Bridging the Gap – Week #1

As part of our desire to include everything that may-be anime related into our blog, I’ll be posting a weekly “Bridging the Gap” series where I’ll attempt to explain everything Japanese – from gestures, to expressions, to traditions, and language. Each week something new will be covered, with the simple goal of shedding some light on the mysteries of Japanese culture, especially for readers who have never been abroad! Have something you want explained or find something interesting? Leave a comment and I’ll cover it in a future posting! Hopefully you’ll learn something new 😀

This week I’m going to start off with a useful anime expression, something we see all the time in anime…

Bonyari (ぼんやり）- “Dumbstruck”

Amu and her friends are completely dumbstruck

This expression in anime and manga is typically characterized by open white eyes with a thick black outline, as the mouth falls wide open in utter speechlessness. Bonyari means “blurred” or “indistinct” in Japanese when it is used to describe something that is distant or hard to make out when viewed. However, when it is used to describe an emotional state it usually relates to a sense of “absent mindedness” or the feeling of being completely “dumbstruck.”

In Japan, words like Bonyari are known as gitaigo – a word that directly expresses the actions, expressions, or human emotions. These “state words” are much more integral to the Japanese language than to English; because of this they are a commonly used device in anime and manga because they are understood without the need to be verbally expressed.

As a student of Japanese it can be hard to understand gitaigo words abstractly, thus having an image that you can associate with a particular “state” can help identify the expression. I’ve added a couple more images below as examples!

Mio looks rather confused

Though the “dumbstruck” expression can vary slightly within animation styles, if it strays to far from how it is most typically drawn (and recognized) it is most likely classified as an entirely different expression.