Cute Monster Girl

"What? Why are you running away?"

"Some girls like
 To dress like a witch
 Some girls like
 To dress like a queen
 Best way a girl
 Can dress for me
 Is in a Goblin suit
 (They look so cute...)"

—Frank Zappa, Goblin Girl

Any "exotic" being (alien, monster, robot, demon, ghost, etc.) bearing a strong resemblance to an attractive human female, sometimes when she doesn't necessarily have to.

This trope comes in several varieties:

  1. The result of a common form of Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism in fiction, in which the female members of a nonhuman species are much more attractive/less monstrous than the males.
  2. A "cute" female version of a previously-existing monster, sometimes with the original monster having been female to start with (see Gorgeous Gorgons).
    1. A Half-Human Hybrid of said monster that happens to be female. And cute.
  3. An original creation, subject to the same visual conventions as above.
  4. Anomalous among her people, despised or considered a freak, but a knockout by human conventions of beauty.

Female One Gender Races are typically these. Very rarely, you will get a Cute Monster Guy (although this is much more common with vampires), and assume that if there is a Monster Mash, the few female member(s) will be Cute Monster Girls.

Cute Monster Girls are seen as somewhat troubling by some, since they imply (especially Type 1) that the males of an intelligent species can look like whatever they want, but the females must always be attractive to male humans (because Men Need Martians!). Beyond that it suggests that male monsters should be killed, while the females should be screwed.

Cute Monster Girls are often the mothers of Half-Human Hybrid, while monstrous females rarely are. May be a subset of Stripperiffic, and may therefore contribute to the alienation of some women from genre fandom.

Related to Moe Anthropomorphism and Gijinka in Fan Art circles. Often subject to Fantastic Arousal. Might often also be a Cute Alien Girl and/or Cute Humanoid Animal Girl. See also Youkai and Gorgeous Gorgon.

For the male equivalent, see You Sexy Beast.

Examples of Cute Monster Girl include:

Anime and Manga

  • Lum from Urusei Yatsura looks like a cute teenaged girl with green hair and little horns, but is explained as being an alien whose race is the inspiration for Japanese ogres. Her being such is actually lifted straight from Japanese mythology, where oni woman are supernaturally beautiful, but capable of assuming fearsome visages when angry or jealous.
    • Then there's Lum's friend Oyuki (a yuki-no-onna - although these ghosts are usually portrayed as attractive anyway) and secondary character Kurama (crow tengu - her servants look like anthropomorphic crows, while she's a pretty girl with small crow wings on her head). One might tentatively incorporate Ran (loosely based on the gaki, a life-draining ghost) and Benten (a punk biker version of the Goddess of Knowledge, Art and Beauty) into this category as well.
  • Mink from Dragon Half, though granted, she's half human herself; her mother is a dragon. Her mother is usually transformed into a humanoid form but tends to break it when she becomes angry.
    • There is also a half-dragon Mink in the webcomic Darken. Pretty, too.
  • The series Petopeto San is entirely devoted to the concept of cute monster girls (some of which are half human).
  • Mahou Sensei Negima has Evangeline, Cute Ghost Girl Sayo, robotic Chachamaru, half of Magicus Mundus, most prominently Fate's underlings, and even Setsuna, a half-tengu and self-proclaimed monster (not that anybody cares...)
  • Hazuki from Tsukuyomi Moon Phase. Anyone unfamiliar with the story and character would NEVER assume she's a monster! The opening theme doesn't help.
  • The title character of Karin (a.k.a, "Chibi Vampire")
  • A fair amount of the female cast of Sola.
  • Seth Nightroad from Trinity Blood.
  • The Anime Magical Pokaan gives us four Cute Monster Girls - a werewolf, a vampire, a witch, and an android.
  • The Bugrom of El-Hazard: The Magnificent World mostly resembled giant neon cockroaches, with the exception of their queen, who resembled a normal attractive human female with antennae.
  • Mayu of Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun. For a succubus, she's cute, busty, and Does Not Like Men. She's training to work on the last part, though. Later, her friend and love rival Reika is revealed to be a succubus as well, albeit without the Androphobia, instead having a healthy dose of Cannot Spit It Out.
  • Every single girl except for Kyoko (Tsukune's cute but human cousin) in Rosario + Vampire. They spend the most of their time hiding their monster traits, though, so they look completely human except during fights.
    • Well, Yukari doesn't really transform, though she's still cute!! And even when transformed, the main gals (and many of the supporting cast) are STILL cute (Moka is devastatingly so, Kurumu becomes ultra exotic, etc.).
  • Demonbane takes this to the logical extreme: female books look like cute girls. Yes, books. And since no characters in the series are stated to be male books and there are books that don't look like cute girls, it can be safely assumed that male books look like regular books.
  • Borders on crossing over into the DANGER ZONE but Bagi of Bagi the Monster of Mighty Nature. Though as the movie progresses she begins to regress towards her half-animal side and eventually loses speech and coherent thought by the end.
  • Fran Madaraki of Franken Fran is basically a Moe Frankenstein's Monster. Or at least her appearance is cute (when she isn't falling apart). Fran herself is... less than cute.
    • Gavrill and Veronica can also be pretty damn cute, as can officer Kuhou after she was transformed into a monster girl.
  • There is a whole sub-genre for redrawing mecha as girls wearing the machine as armour. It has gone so far as the Destroid Monster! But perhaps the ultimate mecha example is the Valsion's entirely canon sister unit, the Valsione. (Apparently the Valsion's operator made the Valsione for his daughter, who gave it a feminine form out of personal preference.)
  • The Wind warriors from Digimon Frontier explicitly embody this trope - when Zoe obtains the Beast Wind spirit, not only does it resemble nothing other than a lingerie model with avian wings and feet, but unlike every other (good) Beast spirit, it doesn't even have the destructive impulses that took other characters up to three episodes to get under control. This is slightly more excusable with the other Wind warriors, as one of them is supposed to be human, another is supposed to be half-human, and the last has no real requirements - but each form distinctly fails in the "Monster" part of "Digital Monster".
    • Let's not forget the earlier Angewomon, LadyDevimon, Lilymon and Rosemon. The Bishonen Line means most female Digimon are gonna end up like this at some point.
    • However, if you want to keep the ‘monster’ in monster girl, you want the villainous Ranamon. Green, covered with seashell-themed, uh, head-things, and cute as a button. Her Beast Spirit form, Calmaramon, is much more monstrous, with a giant squidlike body beneath the humanoid portion. Though it wasn't used that way, you get the feeling the designer had in mind hapless victims approaching a "woman" in the water, and then out comes Cthulhu's little sister to kill you to death.
  • Holo from Spice and Wolf is a very cute girl with wolf ears and a big fluffy tail, both of which she keeps hidden under clothing when she wants to pass for human. Her true form is that of a wolf as large as a bus, which is rather less cute.
  • Though the Zentradi from Macross and Robotech are Human Aliens, the males range in appearance from ugly to average to handsome, with the occasional odd skin tone and/or cybernetic aspect, while the female Zentradi are always depicted as beautiful. The Zentradi designs in The Movie, Do You Remember Love?, are probably the strongest examples of this trope.
  • Tons of them in Yu Yu Hakusho, especially during the tournament which features a cat-girl announcer and a dragon-girl referee. There are Monster Boys too, (Yoko) Kurama probably being the main one.
  • Almost every member of the Unwanted Harem in Omamori Himari. There's a Catgirl with Gag Boobs, a Foreign Fanservice Meido tea-cup spirit with even bigger Gag Boobs, a Token Mini-Moe water-snake spirit Emotionless Girl, and a blood-thirsty (literally) Yandere forest spirit.
  • Niche from Letter Bee, as while her cuteness depends on who you ask, she certainly fills the monster and girl roles. And then there's Niche's sister...
  • Miiru from the second volume of Fushigi Yuugi. She is actually a servant of Tenkou who became such because she and her brother were killed for incest and wanted Tenkou's help to find a place where they could be happy. In the manga, her shadow is shown as a demon.
  • Monster Soul has a few, with two of them being a mummy and a golem respectfully.
  • Gainax's various merchandise for Neon Genesis Evangelion includes the "Apostle XX" line of figurines, which takes several of the Angels and gives them a female humanoid makeover. Behold Lilith, Sachiel, Shamshel, Sahaquiel, Zeruel, Arael, Armisael and Tabris. Technically, Rei might also count.
  • All of the female mermaids in Seto no Hanayome. The males tend to be less "cute" and more "Manly". Except Masa.
  • Celty from Durarara!! is a Dullahan that looks like a beautiful, though deathly pale, woman from the neck down. From the neck up? Well, she has no head. When we do finally see her head, it's that of a cute, auburn-haired girl -- A far cry from the hideous, rotten-fleshed heads of the Dullahan of Celtic legend.
  • Chomesuke from D.Gray-man has 2 forms, the mostly human (if occasionally black-eyed) form, and her completely demonic form, which is also kind of cute, in a Kingdom Hearts sort of way.
  • Seras Victoria from Hellsing.
  • Princess Resurrection has Riza Wildman; granted, she's at least half human, but the other half (and DEFINITELY the side she takes after) is a flesh tearing, vicious werewolf. There is also got Reiri, Flande, as well as the main character Hime whose a phoenix in human form among a few others.
  • Graham from Shamanic Princess is a male version, being sort of a cross between a Bishounen and some kind of Gothic horror monster (like Frankenstein's Monster or The Phantom of the Opera).
  • Chocola, the vampire daughter of Don Dracula.
  • Shia, from Pita-Ten, is a demon/demon's apprentice (depending on whether you're reading the manga or watching the anime,) but she looks completely human and is also very, very, very cute. The males in canon all fawn for her and many develop actual feelings for her, as well. Although, another demon is also shown, Klaus, and he's also cute in a shoujo kind of way, himself.
  • Ragnarok the Animation has Maya make friends with an "Alice" (a high-level humanoid monster). This is the impetus for explaining her Dark and Troubled Past.
  • The eponymous character of Squid Girl is an adorable ... squid-girl.
  • The Seedrians from the third season of Sonic X are like this. The males are monsters that transform into Godzila-like creatures (and later become Decepticon-like robots...for reasons that aren't thoroughly explained...), but the females are cute plant-girls, and Tails falls in love with one named Cosmo.
  • In Blue Exorcist, Rin is the rare Cute Monster Guy. Cute Little Fangs, Pointy Ears and all.
    • He has a tail. It's fluffy.
  • Yuki-Onna/Tsurara from Nurarihyon no Mago.
  • Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? virtually every female introduced except Haruna a Magical Girl and the two girls who are Muggles.
  • Sankarea, a zombie girl.
  • Scanty and Kneesocks, the demon sisters from Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt.
  • Daily Life with Monster Girl, unsurprisingly, has a lot of these. Some of them, such as the harpies, are One-Gender Races.
  • One Piece,
    • This Trope could be applied to most female fish-men or minks, such as Carrot. Also, Charlotte Pudding; at least, that's Sanji's opinion of her.
    • Clearly applies to Lily Enstomach from the Z's Ambition Arc; most giants have enlarged and/or exaggerated features, making them ugly and often bestial, but Lily has human-like proportions and is quite beautiful, at least compared to her father, Panz Fry. Along with her size-altering Devil Fruit power, she can easily pass for human most of the time.

Comic Books

  • Gold Digger goes both ways; cute monster girls along with cute monster guys.
    • From the same publisher, Twilight X has an interesting variant in which the human men are drawn with fairly unattractive faces, not to mention blank, inhuman eyes, while the women are all drawn in the classic sexy anime girl style.
  • Marvel Comics' Skrull would often fit, with the males being bug eyed and inhuman, while their princess was quite fetching, and even bereft of the Skrull chin ripple. Later artworks shows the males as more human-looking, and the females having unusually large eyes. (But there was still some gap in attractiveness.) Since they're a whole species of shapeshifters though, they can look however they want, and as Runaways shows they can even switch genders at will (appearance-wise, at least, if not functionally).
  • While the regular Incredible Hulk is generally seen as a berserk, hideously muscular, unintelligent monster when in Hulk form, She Hulk is basically just a somewhat larger, stronger, greener version of her human counterpart. The whole thing doesn't seem like too big a deal, and many would even consider her monster form sexier, in a cave girl sort of way (if cave girls dress like a New York fashion plate, that is). Originally, the explanation was that an individual mutated by gamma rays subconsciously determines their transformed appearance; the Hulk transforms into a hulking angry brute because of Bruce Banner's repressed anger, the Abomination transforms into a hideous freak due to his inner self-loathing, and She-Hulk transforms into an Amazonian Beauty because of her subconscious desire to look like the ideal woman.
    • You could argue that Hulk fits as well. His love interests do find his Hulk form to be handsome. Especially Jarella and Caiera (You Sexy Beast effect?).
  • From Marvel's Starjammers, Space Pirate Hepzibah is a Cute Alien Skunk Girl.
  • Miss Martian from Teen Titans looks like a cute Green-Skinned Space Babe, but her true form is that of a ravenous, blood-thirsty alien monster. It was implied in one issue that if she ever lost control and reverted to her true form, she'd be powerful enough to slaughter her teammates in a matter of minutes.
  • Common in various X-Men comics, especially Generation X; most of the more monstrous mutations will be male, while the women are always sexy.
    • Beauty Equals Goodness is often going on there. For example, when she first showed up, Marrow had bones sticking out all over, including on her face. Later, she joined the X-Men, and it wasn't long before she was made more attractive, with most of the protrusions gone and those that remained looking like they could merely be part of her costume (her prettification at least wasn't overnight for no reason other than being one of the good guys, story-wise). There are other examples, but she's probably the most obvious.
    • The X-books' resident girl werewolf, Wolfsbane, has gone from having a odd/cute 'wolfweregirl' transitional form, to a 'The Howling'-style monstrous appearance.
    • Nightcrawler, Depending on the Artist.
  • Fantasia Faust, from the erotic fantasy comic Ironwood, started out as a very bulky non-gendered iron golem designed to kill fae. Then her creator figured that the golem would be more effective if he made it really attractive and disguised the fact that it was made of iron. Then, once the fae were dealt with, he realized he had a super-strong, super-sexy non-human babe hanging around, and decided to explore a few fetishes of his.
  • Lampshaded in an issue of Namor The Sub-Mariner, where all the women are akin to Green-Skinned Space Babe while all Atlantean males are blue brutes, except for Prince Namor of course.
  • Delphyne Gorgon is a Cute Gorgon from Incredible Hercules. She even wears a skimpy Goth-styled schoolgirl uniform.
  • Lots and lots of them in XXXenophile.
  • Komodo from Avengers Initiative got her powers by stealing Curt Connors' Lizard formula. But whereas the Lizard is a hulking, almost crocodilian monster with thick scales and an elongated reptilian head, Komodo just looks like an otherwise attractive girl who happens to have smooth green skin, pointy ears, Non-Mammal Mammaries, reptilian eyes, claws, and a tail.
  • Scott Pilgrim has Matthew Patel's demon hipster chicks.
  • Freaks' Squeele has Chance, a nice spontaneous and somehow clumsy college girl ...Oh, and she has horns and bat wings.
  • Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose has many appearing throughout the series.
  • Invincible has a heroine who transforms into a monstrous form. While the monster transformation isn't exactly cute, the actual girl who is really older than she appears is

Fan Works

Film

  • In Let the Right One In, Eli fits this trope. She's a vampire, who has the appearance of an adorable 12-13 year old girl. Oskar, when he finds out what she is Is horrified at first, not only over what she is but what she might want from him. However, by the next night he actively invites her into his apartment and even is planning on a romantic evening with her...Before his mother unexpectedly comes home, that is. When Eli leaves, after being forced to kill the town drunk who finds her daytime resting place, Oskar is inconsolable. That makes it all the sweeter when Eli returns the next night, saves Oskar from the bullies and they proceed to leave town to both start a new life together.
  • A throughly creepy version of this trope arises in the 2001 version of Planet of the Apes. All of the characters playing apes were made to look like gorillas, chimps, etc. Helena Bonham Carter, on the other hand, looked... well, like Helena Bonham Carter in chimp make-up, eyeshadow, and lipstick. She and the other female chimps (including one played by Tim Burton's ladyfriend Lisa Marie) even had humanlike eyebrows, which was thoroughly bizarre to see on a chimpanzee face. In attempting to make the female apes more realistic, they only made them more attractive. Contributing to the weirdness of the situation, she spent the entire movie flirting with the male human lead.
  • In Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, the title character is a cadaver that has been rotting long enough for parts of her anatomy to be entirely skeletal. However, her more "feminine" features (face, breasts, hair) are still almost completely intact.
  • In Star Wars while the male Twi'leks are fairly human like except for head-tails and bumpy foreheads, the females are blatantly designed to look sexy. Deconstructed by having them be famous for beauty to the extent that many of them end up as enslaved dancing girls to crimelords like Jabba the Hutt.
    • The difference between male and female Devaronians is even larger. The males are horned and demon-like with sharp teeth, but the females are furred, have pointy ears and only small, vestigial horns and flat, more humanlike teeth and are generally much more attractive to members of other species than the males. More recent artwork made the Devaronian females even more human, taking away their horns and fur; Darth Maladi and Kee from the Star Wars Legacy comics are good examples.
      • The Legacy comic has made almost a running gag of "prettying up" females of various alien races - contrast Nakia, a female Anzat, with a typical male example of the same species (at least her husband wasn't exactly ugly either).
      • Legacy also has quite good-looking male Twi'lek (compared to the films, anyway) like Shado.
    • Some of the Expanded Universe - The New Essential Guide to Alien Species, namely - says that both male and female Twi'leks appear very comely to humans... when they're young. An old and ugly Twi'lek woman did try to flirt with a teenaged Han Solo in the novels, but honestly, you'd think that Twi'lek women don't live to get old.
    • Cathar tend to have a huge gap. Male Cathar are basically very tall tailless anthropomorphic big cats with wide shoulders, big claws, thick necks and muzzles. Female Cathar? Small Cat Girls. It seems though that no two artists can decide just how anthropomorphic Cathar are, drawing both genders as being everything between the two extremes; in their species's first comics appearance Sylvar and her mate Crado were about as different as two humans, both of them basically Rubber Forehead Aliens.
  • Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother in the 2007 film Beowulf (she has high heels... and doesn't wear shoes), though it's implied to be Shapeshifting: reflected bits of her true form are visible during her time with Grendel, and a keen observer will see her posing as a part of her treasure-hoard when Beowulf first comes to confront her, looking like a very fishy, naga sort of creature.
  • A rare male example comes up in Labyrinth. All the goblins are diminutive, monstrous creatures with wart infested skin and bizarre bone structures... except for their king, Jareth, who just looks like David Bowie with make up on (and very tight pants).
  • Fiona of Shrek is still fairly pretty for an ogress, despite indulging in the usual icky ogre habits.
  • Ginormica from Monsters vs. Aliens. Your basic White-Haired Pretty Girl, super-economy size.
  • The females of Chaka's people in Land of the Lost might qualify. The males look like they did in the series (i.e. like humanoid chimps). The females are Nubile Savages.
  • Dren in Splice. The Fetish Fuel angle to her is played up to the hilt.
  • Daisy from Super Mario Bros., seeing as she, like all natives of Dinohattan, are super-evolved dinosaurs.
  • Celia from Monsters, Inc..
  • Ruby from The Hills Have Eyes, both original and remake.
  • In The Howling, the werewolves are giant, long-snouted and frightening, but when Dee Wallace turns into one, it's cute and fluffy like Benji.
  • The ghost in Dead Friend (aka The Ghost) was pretty cute, despite the rotting clothes and waterlogged hair/skin. At least, she was cute before she died.
  • Marla (depending on how decayed she is in a particular scene) from Hellraiser Deader.
  • In Species, Sil is still pretty hot in her alien form. The creature designers specifically wanted her to still be beautiful as an alien.
  • The eponymous character of Deadgirl is pretty good-looking... although probably not dating material, given everything that happens after she's found.
  • In the fifties film The Mole People, a girl named Adad was born to a race of subterranean albinos, but has none of their features, and thus is hated and shunned by her folk. One of the archaeologists falls madly for her and promises to help her escape this hell with them. Sadly Adad is killed by a falling pillar moments after she sees the surface world for the first time.

Literature

  • In Piers Anthony's Xanth novels, female goblins are described as being far more attractive than male goblins. On the other hand, male harpies are handsome while the females are almost always ugly. A war was nearly started once when a female goblin and male harpy figured this out and started dating. And way far back in history, a war was started when the harpy males preferred the goblin females. And Castle Roogna was stuck in the middle.
    • Female harpies in Xanth get unusually ugly when they have to mate with humans and vultures to reproduce their species. All harpies produced by crossing harpies with humans or vultures are female, and so the cycle became vicious on several levels. It probably took Time Travel to fix that mess.
  • Robert Asprin's Myth Adventures series includes a dimension called Trollia where the males are all hulking monsters and the females are all drop-dead sexy. The explanation: The males are Trolls, and the females are Trollops.
  • Possibly subverted, possibly just avoided by Lois McMaster Bujold's Sgt. Taura, of the Vorkosigan books: a human/animal hybrid superwarrior who happens to be eight feet tall, fanged and clawed, and built like a brick firehouse. (Miles Vorkosigan, her sometime lover, is literally half her size at most.) She's described as striking and even attractive in her own way, but hardly the bikini model in face-paint one might have expected.
  • In the Discworld books female Igors, known as Igorinas, are every bit as svelte and beautiful as their male counterparts are deformed, hunchbacked, and misshapen. Handwaved by the fact that Igors of both sexes are crazy-talented at all forms of surgery, including plastic, and as Igors are devoted followers of "tradithion" it is probably that male Igors remain ugly because male assistants to Mad Scientists are supposed to be ugly, just as female assistants are meant to be beautiful.
  • Asenath Waite from "The Thing on the Doorstep", part of H.P. Lovecraft's fiction, might qualify, sort of. She's a Deep One hybrid from Innsmouth described as "dark, smallish and very good looking except for over-protuberant eyes." Unlike most of her brethren, she doesn't seem to perpetually smell like fish. The fact that Deep One ancestry often doesn't show up too much until you're 25 to 30 if you're a late-bloomer probably helped her, that and the fact that her Evil Sorcerer father probably made arrangements so his current host body could interact with polite society long enough to find a more suitable one.
    • The Shadow over Innsmouth-based B-Movie Dagon throws in a Deep One Cute Monster Girl by way of Our Mermaids Are Different. They still get to play the initial reveal of her monstrous, octopoidal features for Horror somehow. This trope allows the movie to play a romantic angle on the original Tomato in the Mirror ending, giving it minor justification.
  • From the Seekers of Truth, Natalie Beckett aka Golem. Fairly attractive if you can ignore the stone skin. And apparently her boyfriend, Timothy Landerman aka Echidna, can. It helps that he's basically a venomous lobster-man.
  • Used as a major plot device in the Neil Gaiman short story "Talking to Girls at Parties", where a bunch of attractive adolescent girls turn out to be odd extraterrestrial visitors.
  • Subverted in the Codex Alera. Her Imperial Bugginess the Vord Queen tries, but mostly just manages to give everyone the creeps by combining a "green Kitai with Rapunzel Hair" look with a few too many insectile features and a frightening lack of understanding of human emotion.
  • One short story involved a hilarious inversion involving mermaids, with the female mermaids looking something like "Ripjaws" from Ben 10, and the male mermaids basically being Bishonen. The Victorian scientists who discovered them didn't know what the heck they were doing and received quite a surprise.
  • Sandman Slim has Candy, who is probably the bubbliest and most cheerful character in the series, despite being a vimpire-esque killing machine called a Jade. Aside from a few slip ups, she's trying to cut back.
  • Junapur, in Cerberon, is described as quite beautiful despite her various nonhuman traits and imposing Amazon physique.


Live-Action TV

  • The Cybermen in the new series of Doctor Who, whether constructed from men or women, look exactly the same. But that didn't stop the spin-off Torchwood from featuring a "sexy" half-transformed Cyberwoman.
  • Though most Borg in Star Trek of either sex don't look particularly appealing, the Borg queen is decidedly sexier looking than any of her drones. Also, Seven of Nine is quite attractive but only once most of her more Borg-like physical attributes are removed via surgery.
    • The Vidiians suffer from a disfiguring disease called the Phage, but strangely the Doctor's love interest Denara Pel still retains some of her facial good looks. At least more than any other Vidiian we see.
    • In Star Trek VI, Rosanna De Soto's Klingon character had much less pronounced brow ridges than most of the male Klingons. But then, so did Christopher Plummer.
    • Klingons fall into this trope even in Star Trek: The Original Series. In the episode "Day of the Dove" we get to see both Klingon men and women. The men all have brutish expressions concealed under thick Blackface makeup while the women have spray on tans, and garish blue eye shadow.
  • Farscape: War Minister Ahkna is noticeably more attractive and shorter than the rest of the Scarran species; most of whom that have been seen are male (we think). She's still quite reptilian, but it's a smoother, sleeker, sexier kind of reptilian than most Scarrans we've seen.
    • The Scarran emperor looks similar to her (though not nearly as short), so it's most likely that Scarrans have different castes: the big bosses always look like scaly humans, while the grunts look like T-Rexes in gimp suits.
      • The We're So Screwed arc makes the castes explicit, and based on diet. Eating a rare flower (which grows commonly on Earth, to our hero's dismay once he learns how important it is) makes Scarrans more intelligent (and coincidentally look more human).
  • Marilyn Munster in The Munsters. Occasionally, others in her family mention how homely she is.
  • In Lexx, Zev Bellringer, part cluster lizard, part love slave.
  • Lamie in Super Sentai. (Or, as American viewers know her, Scorpina.)
  • Frankie Stein from Wizards of Waverly Place who's basically a cute, if very tall, girl with a rubber forehead attachment.
  • Illyria from Angel. An Eldritch Abomination trapped in a human corpse, basically her only non-human attributes (physically, at least) are blue lines on her face and blue streaks in her hair.
  • In Supernatural, though they all look human, the male reapers all look like balding old people that can keel over anytime, while female reapers are all at least conventionally attractive.
  • The famous "Eye of The Beholder episode of The Twilight Zone.

Music

  • Even Finnish monster rock band Lordi isn't immune to this trope. Their first pianist, Enary, was a blonde Valkyrie, who was still gorgeous despite having an extra mouth. They've since subverted it with their new pianist, Awa, a ghostly witch who's as creepy as they come (although still arguably cuter than most of the male monsters.)

Mythology

  • Older Than Print: In Norse Mythology, the jotuns (giants) were typically pretty butt-ugly, but the female jotuns were comely enough that a lot of the Aesir married one (or nine...).
    • Loki is somewhat an exception to this rule, being handsome despite giant ancestry (it's not clear whether he is a full or half giant). He's also a shapeshifting trickster god, so who knows what he really looks like, and his children were mostly horrible monsters.
    • Huldra, nymphs with cow or fox tails (and optionally hollow backs, like a tree trunk), especially since they're usually considered to be female trolls.
    • Valkyries (like gorgons) are female creatures that were originally hideous but later on became to be known as incredibly beautiful maidens sought after by many a Norse hero (despite the fact that they weren't actually human). Also note that they're really only "beasts" depending on your interpretation of their title: Choosers of the Slain.
  • The Asura in Hindu and Buddhist myth: all the males are ugly and all the females are beautiful. And both are very violent.

Tabletop Games

  • Dungeons & Dragons
    • The supplement Elder Evils has an inversion with the Hulks of Zoretha. The four female hulks resemble bulky, stony giants of no discernible gender. On the other hand the singular male, while roughly the same twenty feet in height as the female hulks, appears as a slender and beautiful winged humanoid if awakened.
    • Medusas, unsurprisingly, zigzag depending on the edition. Those in 1st edition were horribly ugly, 2nd edition made them very comely if you could look past the snake hair (without being Taken for Granite), 3rd edition kept the comely bodies but the effect was somewhat marred by the scales and a face that looked like a cross beween a viper and a hag, and 4th edition seems to go for a middle-of-the-road approach. Pathfinder (aka D&D 3.75), meanwhile, takes the "playmate with mildly scaly skin and snakes for hair" road.
    • 4th edition also features an inversion - there are indeed male Medusas, but apart from being bald, they're actually pretty handsome (and being scaly folk, the baldness isn't that bad).
    • The Fiendish Codex: Hordes of the Abyss introduces Obyriths, outrageously bizarre demons (as opposed to the more humanoid Tanar'ri) whose forms exude such a primal wrongness that looking at them can do permanent damage to your mind. Their queen has a "soft, feminine form," though it would be hard to describe her as cute, but then you find out that that's just the veil surrounding her, which formed because the plane of ultimate, horrible madness that spawned her refuses to accept that she is real. If looking at her true form doesn't simply kill you, you won't remember what you saw.
    • In Planescape, female tieflings often fit; PC tieflings have Charisma bonus to show it.
  • Used to its fullest in the Talislanta game-setting with the Batrean race, whose females are green-haired space babes (except when they're blue-haired) with seductive pheromones, and whose males are gangling hairy ogres. Technically also true of the singular race of Gnorls and Weirdlings, although not for the usual reasons: Although Gnorls (the females) look like someone's 80-year-old grandma, that's still prettier than their male counterparts, the Weirdlings (who look like anorexic Yodas in their skivvies).
  • In Changeling: The Lost, a woman who has become a draconic Fairest is this by default, as Fairest are literally "the fairest of them all", and draconics have aspects of the Great Beasts of Faerie, such as dragons.
  • Subverted in Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000 with Daemonettes of Slaanesh. While considered to be the pinnacle of beauty by anyone who views them, their true appearance is rather nasty (giant claws are a must) and the desire they exude is actually a relatively mild form of Mind Rape.
  • Malifaux gives us the Neverborn, a literal race of Nightmares, including Pandora and Lilith, the latter described as "the very image of woman that creation intended, the beautiful vision that haunts the dreams of men", the former only being on the verge of adulthood.
  • Technically, Yu-Gi-Oh could apply this Trope to dozens of female Mons, seeing as they are called Monster Cards, but many look "cute" while still appearing "monstrous". For example, Fabled Krus who also appears to be a Shrinking Violet. The [Nekogal] is a Little Bit Beastly, while Traptrix seem to be Man-Eating Plants using a cute female shape to lure prey.

Theater

  • Kate Monster from Avenue Q was going to have a lot of fuzz, similar to Trekkie Monster, but was shaved before production so she would look better with a male (and human) love interest.
  • Magda in Tanz der Vampire becomes a gorgeous vampiress after she's bitten (though some actresses in the part do subvert this by applying some rather distorted makeup after she's been turned). In addition, sometimes female chorus vampires fall into this as well. Sarah is one by the end of the show, without exception between actresses.
    • Herbert's a rather cute monster boy.

Video Games

  • In World of Warcraft, the female members of "monstrous" races look like models with paint jobs and funny hairdos, while the male members are considerably fuglier. (This is especially blatant on the Horde side, but the Alliance races, even humans, to some degree, are not exempt.) They also tend to be rather well endowed. The minotaur-like Tauren are arguably an exception, but the females still have a smoother, "cleaner" look and are designed to look cute. And even the female Forsaken, who are undead of the "revenant" variety, look just like goths with the bones showing in their elbows and knees. Of course their chests are unrotted. They put a rather... disturbing Lampshade Hanging on the idea with one flirt macro: "Yes, they're real. They're not mine, but they're real." Do you feel the Squick sinking in yet?
    • Female orcs and trolls have perfect posture compared to their hunched-over male counterparts, with slimmer builds (though female orcs are still relatively muscular) and less pronounced tusks. While the NPC's in the game have a variety of appearances, character creation provides 1 conventionally attractive face option for both, jokingly known as "Cutefase" (sic). The vast majority of female orc/troll player characters have these faces. With orcs, it's particularly bad because they only have one non-barbaric hairstyle as well. Meaning if you want to make a "pretty" orc girl, you will end up with the same face and hair as everyone else.
    • Male Naga are dragon-like snakemen, and females are rather attractive, mildly elven snake women (with four arms).
    • Draenei females are approximately half the mass of their male counterparts, and their tails and whiskers are far more understated. And they have Junk In Da Trunk.
    • Done again in Cataclysm with female worgen, who have eyeshadow, mascara, and Cat Smiles. Less obvious with female goblins, but still evident: while they closely resemble their male counterparts, they're still clearly designed to be prettier.
  • StarCraft has the Zerg Queen of Blades, Sarah Kerrigan. For someone who's been infested by The Virus she's still smokin' hot.
  • The Shura in the free MMO Dream of Mirror Online fit - the males are big hulking walls of flesh, with short, fleshy tails, and a (fleshy) horn on their forehead. The females are cat girls.
  • Female vampires, demonesses, cyborg girls, and of course catgirls are very common in the City of Heroes/City of Villains games. The character creator includes options such as horns, pointy ears, tails, hooved/clawed feet, etc. Even one of the NPC heroines is a catgirl.
    • Also applies to NPC enemies. Most of the various demons the you can fight are grotesque monsters, except for the succubi.
  • A large number of the enemies and villains in Shantae are Cute Monster Girls. Among them: Cute Scorpion-Girls, Cute Water Lobster Thing Girls, Cute Snake Girls, and even Cute Zombie Girls.
  • Nearly every single Touhou character (and there are a lot) is one of these, with Little Bit Beastly individuals rampant, and even some of the most horrendous mythological creatures appearing almost indistinguishable to humans. For only some examples, Nitori is supposed to be a kappa, Aya and Hatate are supposed to be (crow) tengu, Suika and Yuugi are supposed to be oni, Mamizou is supposed to be a tanuki, Satori and Koishi are supposed to be Satori, and Yamame is meant to be a Giant Spider, and yet at most they only have one or two features that indicate them as such. The few male characters in the series tend to appear more monstrous (and old), with Genji being a talking turtle and Unzan being a cloud.
    • With so many examples of this trope, inevitably it is occasionally subverted. Kogasa (a karakasa) is often thought to be not the girl with the blue dress and Mismatched Eyes but instead the umbrella she's holding, the girl simply a projection. In one of Maribel's dream-excursions to Gensokyo she is attacked by a youkai rabbit which she describes as looking like a monster rather than a girl. The various beast-type youkai have shown the ability to transform back into an animal form, though this would probably only make the spider-girl more frightening. Played with by Nue (a, well, nue), who is embarrassed by how unscary her Shapeshifter Default Form is and goes to great lengths to hide it.
      • The characters you meet are humanoid because they possess large amounts of magic allowing them to shift form. Most other Youkai act more like beasts and animals. In fact Youkai are a result of magic power influencing life forms (Souls in terms of ghosts) or even inanimate objects like Kogasa. Only those that receive a high amount of it would most likely attain a human form. One example is Utsuho's origin: She ate a Yatagarasu and transformed into what she is now. Even the Gods themselves fall under this principle: Sikieiki being one who was born from the faith of humans (She was originally a jizou statue).
  • Most, if not all, the female demons & deities in the Shin Megami Tensei series of games, especially Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, as even the ones who are officially supposed to be hideous still manage to look really sexy (with perhaps the only exception definitely being the "Old Hag" type of demoness)!
  • Many of the monsters in the Castlevania games are also Cute Monster Girls, such as the Succubus, and the Persephone, a demonic maid who happens to know Kung-Fu.
  • Yeto of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is a big, hulking yeti with a face that one would expect a yeti to have. His wife Yeta, on the other hand, is a walking ball of fur with a much cuter face. At least when she's not possessed by the dungeon boss, then her face goes all scary-like...
    • The eponymous Twilight Princess: regular twilight citizens aren't so much ugly as featureless (most of them being black mannequin-like when not under Zant's curse) she's absolutely gorgeous and looks mostly like a woman with a weird skin-tone.
      • Not to mention her cursed from - an adorable little imp girl - that she appears as throughout most of the game.
    • The Zora race in this game's incarnation exhibit sexual dimorphism, where the females resemble humans by having clearly human faces and body shapes, while the males are distinctively more piscean-looking.
  • Most monsters in the Disgaea games are male, with the most obvious exceptions being the Succubus and the Nekomata, which are all female.
    • The Succubus and the Nekomata are also noteworthy because they brought in the artist who did the earlier games in the Marl series (La Pucelle and Rhapsody being the only 2 that hit US shores) to do their art, because he does girls with more... va va voom.
    • It should be noted though that the "standard" demon race of the Netherworld does have females of several different body types, like valkyries, healers and magic knights (all of them cute, of course).
    • Disgaea 2 introduces the Flora Beast (something similar to a Nymph). There's one named Bridget, with all of the traits you would expect from that Bridget.
    • Raspberyl from Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice is a Fun Size loli Cute Monster Girl.
    • And now we have Desco from Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten, the Netherworld's most adorable Eldritch Abomination.
  • Planescape: Torment features a number of odd NPCs you can add to your party. Only two are female, and both of them are conventionally very attractive, with some add-ons (a tail in the case of Annah and wings in the case of Fall-From-Grace). With Grace it's expected; she is a demon, and a succubus at that. However, Annah is a tiefling; that is, someone descended from a fiendish grandparent (possibly with a few "greats" thrown in), and most fiends in Dungeons & Dragons, even female ones, aren't very attractive.
    • Annah also wears a leather version of a Breast Plate, including hooker boots. The PC can hang a lampshade on this by suggesting she strip it down further, adding a few more slashes, to distract her marks. She gets flustered by this remark, and he comments he thought that's what it was for in the first place. She claims she gets hot, and "suspects it's the fiend blood in me".
    • This seems to the entire hat of the tiefling race. Male, female, whatever. They all seem to be cute monster people versions of fiends. Case in point: not just Annah but Valen and Neeshka as well (and, depending who you ask, I would imagine Haer'Dalis). It's also explicitly mentioned in the 4e writeup of the race in the Player's Handbook.
  • Knights of the Old Republic has Juhani, a Catgirl who looks... very different from every other Cathar [dead link] in all of Star Wars. Handwaved later by making Juhani a member of a rare Cathar subspecies, yet the more common version of a female Cathar still look much nicer than the hulking tiger-men that are the males.
  • The aforementioned Lineage II: The Chaotic Throne. Male dwarves look like their counterparts in WoW and similar games... but female dwarves look like baby-faced teenage jockettes, scaled down to size. (They also narrowly skirt the Uncanny Valley.)
  • Subverted in Earthworm Jim. Jim's girlfriend, Princess What's-Her-Name, is big-eyed, wasp-waisted (and an insect, haha), and extremely well proportioned. On her homeworld, she's considered hideously deformed. Her sister, Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-Filled, Malformed Slug-For-A-Butt, who looks something like a giant termite queen, is the pinnacle of beauty to her people.
  • The Pixie species from Monster Rancher is an entire race of cute, impish girls with demon horns, wings, tails, and Cute Little Fangs. It's implied in some games that they are Always Female, but the names bestowed on some Pixie NPC monsters seems to suggest that there are some males—they just look exactly the same as the females.
  • Played straight in Gears of War 2 to the surprise of pretty much everyone (including Delta squad, Cole saying: "I thought she was supposed to be butt ugly."), with the Locust Queen, who appears almost exactly like a human woman (albeit wearing a squid on her back and a kinda grey skin tone).
  • Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer gives us a rare male example in Gannayev. Gannayev (nicknamed Gann) is a Hagspawn, which are male Hag/Human hybrids and typically look something like this. Gann, on the hand, looks like this. Most people in the fandom adamantly refused to believe that this was the official character portrait of Gann because, really, there was absolutely no justifiable way a Hagspawn could look that pretty until actually playing the game, where it was revealed that his looks resulted from the love his parents had for each other.
    • Similarly, the tiefling Valen of the Hordes of the Underdark expansion to the original Neverwinter Nights is another male example, being uncharacteristically attractive for a fiend.
    • Neeshka. A tiefling rogue in Neverwinter Nights 2 with horns and (provided the game is updated) a tail. Considered by many fans to be the cutest girl in the game, Neeshka and a male main character is the Fan-Preferred Couple to such an extent that an add-on module has been released to reinstate her as a romance option, after it was cut during development due to time restraints.
  • The enemies in the Hentai game series Lightning Warrior Raidy consists only or almost only of cute monster girls.
  • In Darkstalkers, any female character (Morrigan, Lilith, Felicia, Q-Bee) qualifies, but the winner is Hsien-Ko, a Chinese Vampire.
    • Hsien-Ko is the most obvious, but Q-Bee is probably the most horrible. While her entire race act pretty much like normal bees, they've developed one evolutionary trait to help them hunt their prey: their eyes. Those gigantic bulbs on her head? Those are her real eyes. The ones on the front of her face are there to trick people into thinking she's a dimwitted chick. This is why her fighting pose is animated so her head looks like it's pointing down, her actual eyes are completely focused on her prey.
  • Cthylla in Chaos Code, if one can look past her shark-like dentition and penchant for blowing venomous ink in her opponents' faces.
  • Many enemies in Final Fantasy. The exact specifications vary from game to game, ranging from monsters with female body parts to highly-feminine monsters to monsters that look pretty much exactly like humans with maybe one or two monster features. For example, the recurring Lamia enemies are usually snakes with female torsos and faces, while the summons Shiva and Siren basically are humans with the odd little feature like feather-hair for Siren or growths of ice on Shiva's body. Normal characters can also fit the trope, most notably Terra of Final Fantasy VI, a half-human and half-Esper. Dissidia Final Fantasy‍'‍s interpretation of her Esper form isn't very monstrous and is more or less a normal human female with claws, a few tufts of fur and purple skin.
  • The Vieras and the Grias from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and its sequel, the former being a tanned, white haired race of warrior women with bunny ears, and the latter incredibly cute female dragon humanoids.
    • The Seeq avert this: the couple female Seeq NPCs look almost identical to male Seeq.
  • In the first Shadow Hearts game male Harmonixer Yuri Hyuga transforms into almost completely inhuman monstrosities when he fuses with a monster soul- he'll usually still have 2 arms and 2 legs (usually), but only Seraphic Radiance/Dark Seraphim looks even remotely human- and it still has eerie pale skin and giant black wings. On the other hand, in Shadow Hearts: From the New World, hot female harmonixer Shania transforms into beautiful non-human creatures which are still abundantly female and wearing even less than she usually does. Yuri hits the middle ground, however, with his Level 1 Fusions in Shadow Hearts: Covenant, which are generally attractive male non-human creatures wearing less than Yuri usually does.
  • The kid-friendly Shin Megami Tensei spinoff DemiKids takes this to an utterly ridiculous degree with some of its designs. Some are sort of logical, but others, like the Banshee and Harpy, are a bit of stretch. They even managed to turn Dullahan (basically, a Headless Horseman who rides on a similarly headless horse and functions as an omen of death) into one of them. Take a look.
  • In Grandia II, a large, ugly, male beastman named Marag joins your party early on. This isn't so bad until you visit his village later in the game and find out that, apparently, the rest of his species is comprised of cute and/or hot Cat Girls.
    • Similarly, from the original Grandia, a character named Milda joins your team. She's an older (beast)woman who, though not necessarily cute, has curves in all the right places and is marred only by having horns, sharp teeth, and a tufted tail. Eventually you reach the village where her tribe lives and get to see the men—all of whom are BIPEDAL COWS.
  • Pokémon has Gardevoir and Lopunny. Which, it should be noted, look the same regardless if it is male or female.
    • Gardevoir now has a male counterpart: Gallade
    • Several other Pokemon seem to be this (though again they appear identical regardless of gender), including Ninetales, Mismagius, Mawile and Froslass.
    • Bellossom, Roselia, Roserade and Lilligant can be seen as Cute Plant Girls, while Leavanny is a Cute Bug Girl.
    • Sword and Shield]] introduces Hatterene, a Cute Witch among Pokemon. Unlike the other Pokemon mentioned here, Hatterene is Always Female.
  • Fenia from Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World; the best mage monster in the game, talks, and plays this trope perfectly straight.
    • May be averted, as Fenia isn't technically a monster. She's a Cameo from Tales of Rebirth She's merely placed there as a monster so she can be in the party.
      • Her original game plays this straight and averts it with Hilda, a Gajuma-Huma half-breed. In-universe, Hilda's horns made her appear to be an ugly freak, but anyone can see that Hilda is attractive with or without the horns.
    • The original Tales of Symphonia has the Mandragora enemies, which are just humans with green hair and flowers growing out of their heads. Dawn of the New World makes them look significantly more inhuman, though.
  • In Neo Steam, the male Beast races are huge hulking wolf-men or bear-men, depending on faction. Their female counter-part race are small, slender, curvy catgirls with cute stubby tails.
  • Male members of the Blacksmith Clan in Breath of Fire are hulking minotaur-like strongmen. Their women look like ordinary humans with horns. Although apparently the women are just as strong, despite this...
  • Boktai's Black Django -- the hero's vampiric form -- has pointed ears, fangs, blue skin, and bat wings... making him a Cute Monster Boy.
  • Presumably subverted in Tsukihime with the demon races. Akiha is pretty cute, yes, but people with more demon blood tend to look... well, demonic. Breeding with demons is done for power, not love. Played straight with Arcueid, which doesn't count really since she's a vampire, and Nanako, a half human half unicorn spirit that's the Moe Anthropomorphism of the Seventh Scripture.
  • The House of the Dead EX has Zobiko, a Cute Zombie Girl. She's also one of the main characters.
  • The MMORPG Perfect World has the race called the Untamed. Basically, the males are big muscular furries, entirely hairy and with animal heads, and the females slender Cat Girls (or fox-, demon-, etc.), with tails and a second set of ears or something similar on the sides of their heads, but otherwise as humans.
  • Phantasy Star has this in spades. PSII had Nei, PSIV had Rika and Demi, and by PSO, Numans were a full-fledged minority within the population of Pioneer 2.
  • Medusa from Kid Icarus is a cyclops stone head in a wall, but after being damaged enough she turns into a human sized attractive Medusa (her original form according to the story) right before dying. She's even more of this in Kid Icarus: Uprising for 3DS (just look at her).
    • The Syren enemy, who has full frontal NES nudity. The manual warns not to be caught unaware by her female form, as she is pure evil.
  • Pretty much every Fire Emblem game has one of these, though they look only slightly inhuman at most in their untransformed states. Of the games released in America, there's Ninian in Fire Emblem, Myrrh in Sacred Stones, Ena in Path of Raidance/Radiant Dawn, and Tiki in Shadow Dragon.
    • And those are just the mandatory dragonkin for the series; Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn also give us Lethe, Lyre, Nailah, Leanne, and Vika, as well as Almedha, an ex-Cute Monster Girl (it's a long story).
  • Saya from Saya no Uta is a deconstruction, since she is an Eldritch Abomination. Her true form is never fully revealed, but it's implied to be the farthest thing from cute.
  • Tiamat from La-Mulana. Then she starts kicking your ass, and you somehow stop finding her cute. Then you start kicking her ass, and she gets downright ugly. (In the PC version anyway; in the Wii version all she gets is a scowl.)
  • The Fire Clan of Golden Sun are mostly human-looking with some draconic traits, such as scales, colorful skin, equally colorful hair, and Pointy Ears. But then there's Karst, who pairs all of that with the appearance of a cute teenager and a black leather micromini.
    • Dark Dawn's beastmen are all quite furry and a bit more animalistic than your average Catgirl. And then there's Sveta, who is very human-looking, not readily identifiable as anything but "furry" (and her fur is skin-tone!), and very Moe. Compare her with her brother, who has a very distinct muzzle (and blue fur, though beastman colors run the gamut).
      • She can actually enter a more beastly form, which is actually largely indistinguishable from the werewolf/wolfman monsters. It's also a bit of a Game Breaker.
  • The H-game Visual Novel Monster Girl Quest is filled with these. They are actually all a One-Gender Race who rely on human males to reproduce. And as a food source.
  • Adult Swim Flash Game Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars has, well, the lesbian Spider Queen of Mars(it's the lower half that's a spider).
  • Dark Souls has a few of these, most notably Priscilla the Crossbreed, a 20 foot tall giant White-Haired Pretty Girl who happens to be half dragon. Quelaag and her sister are beautiful women with horrible lava spiders for lower bodies.
  • Violated Hero has these as the major enemies and sexual partners, along similar lines as Monster Girl Quest.
  • Desire Dungeon has these as the inhabitants of the titular dungeon. They attack passing adventurers for their semen but let them go afterwards.
  • Lust Grimm has many types of monster girls, all of which are technically succubi (even the ones normally classified as other types, like mermaids).
  • Callie and Marie from Splatoon. They look like Adorkable teen pop stars (and technically, they are) and it's easy to forget that they're members of a species that evolved from squids.

Web Comics

  • All the female cast (and males) from Monsterful. Cute monster girl extras (both young and mature) are everywhere, and even cute monster girl celebrity parodies!
  • Grace Sciuridae/Shade Tail in El Goonish Shive is a genetically engineered shapeshifting assassin created to fight the Big Bad Damien. However, she proves to be a pacifist by nature except under the worst provocation. (Her brothers are less human-looking in their hybrid forms, though they can appear human, and quite good-looking, when they choose.) Her male Evil Counterpart from another dimension is much scarier.
  • Modest, the gorgon protagonist in Modest Medusa, seems to be a cute and fairly harmless child, without the ability to turn people to stone or the aggression normally associated with the medusa/gorgon type of monster. Instead she's easily distracted and seems to enjoy video games and junk food.
  • The Wotch has Ti'el, a cute green-haired alien with tentacle hands, and Myrrh, Lord Sykos' half-liquid maid. Due to the Shapeshifting that goes on, many characters have been a Cute Monster Girl at least once or twice.
  • The demon heroine Raven in Demonology 101 is a cute teenage girl whose only demonic attributes are reddish eyes and oddly shaped ears (justified since Raven is only a half-demon). The other demons portrayed (both male and female) are also fairly human-looking (and usually somewhat attractive).
  • The Order of the Stick has Therkla, a half-orc ninja. While the males of the orcs we see aren't exactly any more ugly, mishappen, or inhuman than the females, this could be a limitation of the art style...
    • Subverted and parodied in with a female Lizardfolk prostitute. At first she appears to look much more human than a typical member of her species, with blonde hair and Non-Mammal Mammaries. But it turns out these are a wig and implants, which she got to attract more business. Without them she'd look just like a standard Lizardfolk. (And the other lizardfolk hooker is disgusted by her.)
  • This Krakow strip.
  • Nerf Now has Cute Zerg Girls. As in, the Zerg from StarCraft. The author of the strip has a tendency to pump out cute monster girls on a weekly basis.
  • Goblins has Saves-a-Fox (admittedly she wears a wig, but still...) and snake girl Kin.
    • Female Goblins are drawn sexier than their male counterparts in several panels, especially when the male leads are fantasizing.
  • Sluggy Freelance parodies this in the Years of Yarncraft storyline, especially in this strip.
    • Aylee adopts her forms to defend against specific dangers (such as developing mind-shielding with a telepathic foe around). The current form was taken because she feared what humans would do unless she could fit in among them better. In other words, she (subconsciously) made herself into a Cute Monster Girl to gain acceptance.
  • Mentioned occasionally in Schlock Mercenary.
  • Molly in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob is an extremely cute pink furry monster. Princess Voluptua still manages to be pretty attractive even in her insect form, as well.
  • Girl Genius got a few: traveling jager-kin Jenka. Ferretina the Evil Weasel Queen from the side-story "Revenge of the Weasel Queen". Also Mamma Gkika; "cute" and "girl" definitely aren't the words for her, but she fits all the same. Nobody's really sure what the Geisterdamen are, other than creepy, but they're also kinda hot.
  • Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire has Hyraxx D'mofiti as well as some of the girls employed at the Velvet Fist.
  • The Creo in Terinu start out as petite and cute when they're young, but upon reaching adulthood they gain the same bulky musculature as a male. Ferin does and bucks, on the other hand, retain disturbingly small and cute their entire lives, even as they sported spiky horns and tails.
  • Nitrine of Flaky Pastry is a small, cute human-looking young woman with green hair and lips. She is also a goblin and has had some rather classical male goblins hanging around.
  • Soraya from Poharex combines this with Lizard Folk.
  • All orcs in Dominic Deegan look close enough to humans to be mutually attractive once you get past the Cute Little Fangs (played straight with Luna, who is fully human and has fangs) and, yes, the green skin. This applies to both male and female orcs, however, so it's partly justified.
  • Pretty much all of the main characters in School Bites are cute vampire girls, some going into the catgirl variety.
  • Ambrosia Verdandi from Fetch Quest: Saga of the Twelve Artifacts. She's also a doctor wannabe!
  • Keychain of Creation has both Marena (Lunar Exalted, literally 'foxy', and arguably the Ms. Fanservice of the strip) and Secret (Abyssal Exalted and thus effectively a kind of undead, but undeniably cute). And if a Genius Ditz robotic mad scientist who can turn into a giant robot cat is more your thing, there's always Elegant Nova of Progression.
  • Eerie Cuties has this title for a reason. The comic centers on a monster highschool, and so far, with the exception of a pair of lizard boys, they are all cute monster girls (and boys). And if the cast isn't enough, there are more of them in flashbacks -- hilariously cute snake-girls and so on.
  • The trolls of Homestuck fame have grey skin, orange, sunken eyes, fangs of varying length and horns of varying shape. Apart from that, they don't really look that monstorous. Nepeta, for example, is pretty much adorable, even if she does kill wild animals for food with her bare hands. And paint the walls of her cave with their blood.
  • Sinfest has Baby Blue and Fuchsia. They're Devil Girls (presumably succubi), so there's some justification for this. Also, their boss is depicted as pretty handsome.
  • The title character of Selkie has gray skin, flippers, and fangs. No horns though.
  • Hala River from Irregular Elis is a Hot Mom alien.
  • What's Shakin' has a few, most notably an undead lady Ell and an orc girl Pai.
  • In Shadowgirls, Christmas Snow's mother is a female Deep One, but not nearly as grotesque as one of Lovecraft's originals.
  • Spinnerette gives us Minerva, a Stripperiffic Hot Amazon Cerberus whose three heads offer something for everyone, whether they like their girls sweet, spicy, or Tsundere.
  • Xan from Winters in Lavelle is a male example of this. Half-deer, part of a species infamous for hating humans and being rather violent, but damn, if he isn't adorable. And despite his usually less than kind demeanour, his occasional sweet moments (almost always with Rio) only serve to emphasise that.
  • The Deer Woman (based on Native American mythos) at the begining of Paranormal Mystery Squad was kinda cute if you don't notice that her long skirt concealed deer legs. To bad she had already murdered 7 men before being made a foot shorter.
    • Once Katie is changed, she is a cute litte werewolf after her bite.
  • Benn'Joon of Looking for Group. What exactly Benny's race is is unclear to the point that Richard describes her as "miscellaneous," although she has been on a couple occasions been identified as a troll (whose males, for the record, are green-skinned and generally ugly) and has been regularly called a half-breed. Recently it has been heavily implied that her mother is the quite attractive Elven pirate Captain Tah'Vraay, so Benny appears to be at least part Elf. It's very probable, then, that Benny's good looks come from mom.
  • Lowroad got Giselle, a good-... sorry, evil-for-nothing girl from some rich demon family who lives on Earth alone... sorry, with a demon butler. She can be too damn cute - enough to stop a demon hunter.

Web Original

  • The base principle behind this trope, that of the sexy, exotic-looking humanoid, could be kind of an explanation as to the popularity of furry porn among the Furry Fandom.
  • The flash cartoon series Primal War is notorious/loved by teenage boys for its cartoony, monstrous males being drastically different to their more human-like and realistically proportioned females of both the beast and dino races.
  • The Spider Cliff Mysteries: Crystal (demon) and Annabelle (zombie).
  • Felarya. The world is essentially based on this trope. Almost all major characters are Cute Monster Girls - sweet, innocent, and with an appetite for gulping down humans whole and alive. Felaryan Cute Monster Girls range from nagas (giant snake-human hybrids) to driders (giant spider-human hybrids), mermaids, slug girls, and even adorable carnivorous fairies. Who, naturally, are all trying to eat you. Giant males are presumed to exist, but are rarely seen. Some species are One Gender Races.
  • Pokegirls is built on this.
  • Three Words: Monster Girl Encyclopedia. It's a field guide to a world where all the monster races (comprising virtually all the popular monster species in global fiction) have been reduced to One Gender Races of, you guessed it, nubile nymphomaniacs who prey on human males/convert human females, to the point where actual extinction of the human race is now feared.
  • Another much-smaller attempt at an Encyclopedia from apparently the same artist as the Living With Monster Girl series.
  • The art gallery of Fredrik K T Andersson has plenty of cute and/or sexy monster girls.
  • Monster High has a cast full of Cute Monster Girls (and one boy who both follows and inverts the tradition by being a cute male version of a female monster).
  • The Kaiju Girls, a sub-"series" of Twisted Kaiju Theater mostly consisting of female anthropomorphised kaiju of varying degrees of Safe-For-Work-ness (mostly Not).
  • The waiter-zombie users play as in the iTunes app Zombies A La Mode is a cross between a rare cute monster guy and Ugly Cute.
  • Teto Kasane the UTAUloid is a chimera with the appearance of a human girl with bat wings, and is often depicted with Cute Little Fangs depending on the artist. Depictions showing her wings are exceedingly rare, making this somewhat of an Informed Attribute.
  • One Japanese adult anime artist drew a series called Living With Monster Girls—risque but cute comics featuring the relationships between the identical octoplet human brothers and their monstrous girlfriends, with startling tenderness - a slime-girl, a spider-girl, a ghostly knight girl, a centaur, a minotaur/cow-girl, a mermaid, a snake-girl, and a harpy.
    • These are called the "My Life With X-chan" i.e. English: " Living with Monster Girls (Slime-chan, spider-chan, harpy-chan, etc)" series. They were posted anonymously to the Cute Monster Girl fansite (Not Safe for Work). The artist has mentioned that he is planning on doing 8 of them (for the 8 reoccurring characters on the site and its forums), but recent additions to the lineup of regulars may affect this. Possible future updates include kappa-chan (a water-demoness), invisi-chan (an invisible girl wearing a theater mask, blond wig, and gloves), Drider-chan (drow/spider "centaur").
  • There's a short (6-pages or so) hentai work in which the "Cute" Monster Girl's lower half was that of... something resembling a barnacle(?). She has tentacles and crab claws coming from under her skirt. The same artist (Dowman Sayman) did a manga called Toge Toge, in which the girl has enormous clawed hands and finds a sick teenage boy passed out one day in her neck of the sewer. Things go well until, well...

Western Animation

  • Marceline the Vampire Queen from Adventure Time may occasionally turn into a giant, monstrous bat or an amorphous mass of tentacles and darkness, but most of the time she's a tall, pale humanlike girl who's as sexy as the show's art style allows for.
  • All of the female Gargoyles shown in the original TV series are sexy winged humanoids, except for Una, who resembles an anthropomorphic unicorn and is thus still "cute", while male gargoyles have many other types. However, the comic continuation eventually introduced Constance (Coco), a heavy-set female who resembles a wild sow, and Brooklyn's mate at the end of his Timedance, Katana, has a face that includes a beautiful beak.
  • In the Duck Dodgers series we meet other members of Marvin the Martian's species for the first time. Seems that while the males are short and cartoony the females, particularly Queen Tyr'ahnee are, well, this. Then again, the male Martian General Z9 is tall and well-built, so it's possible that Marvin is just a midget among his people.
    • One episode had the hero crash-land onto a planet made up of attractive bug-like women... until the sun goes down.
  • Superman: The Animated Series depicts Mr Mxyzptlk as a short, bald, almost baby-like figure with a distinct slouch whereas his female "friend" (as he spends most of his time ignoring her, it's hard to say what their relationship is exactly), Ms Gsptlsnz is a normal-sized, or even tall, very curvy redhead with a penchant for 1950s-style clothes. Given that the residents of the 5th dimension can choose whatever appearance they want, this is almost certainly deliberate.
  • Both averted and played straight in Transformers and its infinite spin-offs. The earliest female robots were indeed curvy and sexy, but more diverse female Transformer designs have been introduced, whether they were original characters, or new characters based on previously-male toys. However, "sexy" female Transformers are still the primary type.
    • Dialogue, in the original series and Beast Wars, imply that sexual dimorphism is common amongst Cybertronians, Black Arachnia, Arcee and Thunderblast being a perfect example. Rat-Trap even mentions female stripper-bots with "enhanced chest-plates" or some such. The fact they even have strippers, to say nothing of cosmetic surgery, implies that our notions of gender roles are basically the same despite them being aliens.
    • For a particular aversion Strika. Yes, she is a girl.
  • Kitten in the Teen Titans episode "Date with Destiny" looks like a cute, normal human girl. Her father, Killer Moth, appears to be some kind of moth man and her boyfriend, Fang, is a guy with a Giant Spider for a head (not a spider head, an entire spider). It turns out that Killer Moth is actually a regular guy in a costume, but despite the metallic voice and non-moving mouth you might not realize that just by watching the episode (since he wears his costume even under the most mundane circumstances).
    • And among the main characters there's Dark Magical Girl Raven, the daughter of an Eldritch Abomination Physical God and a human (well, Azarathian anyway) woman. Most of the time, she looks like a cute human girl, save for her pale skin and purple eyes and hair (and in their Animesque world, it's hard to say just how unusual even some of those traits are). The angrier she gets, though, the more her father's monstrous traits start showing: when she has four glowing red eyes, an elongated body, and is spewing Lovecraftian amounts of darkness tendrils from her cloak, it's time to start running. Fast!
      • Dr. Light: It was so... so... dark... Make it stop... Make it stop...
    • Then there's Beast Boy to cover Cute Monster Boy, with his green skin, pointed ears, and Cute Little Fangs.
    • Technically Starfire counts as well. In spite of her obvious beauty and rather shameless status as pure Fan Service, Ms. Alien Eye-Candy still, basically, a superstrong alien monster with orange skin who shoots lasers. A really beautiful alien monster, but alien monster nonetheless. This is actually brought up whenever she decides to eat (her race basically eat giant insects and squids and have teeth filed down to points) or hug someone (accompanied by breaking-bone sounds).
      • The animated version is less big-boobed bombshell and more ... well, cute. The comic version assumes that the "Teen" in "Teen Titans" means "late teens or even early twenties", while the animated show, aimed at a different demographic, stays mainly on the lower end of the "teen" range.
  • Leela from Futurama, a beautiful one-eyed woman descended from a race inflicted with all kinds of Body Horror, is a particularly justified example: her parents and people are formerly human, subterranean Mutants and the fact that she happened to be born looking almost human is why they were able to pass her off as a Human Alien and send her to the surface world for a better life than they could give her.
  • Saffi from Jimmy Two-Shoes. One eye, orange skin, Hartman Hips, and a good fan following. A few background characters qualify as well.
  • Generator Rex has Breach, a pale, four-armed (with the top set of arms being abnormally huge) schoolgirl.
    • A later episode introduced Cricket, a girl who's still pretty cute despite being green and having spines on her arms. Later episodes reduce the amount of spines, make her figure fuller, and give her a cuter face.
  • Martin Mystery has Diana becoming a half-lizard girl in the second part of the third season finale. The eponymous character even jokingly compliments that she's only a mini-mutant because her eyes changed and she has a tail.
  • April O'Neil had the misfortune of being turned into one twice in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; she was turned into a feral Cat Girl in one episode and into a Fish Girl later, courtesy of a Mad Scientist. Fortunately, it was reversible both times.
  • Mavis, Dracula's daughter in the Hotel Transylvania movies. She's far-more human-looking than any of the monsters in the franchise, including her dad, with far less-pronounced fangs. Only a few odd habits indicate her nature as a vampire.
  • In The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Wasp becomes one when she's mutated by Gamma Radiation.
  • Lena Dupree from Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island is an... interesting variation. She's certainly cute, and she's certainly a monster, but her monster form itself? NOT. CUTE.
    • The movie about aliens near Area 51 has an interesting example: turns out the cute native girl Shaggy had the hots for(!) -and who seemed to share his feelings(!!)- was in fact a real (benevolent) alien; she looked somewhat like a metallic-skinned Grey alien, but with an attractive human bodyshape and expressive facial features. You kinda felt sorry that she had to leave Earth (and Shaggy) at the end -presumably never to return.
  • Gumby is guilty of this one. Gumby has roughly the same slab-shaped body as his father, but his mother has a round head with blonde hair on a body that has breasts. And she wears clothes. She's not cute by the standards of most entries on this page, but she's far more human-shaped than the rest of her family.
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