Overview
Ahegao (アヘ顔) is a term in Japanese pornography for a facial expression of characters (usually women) during sex, typically with rolling or crossed eyes, protruding tongue, and slightly reddened face, to show enjoyment or ecstasy. The style is often used in erotic manga, anime (hentai), and video games (erogē).
Description
Typical characteristics are rolled or crossed eyes, a hanging tongue, and flushed cheeks. A character's overall face shape may also be distorted in ahegao scenes. An ahegao face of various levels of distortion is used to depict different grades of sexual arousal. Ahegao indicates that the pleasure experienced is so intense that the character loses control of their facial expression.
While ahegao is often used in pornographic manga, anime, and videogames, it is not exclusively a term of hentai. A number of non-adult works feature ahegao faces.
In the history of Hentai Manga, hentai manga researcher Kimi Rito states that ahegao follow three particular traits that set them apart from other ikigao (orgasm face) expressions:
- The whites of the eyes are visible or are close to becoming visible. The focus of the eyes is not fixed, nor are they "rape eyes", where the eyes are rolled up into the head and the pupils are not visible.
- The mouth is open and the tongue is sticking out.
- Saliva, mucus, sweat, and other bodily fluids are often present.
History
Also known as the O-Face, the term ahegao dates at least as far back as the early 1990s. Pornographic magazines used the word to describe the facial expressions of female live-action porn actresses during orgasm. In the same context, ahegao was used in some postings at 2Channel and its sister community for adult content, BBSPink, as well as in pornographic videos at adult e-commerce platforms in the early 2000s.
In the midst of the 2000s, use of the term increased, and the drawing style became rather conventionalized and started spreading throughout the otaku culture. In 2008, the first ahegao-themed doujin comics anthology, A-H-E, was released. In the 2010s, major publishers produced more ahegao-themed comic anthologies. By that time, the facial expression was featured in regular pornographic videos during the popularization of hentai fetishes in the real-life sex industry. Ahegao-like exaggerated facial expressions are also sometimes featured in other anime and manga works, in a non-sexual context. In September 2016, an "ahegao challenge" meme spread on social media websites, mostly via Instagram, which spread the trend in the United States.
Kimi claims that reasons for including ahegao in a scene include reflecting a character's joyful emotions such as ecstasy or pleasure; to show negative emotions such as fear or reluctance; or to show domination, submission and loyalty.
According to an article from adult gaming site Nutaku, ahegao in combination with the peace sign became an Internet meme in Japan, known as "ahegao double peace" (アヘ顔ダブルピース). Kimi states that this version was usually used after a gang rape scene, either breaking the victim's spirit or as the final part of a humiliation scene. However, as this was limiting, the use of the ahegao double peace became more common as a joke. The term itself is credited as first appearing in a 2010 self-published video game called Futa Letter, in which the main character's girlfriend does a ahegao double peace in a video sent to her boyfriend after she is "broken" by his uncle.
