(*_*)

I’ll admit I’m a fan of gmail’s default animated emoticons, but an AFC reader recently sent in those used East Asia as something I might find interesting.   And indeed I do.  As he explains,

I was doing a little random internet research on emoticons and I discovered on the Wikipedia all these awesome Eastern ones. I think they are much more sophisticated than the familiar Western ones for two reasons:

1.They are oriented properly.
2.They are way cuter and express a subtler range of emotions.

From Wikipedia:

Users from East Asia popularized a style of emoticons that can be understood without tilting one’s head to the left. This style arose on ASCII NET of Japan in 1986.^[14]

These emoticons are usually found in a format similar to (*_*). The asterisks indicate the eyes, the central character, commonly an underscore, the mouth, and the parentheses, the outline of the face. A large number of different characters can be used to replace the eyes, which usually is where the emoticon derives its emotive aspect (contrasting the Western emoticons’ emoting through the mouth). Different emotions can be expressed by changing the character representing the eyes, for example ‘ T ‘ can be used to express crying or sadness (T_T). The emphasis on the eyes is reflected in the common usage of emoticons that use only the eyes, e.g. ^^. Looks of embarrassment are either represented by (x_x) or (-_-;). Characters like hyphens or periods can replace the underscore; the period is often used for a smaller, “cuter” mouth or to represent a nose, e.g. (^.^). Alternatively, the mouth/nose can be left out entirely, e.g. (^^). The parentheses also can often be replaced with braces, e.g. {^_^}. Many times, the parentheses are left out completely, e.g. ^^, >.<, o_O, O.O, <.<; A quotation mark “, apostrophe ‘, or semicolon ; can be added to the emoticon to imply apprehension or embarrassment, in the same way that a sweat drop is used in anime culture. Many other characters can be appended to also indicate arms or hands, e.g. <(^_^)> or \(^o^)/ or ⊂( ﾟヮﾟ)⊃ or (/.\) => (\^o^/) (peek-a-boo) or <(-.-<) or /(T_T)\.^{[citation needed]}

Microsoft IME 2002 (Japanese) or later supports the use of both forms of emoticons by enabling Microsoft IME Spoken Language Dictionary. In IME 2007, it was moved to Emoticons dictionary.

:/ similarly expresses apprehension, though the sweat drop added to any emoticon is certainly much more versatile.  Anyone have any picks for the most versatile Western emoticon?