Skip of Innocence

A type of walk where the character swings their arms back and forth while skipping. This is a visual clue of that the character is young or immature. Characters that walk like this are most likely a Cheerful Child or a Genki Girl. If it is not the character’s default walk it is sign of joyousness. Almost always done exclusively by females. Bonus points for whistling while doing this.

Related to Girly Run.

Examples of Skip of Innocence include:

Comic Books

• The Smurfs: The Smurfette often does this when she joyfully has a walk in the forest, in various albums of the series.

Film

• The Wizard of Oz: Dorothy, the Tin Man, Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion.
• In the film of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Luna skips. This is never mentioned in the books, but it fits her character perfectly.
• Buddy does this in Elf.

Literature

• Twyla does this in Hogfather. Susan considers this to be part of her "ingratiatingly cute" persona, claiming "real children don't go hoppity-skippity unless they're on drugs".

Live Action Television

• Doctor Who: The little girl in "Remembrance of the Daleks" skips around town when she's not plugged into the Dalek battle computer. She's not exactly "innocent", though.

Video Games

• Princess Kururu from the Marl Kingdom series does this when she about to sing a song with her best friend.
• Cream the Rabbit walks like this in Sonic Battle.
• Roll does this in Mega Man Powered Up! after saving the day.
• In Lightning Legend Daigo no Daibouken, Yuki Shirogane, the Cheerful Child of this Fighting Game, walks this way during the storyline sequences.
• Laura from Silent Hill 2.
• Gwen in presearing of Guild Wars.
• One of Misa Amane's supports in Jump Ultimate Stars has her doing this. If an opponent attacks her, Rem appears and inflicts the death timer effect on them.
• A rare male example is Ebisumaru from Ganbare Goemon. Some games (The Super Famicom ones mainly) have him skipping as a walking animation.
• B.B. Hood does this for her forward movement, however she is anything but innocent.
• Annie from League of Legends moves like this. She certainly seems innocent enough- and to be fair, she probably doesn't really see the harm in introducing you to her bear Tibbers if you get in her way.
• In The Sims, children can do this. Some Sims can do it in adulthood if they have enough playful points. Oddly enough, they do it with a very stoic face.
• Pinocchio does this in the video games of the movie.

Western Animation

• My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic: Pinkie Pie skips more often than she walks. Though without the arm-swinging as she doesn't really have any. Given that she is a quadruped, the way she skips looks like bouncing.