Cute Little Fang

About

Cute Little Fang, also known as the Moe Fang or Tsundere Fang, is a character trait present with, most commonly female, anime and manga characters in which they have a small triangular tooth showing on the edge of their mouth. While the protruding teeth were already a well-known trait for certain character types amongst fans for decades, the trope did not become a popular meme until 2017.

Background

Snaggletooth, or Yaeba^[1] (八重歯) in Japanese, is the term given to human teeth, especially upper canines, with an uncommonly fang-like appearance. According to the Online Ethymology Dictionary,^[2] the term snaggletooth already dates back to the 1580s as a term for "having crooked, projecting teeth". In 2013, Yaeba became a trend in Japan where teenage girls and young women would undergo dental procedures to have their upper canines capped (shown below).^[3]

In manga and anime, protruding teeth are most commonly used as a character trait to display mischievousness or being evil, but also as a general feature for the popular catgirls and other types of monster girls. It is unknown when characters first started appearing with the trait, and manga displaying them already predate the 2000s. The fangs come as either one tooth or two teeth and are sometimes drawn as an extension of the lip (also known as the "lip fang") instead of a tooth.

Spread

A TvTropes page for the "Cute Little Fangs" was created on May 18th, 2013.^[7] A subreddit for cute litte fangs, r/cutelittlefangs,^[4] was created October 22nd, 2014, and has over 12,500 subscribers as of March 2018. The subreddit also created its own visual reference album by redditor u/andres1232 on Imgur on January 5th, 2015, which displays, as according to the subreddit, the best characters who illustrate the appeal of the cute little fang.^[5] The album references various popular anime, including The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Oreimo (shown below, left) and Kill La Kill (shown below, right).

Throughout 2017, the fang gained a more mainstream appeal within anime communities following several anime and games with characters that feature the trait alongside fans that exploited this through images. Arguably the most notable examples of this increase in popularity are Satania from Gabriel Dropout (shown below, left), Astolfo from Fate/Apocrypha (shown below, middle) and Natsuki from Doki Doki Literature Club (shown below, right).

On February 17th, 2017, Youtuber Lost Pause^[8] created an video dedicated to the fang character trait, referring to it as "the most important thing", and explained some of the background on it as well. The video managed to gather more than 200,000 views over the following year.

On January 31st, 2018, redditor u/jasimina uploaded an image to r/animemes which featured various cute little fangs alongside the character Guts from the Berserk manga and anime (shown below, top left). The post managed to gather 4,235 points prior to being archived and is the top search result of the board for "fang" as of the same date. The format used by u/jasimina was reused by several other redditors on the board to create their own images using different characters throughout the following month.

Derivative: Shark Teeth

Shark Teeth, also known as Sharp Teeth, is a similar style of character trait in which the character has their entire mouth filled with sharp triangular teeth, instead of just one or two. Referring to the trait as shark teeth was popularized through Rin Matsuoka from Free! (shown below), who fans often compared to a shark due to the anime's theme of swimming. While not as popular as the cute little fang, it also has its share of fans and grew in popularity alongside the fang.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References