Under the cherry tree behind the school building, a girl with one wing injured falls from the sky. “Is this… the ground?” she asks, catching her breath. The wings are white, the eyes clear, and she is a little bewildered by the smell of the earth. She knows nothing yet of human social norms. What is embarrassing, what is ordinary, she will learn one thing at a time from here. Who teaches her first, and from there the story begins. Tenshi-chara moe (天使キャラ萌え) is the strong attachment and arousal felt toward angel and fallen-angel characters of celestial origin. White wings, the halo, pure-white dress, the position of an innocent who knows nothing of the world, and the staging of that purity collapsing combine to form a stable sub-genre in fantasy, eroge, and adult doujinshi. All characters are presumed adult.

Overview

The visual signs at the core derive from the iconographic tradition of Judeo-Christian painting: large white wings (with graded differences of one, two, or three pairs), the halo, pure-white or gold dress, blonde or silver hair, blue or violet eyes. These passed from medieval religious painting through Baroque art, the nineteenth-century Pre-Raphaelites, and into twentieth-century fantasy RPGs, comics, and anime. As an attribute type the angel takes a position opposite the demon character: where the demon works as an active seducer, the angel often works as a passive, innocent figure to be seduced. This contrast is frequently used in works that run the two attributes as a pair (black-and-white symmetry, fallen or reincarnated angels).

Reception

The psychological core is attachment to the relational structure of “an innocent grounded.” A figure who knows nothing of the world’s stains descends to earthly life, and the observer-protagonist is placed in the position of teaching her everything of the world from scratch: table manners, social norms, the names of emotions, and the procedures of sex. As an object of observation that offers “a chain of first experiences,” the angel holds a distinct place. The angel attribute also works as a device for the collapse of purity: a being at first innocent and clean acquires emotion and desire through earthly experience, and this gradation of change itself becomes the kink object, with the recipient placed to witness her first shame, first bewilderment, first pleasure. This connects directly to the lineage of pure, transparent, passive girl-figures of contemporary Japanese subculture.

In sexual expression

In eroge, eromanga, and adult doujinshi, works centred on the angel form an independent sub-genre. Representative script structures repeat: the angel fallen from heaven, the angel sent to earth on a mission, the angel boarding in the protagonist’s home. The core is the observational pleasure of an innocent who knows nothing of the world acquiring sexual experience one step at a time. The “fallen angel” derivative holds a distinct place: by the setting of an angel who has broken or is breaking heavenly norms, purity and depravity can be layered in one figure, sitting on the border with the demon character. Recently the attribute has branched into the fighting angel, the shrine-maiden angel, the childlike angel, and the adult-feminine angel; in database consumption the angel often serves as a base attribute combined with a personality attribute, as in “tsundere + angel.”

Variations

The fallen angel is a being turned, or turning, toward the demon side, with purity and depravity coexisting, placed at the border with the demon character. The mission or dispatched angel descends to fulfil some task (to save, observe, or judge), the conflict between duty and love forming the narrative axis. The boarding or cohabiting angel cannot return to heaven for some reason and settles into the protagonist’s home, templating the everyday-plus-innocent combination. The guardian or contract angel appears as the protagonist’s personal protector, with exclusive intimacy designed from the start. The fighting angel carries a combat role, connecting to the shrine maiden and holy-knight derivatives, adding signs of strength to purity.

Related Terms

• Demon-character moe
• Kemonomimi
• Mermaid moe
• Shrine maiden
• Princess character
• Tsundere