When a character is being portrayed as attractive (even intimately so), they may be surrounded by bishie sparkles. These sparkles are intended to engender a sense of beauty, novelty, impressiveness, or, in the case of a character, internal joy or happiness. In manga and anime, вњЁ Sparkles-esque symbols are often presented either alongside or surrounding a character, object or scene. Symbols closer in design to вњґпёЏ Eight-Pointed Star and рџЊџ Glowing Star can also be used in this way, as can the рџ’– Sparkling Heart. In the case of вњЁ Sparkles, this visual metaphor has historically been deployed to encapsulate a broad range of positive sentiments. Д«oth of these traditions have an extensive set of visual shorthands that are deployed to emphasize charactersвЂ™ various emotional and physical states in reaction to what's happening to or around them.

In fact, вњЁ Sparkles is one of the earliest emoji designs, originally supported by Japanese cellular carriers back in the late 1990s.ДЄbove: a Unicode proposal document featuring early examples of the вњЁ Sparkles emoji from Japanese vendors SoftBank, Docomo, and au by KDDI.Дocumentation from 2008 proposing the encoding of Japanese phone carrier emoji sets into Unicode includes the descriptive note 'sparkling new', referencing one of this emoji's early perceived meanings: to convey a sense of newness, cleanliness, and an associated sense of impressiveness.ДЄs with many of the earliest emojis, the design of вњЁ Sparkles and this associated meaning was derived from conventions in Japanese manga (comics) and anime (animated cartoons). The design of вњЁ Sparkles has historically been highly convergent across vendors: a cluster of three yellow-or-gold four-point stars, with one large sparkle and two small ones to its left or right. While there is still a considerable gap between рџ‚ Face with Tears of Joy and вњЁ Sparkles, if the growing global dislike for рџ‚ continues, it's possible sparkles could become the second-most popular emoji on Twitter in 2022.ДЄlongside this growth on Twitter, вњЁ Sparkles has seen considerable use across Tiktok videos and their associated comment sections. The previous peak for вњЁ Sparkles came in October 2019, when it was in fourth place behind рџ‚ Face with Tears of Joy, рџ Loudly Crying Face, and the now-6th-place вќ¤пёЏ Red Heart. The trio of glistening stars just topped рџҐє Pleading Face to become the third most popular emoji on Twitter in September 2021, for the first time ever. While always popular, a recent surge in use across TikTok and other social platforms has seen the вњЁ Sparkles emoji overtake рџ¤Ј Rolling on the Floor Laughing, вќ¤пёЏ Red Heart, and even рџҐє Pleading Face to become the third most popular emoji in the world.Д«ased on data collected by Emojipedia, almost one in every 100 tweets now contains a вњЁ Sparkles emoji. What's going on here? Did we just collectively decide this set of three stars has a distinct meaning? Or has this been the case all along? This emoji has been with us for over a decade, yet is now more popular than ever.ДЄbove: вњЁ Sparkles emoji as it appears on major platforms.Д®ditor's Note: as of February 2022, both Microsoft and Samsung have updated their вњЁ Sparkles emoji designs to be more consistent with those of other vendors. Once merely a decorative set of stars indicating newness or cleanliness, the sparkles emoji has become the go-to markup for вњЁemphasisвњЁ, вњЁsarcasmвњЁ or вњЁmockingвњЁ on TikTok and other platforms.

Sparkle emoji