Cute Giant
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Cuteness is often associated with smallness, but sometimes characters or creatures can look cute despite, or even partly because of, how big they are. This is the essence of the cute giant.
Of course, cuteness is not so much about size as about various physical traits that are hard to pin down. Nevertheless, the association of cuteness with a giant does end up seeming contradictory.
Compare/Contrast with Gentle Giant, but remember, some giants can be cute but not gentle, or gentle but not cute.
See also Canis Major and Mega Neko, examples of which tend to double as this for obvious reasons.
Examples of Cute Giant include:
Anime and Manga
- An episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha had a kitten come into contact with one of the Jewel Seeds, which granted its wish of wanting to grow up... and grow it did, becoming as tall as the trees. Despite being giant, it still acted like a kitten, not aggressive at all. Provided the page image for Mega Neko.
- Mana Emiya from Super Dreadnought Girl 4946.
- Totoro and the Catbus.
Film
- Toy Story 3 has a teddy bear named Lotso and a baby doll named Big Baby, both of whom are considerably larger than the protagonists.
- Honey, I Blew Up the Kid is all about this; a toddler is made taller than many buildings due to a mistake with a device.
- Ginormica and Insectosaurus from Monsters vs. Aliens.
- Hagrid's brother in Harry Potter.
- The Iron Giant.
- Little Godzilla, from the Godzilla films.
- Puss in Boots has the Golden Goose's mother, who is bigger than most buildings in town, yet is essentially a giant goose.
- The Rescuers Down Under has Marahute the giant eagle. Also, to mice, humans are giants, so naturally human children will qualify as cute giants from the perspective of the mice as well.
- The Were-Rabbit from The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the Wallace and Gromit movie, even if it is way larger than a rabbit.
Video Games
- The Super Smash Bros. series often invokes this with giant versions of small characters.
- Yoshi in Brawl was a memorable case of this.
- Via a glitch, it is possible to get Jigglypuff to be absolutely huge in Brawl.
- Doshin the Giant, though his game never made it to North America, did have a trophy in Super Smash Bros Melee.
- Several Pokémon can fall under this. Snorlax in particular looks like a big cuddly bear-cat thing.
- Suika Ibuki of the Touhou series is normally pretty small and adorable, but has the ability to change her size at will. She's still adorable when she's huge, but you're probably not thinking such as you're trying to avoid getting squashed by her!
Western Animation
- Clifford the Big Red Dog more or less relies on this.
- Played for laughs on Futurama. The episode Mother's Day reveals that Farnsworth and Mom used to be in a relationship...until she tried to make his latest toy, Cutey McWhiskers, 18 feet tall with lasers, causing him to angrily proclaim, "Eighteen-foot-tall things aren't cute; that's why my Colossal Tammy Tinkle doll was such a flop! You don't understand me!" and break up. Later they reconcile, Farnsworth admits they're still cute at 18 feet tall then Mom reveals that there's an even taller model and he gets angry again...at first.
- Baby Huey is giant compared to his peer group.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Has Appa, elephant koi, and badger moles
- Sequel Series The Legend of Korra has Naga the polar bear dog.
Real Life
- A lot of the float balloons in the Macy's holiday parades.
- Many animals in real life:
- Bears. Why else would they be so commonly portrayed as endearing and have the most popular form of plush toy based on them? Of course, this is easily subverted from time to time.
- Some breeds of domestic dog. (Siberian Huskies, for example, are rather large while still remaining endearing.)
- This rabbit.
- Giant Tortoises. Just look at this tortoise having his neck scratched! Heck, even sea turtles are some of the gentlest animals you can come across in real life.