Anime Buttholes @animebuttholes - Tumblr Blog

I have to ask because you seem to be the person who might actually know. I've been trying to find out why some anime/manga/games/collectables decide to denote the butthole and others don't. Do you know what the reason behind this is? Is it just artists' choice or is there some cultural reason behind it? I apologize if you've answered this question here or on twitter before, but I didn't see it.

I’m no authority on Japanese culture, merely an anime watcher and collector of images, but it does ultimately seem to simply be the choice of the artists or companies involved.

Sometimes in anime there’s no X on an animal, until suddenly there is an X for one single shot or frame. This appears to just be whoever drew those frames having fun.

Sometimes it’s just one animal out of many that have the X, seemingly to portray that one character as cuter or less intelligent than the others.

It seems like animals who speak tend to not have the X, so mascots and generally more human-like animals don’t have the X, unless it’s a deliberate “charm point” feature like with Pompompurin, President Aria and the Yuri Kuma Arashi bears.

Mischievousness / wickedness / rudeness also seems to increase the chances of an X butthole.

Again, I don’t really know, but you could probably chart this stuff on a graph and reveal a pattern.