Kind Red Eyes

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Crimson gems of benevolence and nobility.

You see a character with red eyes. He's going to be violent or menacing, right? Wrong. On the contrary, his red gaze is one of the most comforting features of his face, because he has Kind Red Eyes.

Traditionally, red eyes have been a negative feature, showing a character's evil or villainy. But as tropes mature and become subverted and averted, you see more characters whose red eyes have no negative connotation whatsoever. They can even be a Fetish Fuel.

Kind Red Eyes could belong to a Heroic Albino, but just as often they belong to a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire, or may even be a literally Red Herring. Sometimes they're just pretty, or colorful, and don't have any relevance to the story.

A subtrope of Technicolor Eyes. Contrast Red Eyes, Take Warning, with which it can occasionally overlap (especially if a character is a Tsundere or Badass). In short, the character's eyes may be red, but their eye color's lack of villainous connotation is played absolutely straight. If the character is a Redheaded Hero, expect Curtains Match the Window.

There are two types of these:

  1. The perfectly played straight trope, where characters with red eyes have never been, are never seen on screen and will never be seen as dangerous.
  2. The downplayed trope. A character with red eyes is usually well intended, good hearted and so on, but in certain circumstances, they can become angry or dangerous. Beware the Nice Ones, indeed. Subversions, inversions included.
Examples of Kind Red Eyes include:


Played Straight

Anime and Manga

  • Ion Fortuna in Trinity Blood. Just look at them...
  • Cheza in Wolf's Rain.
  • Fate Testarossa from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.
  • Iczer-1 and Iczer-3 in the Iczer series (Iczer-3's eyes are actually orange, but I'd say they count for this).
  • Hikaru in Magic Knight Rayearth.
  • Chibiusa in Sailor Moon is probably one of the first examples of this, as is Sailor Pluto. Luna has red eyes in cat form. Princess Kakyuu has red eyes to match her "fire" theme. Sailor Mars has red eyes in some promotional art, mostly in images where the senshi are Color-Coded for Your Convenience.
  • Sakura from Tokko.
  • The Ishvalan people in Fullmetal Alchemist, the ones that try to be pacifist anyway.
  • Takato Matsuda in Digimon Tamers has red eyes and is perhaps the most innocent of the original three tamers in the series, wanting nothing more than to spend his days playing with his partner, Guilmon.
  • In Samurai 7, the kind and patient priestess Kirara has red eyes, as does her equally nice (if Bratty Half-Pint) sister Komachi. This might actually be a racial trait, as the villagers in general tend to have reddish brown eyes.
  • The titular character of Puella Magi Madoka Magica has them, though official art makes them more pink-ish.
  • Ichigo Hoshimiya in Aikatsu!.

Video Games

Downplayed

Anime and Manga


Comic Books

  • The Martian Manhunter is often depicted with red eyes, and he's the soul of the team.
  • Gambit, kinda...
  • Sleepwalker's eyes are a subversion in that most people are freaked out by them, although that may be because they're compounded like an insect's. A few people, such as Pike and Alyssa Conover, are able to look deeper and see the kindness within them.


Fanfic

Literature

  • In James Swallow's Warhammer 40000 Blood Angels novel Black Tide, Kilian's eyes are commented on as dark red—shortly after he has helped saved the lives of Rafen, Tarikus, and Vetch.
  • Skybaxes in Dinotopia usually have yellow or red eyes. This trope is perhaps best exemplified by this fanart.
  • In Pretties (of the Uglies series), Shay actually HAS RUBIES IN HER EYES.
  • Hestia from the Percy Jackson and The Olympians books literally has eyes of fire, but they have the effect of a cozy fireplace.


Video Games


Web Comics

  • Zimmy from Gunnerkrigg Court is an interesting example. Usually her eyes are obscured by black goo, and she is usually unstable and highly abrasive. When the goo clears up her eyes are visibly red, and this is when she is at her most happy, stable and nice to be around.
  • Dave Strider from Homestuck recently turned out to have bright red eyes beneath his signature shades. According to Karkat, he hides them under his shades due to being insecure about his eyes - His friends have the relatively normal eye colors of green and blue, and Rose has purple eyes, which are rare but not unnatural like red.
  • Buwaro from Slightly Damned is the absolute embodiment of this trope. I mean, just look at those big, cute, blood-red puppy-dog eyes!
  • In Eerie Cuties, from colored era and covers we know that Layla and Chloe got red eyes. Chloe is the nicest succubus seen in *C-verse so far (when not out of her head), and Layla is a Tsundere ice queen, but now and then does look warm, especially around her little sister.

Western Animation