Anime Hair Color Meaning
Meaning, in most cases, the color of an anime character’s hair does not reflect some natural hair color or a racial stereotype – instead, it is supposed to be a hint towards their personality and their role in the plot. I guess it’s high time for a crash course in anime hair color symbolism…take a seat.
Hair Color: What Does It Say About You?
So, giving a character strange-colored hair (as opposed to the typical brown or black hair) is a way of marking them as exotic and therefore, more interesting. The vampire horror anime "Shiki" gives its characters strange-looking hair to make them look even more eerie than they otherwise would.
Top 10 Anime Hairstyles for Men
Fittingly, characters with pink hair signify romance and innocence. Pink hair is usually reserved for female characters. They are daydreamers and idealistic, with a child-like innocence. In many cases, they bring positive energy to the people around them.
Red hair is associated with a temper or an outgoing personality. That core idea exported into anime. Red heads are full of raw energy and often associated with fire. Red heads are resilient; they seek to survive at all costs.
Both male and female characters have orange hair in anime. What is important to know is that this anime hair color is very similar to the above-analyzed red when character traits are concerned.
Green hair represents the cycle of reproduction and change. Greens also tend to be rejuvenating characters: healers. Yellows are also rejuvenating characters, but they tend to focus on the emotions while greens heal the body.
What isstill somewhat common, however, is characters with lighter/paler shades of purple. These almost always come with long, flowing hair and typically signify some sort of detached, noble, cultured, dainty, often even mysterious, “fantasy princess” archetype.
The "blue hair effect" has been used as a metaphor for social distancing. For example, a man who worked for a hospital for 10 years was fired for coming to work with blue hair after refusing to dye it back to its normal color.
Orange is a mix of blonde and red character elements. Orange characters tend to be flamboyant and attention seekers. The color has the energy of red hair and sometimes either the goofy, naive, or dumb aspects of blonde.
Even traditionally Japanese anime characters can have hair of any color, even colors that don't traditionally appear on any real human! Like with manga, assigning different hair colors to different characters allows the viewer to recognize which character is which.
While there have been a handful of anime that draw pubic hair on women (and an even smaller number that do so on men), anime characters are, by and large, body hair-free. The original reasons for this, of course, have to do with Japanese censorship laws.
With elder characters, white hair denotes maturity, wisdom, and dignity.
Just a decade ago, no one would ever have believed they would see this. The natural hair color for Japanese people is generally black, of course. Long, black hair was a sign of beauty for women in the Heian period (794-1192), when Japan developed its own cultural preferences.
It is more common in Anime, but it can happen in any style. It might be just how the art style is, or the character might literally be lacking a nose. This noselessness is a favorite target of a Stylistic Self-Parody.
Orange hair means that the character is courageous, optimistic, loyal, spirited and full of energy. They can also be selfish, annoying and attention-seeking. In some cases, they can be self-centered troublemakers.
Blue Hair. Left: Kuroko (Kuroko’s Basketball), Rei (Neon Genesis Evangelion) Another colour associated with nature is blue . Characters with blue hair can vary from being quiet to being cold and calculating, much like still water and cold temperatures.
One important aspect of anime characters is their hair colour. Some characters have crazy hair colours that we don’t see everyday in real life. A character’s hair colour can actually say a lot about their personality ...
Pink hair is usually reserved for female characters. They are daydreamers and idealistic, with a child-like innocence. In many cases, they bring positive energy to the people around them. However, male characters with pink hair can be perverse.
Red hair. Left: Karma (Assassination Classroom), Ezra (Fairy Tail) Characters with red hair are often passionate, adventurous and enthusiastic. On the other hand, they can be hot-headed, aggressive and feisty. They portray leadership qualities with their headstrong personalities.
Left: Levi (Attack on Titan), Nico (One Piece) Black hair may be another default hair colour especially in anime, but it carries deeper meaning. Characters with black hair often have had a dark past. These characters are intelligent, powerful and refined.
Meaning, in most cases, the color of an anime character’s hair does not reflect some natural hair color or a racial stereotype – instead, it is supposed to be a hint towards their personality and their role in the plot.
However, in cases when the character has long, flowing black hair, it can be intended as a shorthand for “noble lady / Japanese princess / idol of the whole school” characters. In that respect, it sometimes once again overlaps with the Yamato Nadeshiko notion.
Blue hair: …typically signifies a quiet, soft-spoken, intellectual, sometimes even introverted character – albeit often one with a surprisingly strong will. In addition, such characters tend to get portrayed as refined, tradition-oriented and feminine, quite often even as examples of the Yamato Nadeshiko ideal.
Brown stands for “warm + friendly normal” and is the most common “day-to-day-life side character” haircolor. Similar to black, the underlying message is not very strong – still, brown is most popular for longtime childhood friends, or all sorts of “safe/reliable” love-interests. Characters with this hair color tend to play some role in the plot, and be close friends of the leads, but they still represent normality and following social expectations… sometimes to the point of being boring.
This holds especially true for shoujo (for girls) manga/anime titles, where you can pretty safely bet that the most important female lead will be blonde. Occasionally, it can also signify “the rude/inconsiderate foreigner”, for example a non-Japanese character with an abrasive or rude personality – but that’s more of an exception than the rule.
There are only so many anime faces you can have, and hair represents an easy way to distinguish between characters. It’s also easy to draw, helping animators make quick work of scenes that might have a number of characters.
Just like characters in American animated series often wear a uniform that helps fans identify them, anime characters are frequently identified, in part, by the hair. A wide array of improbable hairstyles are further differentiated by a vast array of colors unseen in nature.
Typically, the hair is at least as large as the character’s head. They’re sort of halfway between childish pigtails and regal ringlets. Ponytails are also fairly popular for male characters, especially in historical anime. If a male character has a short ponytail at the nape of the neck, they might be Chinese.
Sometimes ojou hair is used ironically, to indicate a character believes themselves to be high class even if they’re not. Look for two prominently curled locks on either side of the face, normally in front of the ear but sometimes behind.
Shōnen Hair. The most outrageous anime hair comes from Yu-Gi-Oh!. But the second most outrageous hair is Shōnen hair, found (unsurprisingly) in Shōnen anime and manga. These series are fighting-heavy, focusing on epic martial arts, tournaments, action and adventure.
The Ponytail . Easy to draw, the ponytail is the simplest female hairstyle. Like its real-life counterpart, the standard features hair pulled back along the head to the back, where it hangs lose. As the most common hairstyle, it often indicates modern normality, if it indicates anything at all. There’s also a huge array of ponytail subtypes.
Identified by a single, straight forelock sticking up from the character’s head, ahoge hair literally means “idiot hair.” It’s used to denote characters that are stupid, naive, or maybe just oddballs. They’re especially bumbling in romantic or social situations.