＼(^ω^＼) KawaiiFace.net helps you find every kawaii face and cute smiley!

In roughly 1986, the internet started to spread to Japan. Around this time, the first “kaomoji” were created by people in Japan who wanted to express themselves in a more visual way. These special emoticons are creative faces made from text and symbols taken from multiple languages.

Originally, kaomoji weren’t really meant to be cute. Because characters and computer memory were limited, you’d often only see stuff like (*_*) and other dead-looking faces. The use of asterisks as eyes was something that you’d really only see in Japan, and was different from the western internet standards at the time (the :-) face). Later, when people actually wanted to get across a dead guy, they’d use “X”s, like this face: X_X.

After some time, netizens got more creative with their kaomoji. Dashes were used to show contempt (-_-) or sleepiness [combined, we get ‘unimpressed’]. Similar to the butt cheek-shaped snot you often see in anime, using /// gave a feeling of blushing. Actually, the ‘three slashes’ made its way back into anime (artists often draw lines on the face of their subjects to show shyness)! Who would have ever thought that something as simple as little kawaii text faces would have so much cultural impact?

As differenct ASCII characters were created and symbols from other languages were discovered, we began seeing people use things like braces {^_^} and carets >o<. In emoticons, an apostrophe is often used to portray a sweat drop, like in (^_^'). This is another callback to kaomoji’s anime roots.

Kawaii smileys almost always follow anime trends, and the Western (English-speaking) world had really caught on by this point! As instant messaging became very popular, “hug” emoticons like (>^^)> started to spread across IMs and microsites (like MySpace). These characters became known as “kirbys,” a nod to Nintendo’s blobby, pink, and oh-so-squish-able mascot. Emoticon started to be used to portray gesticulations too. t(o_ot), for example, was used as a way to show the middle finger — it essentially meant “f**k off!” We also began to see ‘vampire’ kaomoji that used commas and periods as ‘snake eyes’ and ‘fangs’ (i.e. ;..;).

Over time, people began to mix characters from languages and new ASCII symbols to make emoticons that could portray things never before seen online. For example, the small katakana “wa” and the accented “o”s make up this kawaii face: ôヮô. These characters come from both Finnish and Japanese. Once new language keyboards became more available to people around the world, the net began to see really interesting results. Brazilians, for example, figured out that accent marks could be used for a wide range of “eyebrow” emotions, like ò_ó or ó_ò. The tilt of the slant above the accented “o” serves to create an entirely opposite effect. More obscure languages, like Kannada from India, allowed for unexpected and particularly specific emotional portrayals. This character’s eyes were made from Kannada letters: ಠ_ಠ. It often is used to portray disapproval.

Once people around the world had mastered the traditionally Japanese smileys (and the popularity of anime went global), we started to see more internationalized text face combinations. Parenthesis were often dropped altogether in these new ‘global’ combination. For example, the long face (^_________________^) here which uses lots of underscores was born. This was mostly used on blogs and in instant messaging chat rooms to emphasize that one was “really happy” (or, in other contexts, really bored or really sad). Because these emoticons take up so much more space than usual, they are often regarded as more “spammy” than their counterparts.

Today, people are wildly creative with their creations. New emojis are added into the world by the Unicode Consortium every year, and these are mixed with ASCII characters to create new faces and depictions. And with the accessibility of the internet, fresh characters from different languages are constantly being put online!

As the world continues to globalize and people from different cultures get online, we will only see cooler and more creative smileys! This website is the place to find them. Try to make some emoticons on your own; who knows, you just might come up with the next ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) that has all your friends and comment sections laughing. Thanks for all the love and support!

I made this site because the blogs or other places where you can normally find kawaii emoticons or smileys for free are too cluttered and unorganized. There are even places out there that try to charge you money for them! I think that’s dumb. Please feel free to share this page with anyone who would like it. Thanks! xoxo