Anime Buttholes

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.