those slim, slightly rounded frames on Chinami Ebihara enhance her character, and I’d fanboy an Eriko Futami with a pair of sleek no-nonsense specs, ten times more, hands down. (Why are there no examples of this, I wonder.)

To expand my point to a more general basis, and to tie it back to the soft drink analogy, I probably don’t fanboy the glasses so much as I fanboy an image.

Just as like how if I bought Coke, I guess, I would buy into the whole American Idol, cool and hip, smiling social lifestyle they advertise, my attraction to glasses is largely a result of an attraction to the personality that glasses girls tend to exude.

For percieved or not, glasses girls tend to draw from a very limited and highly attractive pool of personalities. Generally, they fall under one or more of the following.

• Smart: A la the Miyuki Takara or Mimi Usa archetype, nerdy guys the world round have given rise to the rather simple assumption that having glasses makes you inherently more intelligent. And thanks to being a nerdy guy, or perhaps thanks to a taste shifting away from the airheads of the anime world (barring Class-S Spacey People like Kotomi or Osaka), I rather like smart people. Go, natural selection. A special subset of these ladies, despite being rather bright, lack in street smarts: another trait which inherently needs no explanation.
• Clumsy: Perhaps bred from years of not being able to see where they were going, until their poor vision was corrected by spectacles, a large quantity of glasses girls are inherent complete klutzes. And while I am rather opposed to those with no mental coordination, those with no physical coordination I find quite cute. Perhaps this is because I am equally prone to walking into door frames. Examples in this field include again, Miyuki, or Chinami Ebihara.
• Cold / rational: Perhaps a bit of overlap here with the first trait, the majority of glasses-bearers seem to sport a rather no-nonsense personality, ranging anywhere from the null expression of Yuki Nagato, to Kairi Sanjou’s refined serious-business glare, to Eriol Hiiragizawa’s scheming glasses-shimmer. One may argue as to whether or not the ’strong but silent(-ish)’ or occasionally ‘logical / tactical mastermind’ exudes moe in itself, but even if one cannot appreciate this, another perspective is similar to that of the tsundere, in that ‘breaking’ that expressionless or lying face, to crack Kairi or Yuki’s shell, is all the reward you need.
• Shy: Perhaps less prevalent but still common enough to be listed, there is a social awkwardness inherent to a lot of glasses girls. Whether it’s the ostracization caused by being That Scary Genius, or a lack of common-sense  rationality, or a self-imposed isolation, glasses girls at times can tend toward the introvert side of the spectrum. This is a softer rule than the above three; certainly, there are many exceptions to the rule (Aoi Oribe, Sakura Sae, etc) that play the genki girl card instead. But it feels something apparent to me, in anime or real life, one way or the other.

And as far as I’m concerned, whether it’s from a ‘birds of a feather fl0ck together’ mentality, an ability to otherwise personalize the meganekko, or something else I can’t explain, any linear combo of these traits in a girl is enhanced by glasses, partially because one comes to expect it.

It’s a reversible statement: glasses girls have these traits, and girls with these traits have glasses.

Or they should.

(Pavlov’s inumimi-ko? Pavlov’s meganekko?)

Perhaps I’ve just been conditioned like Pavlov’s dog, to associate meganekko and certain characteristics. I find both moe because of what they imply to me. But, the difference is, I find it much stronger in the reverse direction – instead of hearing a bell (seeing glasses) and expecting food (character traits), I see food and expect to hear a bell.

A shy clumsy rational genius can be moe without glasses, but a glasses girl cannot be moe on her own. A shy clumsy rational genius girl with glasses, is probably a star in the making.

Maybe a pair of glasses is like a turbocharger. If you attach it to your lawnmower, you just feel sort of silly. If you slap that on your GT car though, already a fine machine in its own right, you’ll be tearing up the track in no time.

That’s the best analogy I can make, as to what I believe in the power of glasses.

-CCY