Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing

Tools

Toys

Narrative

Genre

Media

Topical Tropes

Other Categories

Custom Search

You Gotta Have Blue Hair
A Japanese cartoon, eh James? I saw one o' thems once. Let's see what I can remember. Okay, so first of all, my head would have to be a little bean. With real real big eyes. Get rid of my thumbs, make me all shiny... My boots would be a whole lot cooler. Like robot boots. And for some reason, I got blue hair. You gotta have blue hair.
— StrongBad, "japanese cartoon"

''So [God] said, Once there was a boy who woke up with blue hair
To him it was a joy until he ran out into the warm air
He thought of how his friends would come to see
Would they laugh, or had he got some strange disease?''
— Crash Test Dummies, "God Shuffled His Feet"

A Sub Trope of Hair Colors.

Some anime have characters with totally impossible hair colors like green and purple. Generally done by shows that lean more toward fantasy, like Dragonball or Sailor Moon.

Some anime have characters with hair colors that are possible, but very uncommon in Japan, like blond and orange. This is when the show is realistic, but the writers don't want all the characters to have boring black hair.

And a few anime keep all characters within the normal Japanese hair color range, i.e. black or dark brown. This is only for hyper-realistic shows like Welcome To The NHK. More common than everyone having literal black hair is having all characters with non-Japanese hair colors explicitly have dye-jobs or otherwise be foreigners or supernatural, justifying this trope. These still go under plausible hair as long as the justification is plausible.

In many cases, though, hair which is technically supposed to be black will be colored dark blue or dark purple in print media.

See also Mukokuseki. May not always be apparent, due to Hair Color Dissonance. For characters with improbable hair styles, see the Anime Hair trope. There are also the Amazing Technicolor Population and fascinating Technicolor Eyes.

Impossible Examples

Anime and Manga
  • Chirico from Armored Trooper VOTOMS has blue hair, along with a few other minor characters. Most of the other major characters have normal hair colors, though.
  • Dragonball Z Has Bulma, with blue hair. Oddly enough, this editor remembers a line from Dragonball Z lampshading the improbability of blond hair in Japan, but nobody ever mentions anything else. Trunk gets his purple hair from his grandfather and it turns gold when he's Super Saiyan.
    • The line in question was lampshading the Super Saiyan's inexplicable hair color change. Chi Chi threw a hissy fit over her son and husband coming home with blond hair, thinking they dyed it and joined a gang.
      • There was an old couple that saw Goku on the TV during the Cell Game and were like "Isn't that Chichi's husband that dyed his hair recently and wears those funny clothes?"
    • Strangely enough, Bulma has actually dyed her hair a few times—each time to a color equally as weird as her natural color.
    • In the manga, her hair is as purple as her father's, if not slightly darker, as well as Bra's. They probably colored their hair as that teal tone in anime to show how much the women in Briefs family worry about beauty since a young age, and dye their hair to prove so.
    • Also, in the anime, as opposed to manga, Lunch (when not in Kushami form, there she's a rebel blonde that makes blonde-haired people keep their bad fame) doesn't have a black hair with a bluish tone, but dark blue hair instead, almost like the print media example. Seems like Toriyama probably planned her to have, indeed, dark blue hair, but painted it black in the manga to save reticulum patterns (since her hair would be so dark it would be unnecessary), not the other way around. You can see that she keeps that consistent design through the series (before she disappears like a ninja because Toriyama paid oh so much attention in the saiyans and none to any other characters), as opposed as one-time colorings, like Chichi's or even Goku's.
  • Gundam Seed very carefully and deliberately averted this trope by giving unusual hair and eye colors ONLY to Coordinators, genetically engineered humans, while Naturals, those without genetic modification, had only natural hair and eye colors. The sequel, Gundam Seed Destiny, almost immediately screwed this up with Sting and Auel, Naturals with green and blue hair respectively.
    • Used as a plot point in the spinoff manga Gundam Seed Astray: the mercenary Kaite Madigan is a Coordinator whose parents abandoned him because, due to a genetic defect, his facial hair is a different color from the hair on his head.
    • Gundam 00 seems to also have done this, where the only people with oddly colored hair (light/dark purple, pastel green) are the genetically-engineered Innovators, making them easy to spot from a mile away. Having rather odd names (by Real Life standards) also does a good job of spotlighting them.
  • Sailor Moon has characters with huge amounts of weird hair colors.
    • In one of the manga side stories (and the anime special based on it) Chibi-Usa's new classmates actually point out that she has pink hair, which is apparently unusual from the characters' point of view. Makes one wonder if everyone else's hair colors are real, and if so, why nobody finds them odd. Is it only pink that is considered weird?
  • The titular character of Yu-Gi-Oh has three-colored hair — black, gold and pink. Aside from that, the show tends more toward weird hair styles then weird hair colors — indeed, some of the odder hair colours from Season 0 (such as Kaiba's bright radium-green hair) were recoloured to something more probable for the better known later seasons.
    • This troper recalls Yuugi's third hair colour as purple, not pink. And Kaiba's hair was originally brown in the manga (relatively natural compared to the other characters' hair colours).
    • "Screw the rules, I have green hair!"
    • Attention, Duelists! My hair is not actually an example of this!
  • Some Bleach characters have impossible hair, like Renji, who has literally red hair. Same with the lesbian. It's also guilty of implausible hair, with Orihime and Ichigo, and it also lampshades Ichigo's orange hair. Orihime's is actually supposed to be chestnut brown, which is poorly colored on the part of the animators.
    • The entire point of Ichigo's hair is that it's the color that Asian hair turns when one attempts to bleach it. This troper has many Asian friends and has borne witness to this. With that in mind, if the protagonist has a melanin (coloration) deficiency, it can be explained.
    • Not to mention that Grimmjow literally has blue hair, though a somewhat uncommon shade.
    • And while we're talking about arrancar, don't forget about Szayel (pink hair) or Nel (green).
    • Let's not forget about Yachiru, the pink-haired terror of the 11th Division.
    • Also, Hitsugaya has white hair despite his young appearance. There's also the Espada Halibel who is an example of a Dark Skinned Blond.
      • Ukitake also has white hair, although this is apparently the result of his lung disease.
    • Soifon and Mayuri have dark blue hair. Yoruichi, Nemu and to some extent, Momo, have purple hair, as does Tosen in his appearances in the Soul Society Arc.
  • Naruto has Sakura, who has pink hair (And that being a hair-related aspect of Theme Naming), and it's apparently natural, unless she's going to the trouble of dying her eyebrows. If not for her, it would fit into improbable hair, or possibly even plausible hair due to the show not being set in Japan. (Even though everyone is culturally Japanese.) However, a recently revealed member of Akatsuki apparently has purple hair (and the leader was revealed to have apparenly orange hair).
    • Chiko (a nerdy, slightly unkempt girl that has a crush on Shikamaru) has pink hair, too, and doesn't appear to be related to Sakura (even if she would be, Sakura would deny it so hard it would actually be physically dangerous).
    • Blond hair is quite common in the Naruto universe (Naruto himself, Ino, Temari, Temari's mother and uncle, and Tsunade), as are gray-haired young people (Kakashi [whose Back Story puts him in his late twenties], Kabuto).
    • Many other character also have odd hair colors such as Gaara, Sasori, and Kushina Uzumaki with red; Jiraiya with grey (even as a kid); Zetsu with a pale green; Kisame Hoshigaki and Konan with dark blue; Suigetsu Hozuki, Sakon and Ukon, Kimimaro Kaguya, Hidan, the aformentioned Kakashi Hatake and Kabuto Yakushi, all with silver hair; and Juugo with orange hair.
      • On the cover of Volume 24, Sakon has purplish hair.
    • Sasuke's hair is black but at times (especially in Part 1) his hair appears to be blue probably to fit the rest of his clothes but later on his hair is black with blueish tints on it.
    • Can't forget Tayuya, who's hair is red or dark pink depending on who you ask.
    • This troper may be mistaken, but recalls the Databooks giving Hinata's hair color as indigo.
    • Before a certain manga cover was released, Karin's hair was originally colored black but in the manga it confirms her hair color red.
  • Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, where, for the mermaids at least, hair colour also indicates race. Humans and other characters can have any colour.
  • Tokyo Mew Mew. Technically, at least Minto and Zakuro may have stylized black hair, and the anime version of Ichigo is a more or less plausible redhead, but then there are obviously blonde Bu-ling and Ryou... Additionally, in the anime, the Mew Mews' hair colour changes from normal to outrageous when they transform, save for Zakuro and Retasu, who remain purple and green (albeit different shades). In the manga, all five girls always have fancy hair colours, transformed or not.
  • Galaxy Angel, Galaxy Angel Rune and Galaxy Angel Game Verse.
  • Magic Knight Rayearth
  • In Ai Yori Aoshi, secondary characters have realistic hair coloring, but most of the lead characters don't. Kaoru's is brown (a very non-Japanese brown), Aoi's is (appropriately) blue, Taeko's is a reddish-brown, Miyabi's is a plum color, and Mayu's is bright purple.
  • Corrector Yui falls somewhere in between this and implausible. In the anime, Haruna has normal roan red hair, while Yui, being blonde, puts it at least at implausible. The other Correctors have rainbow hair, but they're computer programs. In the manga, though, Haruna has unmistakably purple hair, and in the second season of the anime, purple-haired Ai comes in from the real world (but who cares about the second season?).
    • I do, sir. I sure do. But changing the subject, in the anime, Ai's hair can pass as black in the anime, while in manga, it's dark purple (in the pilots, it's a greyish brown).
  • Yu Yu Hakusho's human characters have every possible natural hair color (except Genkai, who's graying now but originally had pink hair) while the more fantastic characters usually have more fantastic hair colors. Both Kurama and Kuwabara have red hair, for example, but they're very different shades.
    • To be fair, however, Genkai originally was strawberry-blonde◊.
    • Botan's is even lampshaded.
      Koto: Why not focus on something you're good at, Honey? Like dying your hair unnatural colors?
      • She still insists it's natural.
    • Kurama's hair is black (or dark blue) in the manga.
  • Mahou Sensei Negima has otherwise merely Improbable hair, until you get to Misa Kakizaki, the cheerleader with purple hair, and green-haired Ninja-girl Kaede. Not sure if Chachamaru, having light green hair, counts as she's a Robot Girl. The animated adaptations, on the other hand, make it even worse, changing the hair colors of half the remaining cast.
    • This troper would like to point out that in the manga, Kaede has sandy blonde hair.
      • Evangeline speculates in the manga that Setsuna probably has white hair and red eyes, but dyes her hair and wears contacts. We have never actually seen this in any of the different versions of the series, though.
  • Samurai Seven has (mostly) plausible hair colors: browns and blacks. Then we get to redheaded Heihachi, blond Shichiroji and Kyuuzo, and Ukyo, who actually has blue hair.
  • In Suzumiya Haruhi most characters hover around the brown-black-auburn spectrum; however, Ryoko, Emiri, Yuki, and Tsuruya have varying colors of green, blue, and grey. Tsuruya's hair colour may just be to throw us off as to her origin, since the other three are discovered to be Human Aliens before we learn Tsuruya's own secret.
    • In the anime and novel color pictures, Yuki's hair is purple.
  • Outlaw Star falls somewhere between Impossible and Plausible hair colors. Most of the characters are white, and any characters of Asian ancestry have black or dark brown hair. On the other hand we have Harry, who has blue-green hair, and Gene, whose hair is a shade of red that you're very unlikely to find in the real world.
    • Harry's hair is explainable; he's a bio-android like Melfina, a genetically engineered lifeform created using DNA samples taken from a dead human. And in a setting where that sort of thing is possible, not to mention that modifications of all sorts are quite common (so much so that neither Gene nor Jim is surprised when their bounty in the first episode is a cyborg, and Jim has to look up a specific model to figure out his vulnerable spot), if not cheap, then the possibility of DNA tweaking for aesthetic purposes comes up.
  • Cowboy Bebop has realistic-looking characters so the vast majority of them fall under plausible hair colors...except for green-haired Spike, purple-haired Faye, and White Haired Pretty Boy Vicious. No explanation given for these unusual hair colors and nobody notices.
  • Almost no one has normal colored hair in Lucky Star. It's lampshaded when Miyuki (who has pink hair) explains to Konata (blue), Tsukasa and Kagami (both purple) why exposure to sunlight and seawater changes hair color. Note, however, that most, if not all, characters with funky hair colors also have that as their eye color, as such, one may pretend that their hair is perceived in their world as being black/dark brown.
  • Keroro Gunsou has Natsumi's pink hair, Momoka's (and her father's) light blue hair, and Saburou's silver hair, for the human examples; the humanoid aliens seldom have "normal" hair colours. For the humans, though, this is implied to be the result of dye jobs.
  • Clark Kenting related example — everyone in the world of Yes! Precure 5 has some shade of brown or black hair, except for the heroines, all of whom have hair in their respective hero color even in civilian form. Red-haired Rin and (justified) blonde Urara might not stand out, but Nozomi, Komachi and Karen's pink, blue and green, coupled with the fact that the five spend a lot of time together...
    • Rin's got realistic-looking brown "red" hair, which becomes bright red when she transforms. So maybe that throws people off.
  • Saint Seiya has a lot of characters with impossible hair color, most prominently Andromeda Shun, who has green hair color. Shun's hair was normal light brown in the manga; it was changed for the animation to make him more noticeable.
    • In the manga, most of the Gold Saints had blonde hair, and the only exceptions were Dohko who kept his auburn hair from the anime, Deathmask who had silver-grey hair in the manga, Camus's was red, and Shura's was black. Not bad changes, in this troper's opinion.
  • The Revolutionary Girl Utena anime has Utena (pink hair), Anthy (purple), Akio (lilac), Touga (bright red), Saionji (green), Miki, Kozue and Ruka (all blue), Mikage (pink again), Mamiya (lilac again), Juri (orange) and Shiori (wine, or perhaps raspberry). Everyone else's hair color is... possible, as most people have brown hair, some have black and some (notably and implausibly Touga's sister Nanami) are blonde.
    • How can you forget Dios? His hair's lilac, too. It may also be worth mentioning that Miki, Kozue, and Ruka all have different shades of blue hair (Ruka himself has two!), with Kanae's mother adding in yet another. Kanae herself, on the other hand, sometimes appears to have very bright green hair. Chigusa and the unnamed main character from the Sega Saturn game have cyan and magenta hair, respectively.
    • The hair color is so they'll be properly color coordinated. Besides... Ohtori Academy isn't really real anyway, so...
  • The Dirty Pair fall into this: Kei is a Dark Skinned Redhead with an impossible shade of red hair, and Yuri's hair (even when it's referred to as black) is usually shown as blue.
  • Only two of the major characters in Mai-HiME have anything resembling normal hair color for a show set in Middle of Nowhere Town, Japan — Yukino (brown) and Mikoto (black, with pigtails and Eyes Of Gold). Naturally, there's also a blue-haired character in the mix, Miyu — but she's an android, so she has an excuse.
    • Natsuki may also qualify as having "normal" hair — it's dark blue in the anime, but the supplemental materials describe it as being black, so she most likely simply falls under "stylized black hair."
  • Before the Pokemon anime changed to digital animation, James' hair was blue. Now it's lavender (the dub has made a joke about this). Jessie's hair went from fire engine red to magenta. And Tracy's was green even before the switch (just a darker shade, almost black).
    • Officer Jenny's hair changed from Blue to Blue-Green.
  • Full Metal Panic! is mostly realistic, but Kaname has blue hair, and the Testarossa siblings are white-haired. Apparently no one finds that strange.
    • That's probably because Kaname's hair is always described as 'black' (she is described fairly often in the novels), even through it's always drawn blue. And the Testarossa siblings have their hair described as "ash-blonde".
    • Plus all the people that seem to have issues with this in FMP are wispered and all sorts of nonsense can be attributed to this.
    • Of course, in Fumoffu, unnatural hair colors are given out like candy on Halloween. As you may have guessed, it's also the least serious season.
  • All members of the Diclonius sub-species in Elfen Lied have hair in varying shades of pink (in the anime, at least). Justified in that they are not entirely human. Also, their hair color, combined with the cat-ear-like horns on their head, single them out among crowds of humans.
    • In the manga, the "third-generation" Silpelit, Mariko, has blond hair, with is completely impossible considering the fact that her parents were both Japanese and had dark hair.
  • Yotsuba Koiwai from the manga Yotsuba&! has green hair in colour shots. Everyone else's is normal, and absolutely no-one talks about it. (Then again, maybe they just figure she dyed it--Yotsuba isn't exactly all that normal, even for her age group.)
    • The hair may be why strangers assume she's a foreigner.
  • Seikai no Monshou and Seikai no Senki have an entire race of blue-haired space elves. Considering that the Abh were genetically modified to be able to live in space to the point of having been crafted a sixth sense for flying spaceships, the hair colour is really the smallest oddity...
  • Hair colors in Weiss Kreuz are mostly just implausible — Aya, Manx, and Schuldig all have bright red hair, and Yoji and Omi are blond — but some members of the supporting cast have outright impossible hair colors, such as Ouka's blue hair and, from the Oddly Named Sequel series Weiss Kreuz: Glühen, Tsuji's green hair.
    • This troper doesn't find Schuldig's hair color that bizarre considering he's suppoed to be a white Westerner, and always believed Ken had been deliberately given brown hair because he was meant to look ordinary. Given who he's surrounded by, though, he actually becomes rather distinctive...
  • The improbable hair coloring of various One Piece characters is excused by the series not being set in Japan on Earth, but myriad examples of blue or pink hair push it into implausible territory. (Oddly enough, the blue hair of main characters Vivi and Franky is never so much as mentioned, while longer-standing main character Zoro's green hair is ostensibly unusual enough to be cause for mockery. Maybe his detractors just hate him a lot.)
    • To be fair, though, it's really only Sanji who mocks Zoro's hair (calling him Marimo, or seaweed-ball), and likewise Zoro seems to be the only one who finds Sanji's curlique eyebrow to be cause for lampooning (my favorite was dartboard-forehead).
  • In Pretear, secondary characters have brown hair, except for Himeno's step-sisters, who have blueish-green and pink hair. The main cast got hair of different levels of plausibility: brown with some red mixed in (Goh), orange (Hajime), red (Himeno), blond (Shin), golden (Kei, who also has dark skin in the anime) and white (Mannen). Sasame was blond in the manga, but became white-haired in the anime (for a reason, apparently). Hayate's hair went from perfectly normal black in the manga to dark blue in the anime.
  • Most of the Trigun characters have realistic hair colours, but Legato has blue hair and yellow eyes to underline his weirdness, and some of the "mutant" characters have green hair among others.
  • Princess Tutu falls somewhere within impossible and implausible. A lot of the characters have odd hair colors (Ahiru's hair is somewhere in between pink and orange, Fakir's is a dark, dark shade of green), but Ahiru could possibly be a stylized redhead and Fakir could have stylized black hair. Mytho's hair is white, but that could be justified, given his magical origins. But then there's Ahiru's friend Pique, who has BRIGHT purple hair — so bright it's hard to think of it as stylized black hair — and Autor, whose hair seems to change between shades of blue or purple depending on the scene. And then there's Edel and Uzura's light green hair... but since they're really puppets, that might be justified as well.
    • The impossible ones — though largely justifiable — not withstanding, the "implausible" hair colours in Tutu are pretty plausible, given the setting has sod all to do with Japan, by and large. Indeed, if it's set anywhere in particular, it's Germany, with a local set of characters.
  • In Code Geass, the Japanese characters tend to have realistic brown or black hair, while the Brittanian characters have somewhat more outlandish hair colors and styles.
  • The anime series Captain Future, based on Sci Fi novels by science fiction writer Edmond Hamilton, created in Japan in 1978 and famous in Europe during the 1980s, featured at least one main character with blue hair and blue moustache (an older male character).
  • Rokudo Mukuro of Katekyo Hitman Reborn actually does have blue hair, in a sort of "pineapple" hairstyle that has been made fun of extensively by the fans and the author. Chrome Dokuro, the girl Mukuro saves/ gives organs to/possesses/protects/etc. has purple hair in the same hairstyle. Semi-minor antagonist Nosaru also has purple hair. And at least three perfectly healthy, youthful characters have white hair (and one has gray).
  • Minami Juuji of Nabari no Ou has inexplicable green-blue hair. Raikou's pink 'do is okay, since he obviously dyes it (though he, his sister, his mother, and Yukimi Kazuhiko and Kazuho are all natural Japanese blondes). Aizawa Kouichi and Kuro'okano Shijima both have pure white hair, but this is because they're both immortal beings; a human fusion with a snowy owl and white cat, respectively.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is rife with examples of Anime Hair, since it's basically an over-the-top, hot-blooded middle finger to science. Heroes Simon and Kamina both have blue hair (though Simon's looks kinda black), Yoko has brick red hair (as does Gimmy), Leeron's is aqua, Darry's is cotton-candy pink, Kittan's is blond and black, and Nia... just. Nia. Nia.
  • Many of Gintama's cast members all have reasonably realistic hair colors, but Gintoki's silver hair (which somehow appears light blue) sticks out like a sore thumb; this is actually pointed out within the series itself. Then there's Sacchan and Otsuu's purple hair, and Kagura's bright red-orange 'do (though this may be slightly justified, in that she's not human.)
  • Gao Gai Gar is somewhat... inconsistent about this. A hair color is normal, or at least unworthy of comment, if it does not come from alien heritage. (Hyuuma could actually have green hair, but it's almost certainly dyed, if so. And Akane probably actually has black hair.) But, Kaidou with red hair apparently looks much stranger than Kaidou with mauve hair. And Kaidou with mauve hair and Hana with pink hair are just as plausible as nearly everybody else's normal hair.
  • Max Jenius from Super Dimension Fortress Macross. Or Mylene Jenius (blue+green=pink? Who knew?). Or Ranka Lee.
    • In Robotech, Max Sterling's blue hair is dyed.
  • In The Law Of Ueki the titular character has green hair, a likely reference to his power to turn trash into trees. The female lead, Mori Ai, also has aquamarine-colored hair.
  • In a cast consisting of characters that mostly have "normal" hair color, Death Note's Near happens to have stark white hair, while Matt sports unnaturally green hair, at least in the anime adaptation and TCG (in the DS game adaptation, it became blue). Some images of L and Teru Mikami also have their jet-black hair mutated to more of a deep black-green, and the very first colored manga image featuring Mello depicted him with hair just as white as Near's.
  • Jun in the original Science Ninja Team Gatchaman had deep green hair that occasionally appeared black or brown in episodes, to the point where fans theorized that her hair was meant to be so black it only SEEMED "green". The sequel series and artbook images threw this into doubt though, when her hair became a more obvious, brighter shade of green.
  • Many characters in Strawberry Panic have blue hair, as Shizuma complains in this fanvid. Shizuma herself has silver hair; Nagisa's is bright red, Chiyo's is blue-green, Hikari's is very light blonde, and Tsubomi's is pink. In fact, the only major characters with reasonable colours are the raven-haired Yaya and Chikaru.
  • No two Sibyllae in Simoun have exactly the same hair colour (including the two who are sisters). Among them, they've got the whole spectrum covered.
  • Normal hair colors are almost unheard of in Mahoraba, unless your male, that is.
  • For the most part, Rah Xephon almost entirely plausible hair colors. Almost. While Makoto's hair is explained as Albinism, there's still Quon's purple and Ayato's silver/gray hair to get past. Then again, neither of them are exactly human...
  • The girls in the Tenchi Muyo series all have odd hair colors except for Mihoshi, who is blonde. Ryoko has what appears to be a very light shade of teal hair, Washu has pink hair, Ayeka has dark purple hair, Sasami has a teal-blue shade of hair with it's brightness depending on the series(sometimes it looks like light blue-green and sometimes it looks a bit sky blue), Kiyone has dark blue hair, though it can look black at times.
  • The majority of classic manga author Go Nagai's works avert this trope, going for the all-black route. The main major exception to this is Cutey Honey, but otherwise he seems to avoid unnatural hair colours even in his less serious manga such as Mazinger Z.
    • His protege Ken Ishikawa is much the same. The only character in Getter Robo he designed with an implausable hair colour is redhead Shou, though it's not unheard of in Japan.
  • All human characters in Inu Yasha have black hair (except for old men and women, obviously). Something realistic, for a change.
  • Baccano! has all but one character that keeps it away from probable hair colors (Very few have black hair, but most of the cast is either American or European)— Sylvie Lumiere. She's mentioned to be silver-haired in the books too, so we can't even claim that she's a stylized blond like the above-mentioned Tessa.
  • Mononoke features two blond-haired, blue-eyed characters in feudal Japan. If they actually were white, they'd be dead in a minute.
  • Ayanami Rei is often called an albino by fans, but instead of white/colorless hair and pink eyes, she has pale blue hair and red eyes.
    • Subverted by the fact that she is part Angel. Justified in episode 24 by fellow [1] Kaworu Nagisa, who has gray hair (nigh impossible for a 14-year-old, bar a dye job) and red eyes.
  • Mikoto and Nara on School Rumble both have blue hair. Tenma appears to have purple hair.
  • Arale in Dr. Slump gets away with this because she's an android.
  • In at least the second series of the Ranma 1/2 anime, Akane is portrayed with light, rather washed out blue hair. In all other seasons, though, her hair is portrayed as either black or black with navy highlights. Shampoo, on the other hand, is a much better fit for this trope with a long mane of deep blue hair (although in some episodes, mainly the OA Vs, her hair is more purple than blue). An anime only episode reveals that, when she was eighteen, her great-grandmother Cologne had dark blue hair.
  • I'm surpised Psyren hasn't been mentioned yet, while in black & white the hair colors seem normal enough but for the ocasional colored section...

Comic Books
  • Lots of examples in Marvel comics. From X-Men we have Polaris who has green hair as part of her mutation. Her father Magneto and half-brother Quicksilver both have silver hair. Storm inherited white hair as the latest in a long line of mystical African shaman priestesses. Rogue has a white streak in her auburn hair which is natural (though, in the movie continuity, it's a side effect of having the power drained from her to power Magneto's mutation machine at the end of the first movie). Nate Grey also had white forelocks. Psylocke originally dyed her hair purple, but after her genes were scrambled by the villainess Spiral, the color seems to be permanent. Phyla-Vell (Quasar) and her brother Genis-Vell (Captain Marvel) both have white hair as part of their Kree heritage. Shard's blonde hair was unusual because she was a black woman, though this is potentially justified because she is a mutant and at least one-quarter Indigenous Australian. Songbird of the Thunderbolts has striped red and white hair (probably dyed).
    • Except Indigenous Australians don't generally have blonde hair, and are typically as dark-skinned as Shard and Bishop anyway.
    • Truth in Television: Rogue's streak might be natural after all. White or blonde streaks in dark hair can be caused by a blow to the head, migraine, or genetics (partial albinism). This troper's sister has always had one, and her grandmother did too before she went grey.
    • Less natural is the way that Rogue's white streak changes size and location depending on who's drawing her at the time, from two streaks at her temples to a massive skunk-stripe covering the entire crown of her head to, currently, just her bangs.
      • The reasoning for the first change was that apparently Walt Simonson or Paul Smith (IIRC) suggested that her hair have one central streak rather than two streaks near her temples, as the latter made her look too much like a middle-aged woman as opposed to the 16-year-old she was. After that, you're guess is as good as anyone else's.
    • During Claremont's first run on the title, Rogue's hair was mentioned as being dyed at least once. Whether this is still true is anyone's guess.
  • Deliah Blue from the Star Wars: Legacy comics has blue hair, hence the name. This is unusual for her species (Zeltron), who are usually red-haired.

Literature
  • In the fantasy novel Drink Down the Moon by Charles De Lint, one of the faerie women living among humans who is posing as a young punk musician has natural pink hair. Of course, anyone who sees her (anyone who sees her and due to her glamour is led to think she is human, that is) assumes it's dyed.
  • In Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart, Alcuin's hair is literally white even as a young child. This is implied to make him unearthly beautiful.
  • This Troper always imagines the titular character in the Hamish X book series to have blue hair.
  • Members of House Targaryen in A Song Of Ice And Fire have platinum-colored hair.

Live Action TV
  • The live-action Sailor Moon television adaptation reserves the weird hair colors for the girls' heroic forms. One exception to this is Sailor Luna, whose hair is blue even when she is not transformed. Nobody seems to notice this. (Interestingly, many fans consider Luna's live-action human form to be a replacement for Chibi-Usa, so keeping her odd hair color may be intentional.)
  • The female astronauts in the series UFO always wore purple wigs. Also, skintight spacesuits.

Tabletop Games
  • In Dungeons And Dragons, the moon elves of Faerun commonly have white, silver or bright blue hair and blue-tinted skin, while the gold elves (also called sun elves) may have metallic golden hair and golden eye color. Not to mention the bizarre hair, eye and skin colors of half-dragons and dragonblooded characters who are descended from dragons Color Coded For Your Convenience (red, green, blue, black, white), or of various planar nonhuman races like the Genasi who are the offspring of elementals and humanoids.
  • In the GURPS Discworld scenario "A Little Job For The Patrician", published in Pyramid Magazine, the heavily anime-based villain insists his trolls all grow different coloured moss on their heads, so he can tell them apart, and his Igor has implanted blue hair, just because.
  • This is fairly common in Exalted. People from the West often have blue, green, or purple hair, people in the East have green hair, Southerners have red hair (not red hair as in what our world calls orange hair, RED hair)...and that's not even going into the colors people get when they're exposed to magic. Wyld mutations can theoretically leave someone with hair any color of the rainbow (or, for that matter, with rainbow hair), Abyssal Exalted are often White Haired Pretty Boys...the list goes on.

Video Games
  • Everyone except Chaud (with two-tones white hair and black sides) in Mega Man Battle Network has natural hair colours and reasonable hair styles.
    • Excuse me? Meiru has purple hair, and Dekao has a fin on his head. Madoi has outrageous bright pink (with a giant poofy style, even), Shuuko has a pleasant shade of indigo, and Laika has light aqua-green hair. Shall I go on?
    • Don't forget Battle Network's sequel series, Star Force! Insane hair styles, and Sonia's hair style is PURPLE! Not to mention Pat's hair being green due to the Theme Naming.
      • Picking on Misora's relatively normal (color notwithstanding) hair when Twin-Drill Luna◊-iinchou is right over there?
      • The third game gives us Eos and Queen, who have matching shades of actual blue hair, and Heartless, who sports a pink 'do.
    • And Mega Man ZX is an even worse offender. Grey has... Grey hair. Ashe has blue hair. Other main characters have strange hair colours and styles... The strangest of them all has to be Prometheus and Pandora. Prometheus' hair is blue, and Pandora's hair is green, and they look like capes until you notice the one scene in Advent where they don't have their helmets on. But Prometheus can kill people with his hair. What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome?
      • Well, somewhat justified with Grey, Prometheus and Pandora, as they're not humans.
      • And Ashe is only part human, as everyone in ZX who isn't explicitly a reploid is a cyborg. Pure humans have apparently gone extinct by this point.
    • ZX aside, the main Megaman universe is actually pretty sensible abbout this. The original Megaman did have blue hair at one point, but he usually switches between black & brown. The only character with an unnatural hair colour in the X series is Marino, with seafoam green. The Zero series doesn't even have one exception. In Legends, we have the purple haired Megaman Juno who is obviously inhuman & the mysterious Yuna & Sera & their servants, synthetic lifeforms of indeterminate type whose humanoid forms resemble black women with light green hair.
  • The works of Key Visual Arts would fall under "improbable", but there is always a small amount of characters with odd colours: Nayuki and Akiko (purple), Kano and Michiru (blue and magenta), Kotomi (blue), etc.
  • Advance Wars: Days of Ruin has, despite its generally more realistic tone, a blue-haired and several teal-haired characters. A redhead too, but at least that's a possible color in real life, if rare. Most characters stay in the realistic range though, but it's still a third of the playable cast.
    • It should be noted that all of these characters are "clones" of the same character, however that works. (We're talking multiple genders here, people.) Not that that really explains anything, but still...
  • Fire Emblem has lots and lots of strange hair colours to the point that the fact that Leaf (the main character of the 5th game) has brown hair is note worthy, this is somewhat lampshaded in the 9th and 10th games, where Ike and Michiah are always identified by there hair colour (Blue and Silver respectively, Michiah even has the title "Silver Haired Maiden").
    • In fact, Fire Emblem characters can often tell their own families by hair color. Roy and Lilina both have the bright red/blue hair of their fathers (Eliwood and Hector, respectively), Nils and Ninian have the same pale green, and the main twins from Sacred Stones both share a light teal with their father. Examples of characters sharing colors with their parents and siblings go on like this for a while. Makes you wonder why Tana from the FE 8 doesn't have the washed-out grey of her father and brother.
      • Obviously she must take after her mother, who we never see.
  • Subverted with a deadpan kind of hilarity in Digital Devil Saga: the girl who fell from the sky is instantly recognizable and keeps the characters in a kind of awe with her bizarre black hair and brown eyes. Fluorescent-red-haired Heat, purple-haired Argilla, and green-haired Gale simply can't understand how a human could have such strange hair colour.
  • Tales Of Symphonia looks to avert this for 2/3 of the first disk, with humans having only realistic hair shades, and only Elfs (and Half-Elfs) have strange hair colors (such as teal), but then you go a parallel world and find people with lots of strange hair colors such as blue and pink.
    • Tales games tend not to bother, really. Highlights of the series include Meredy's lavender (Eternia), several types of bright pink (Arche from Phantasia, Chelsea from Destiny, Presea from Symphonia, Hermana from Innocence), and a smattering of blues and greens for good measure.
    • Hearts averts this (Mechanoids and aliens excluded), to the point where the Mysterious Waif and Big Bad are explicitly identified by hair color; myths describe an "emerald-haired princess" and a "devil of blood-red hair". Well, mostly. The Quirky Miniboss Squad has hot pink and teal.
  • Despite the fact that the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney series takes place in a fairly realistic universe, no one seems to feel the need to comment on the hair colors of Franziska, April, Redd, or Lisa Basil (metallic blue, pink, purple, and electric blue, respectively). While Redd and April arguably could've dyed theirs, and Lisa's could just be part of her gimmick, Franziska's hair really has no explanation. And that's not even getting into some hair styles that seem to completely defy the laws of physics...
  • A large majority of Disgaea characters, demon or not, have absurd hair colors ranging from blue to white to neon pink. It's bad enough that this troper can honestly not figure out if Almaz's hair is grey/black or dark blue in an inverted form of Hair Color Dissonance.
  • While Link's hair has historically fluctuated between red, brown and blond in his various appearances, his hair was inexplicably pink in A Link to the Past.
    • This was just the sprites, however. In the associated art for the game, Link's hair was a light brown.
  • Falling somewhere between all examples is Ritz from ''Final Fantasy Tactics Advance", a girl who has crimson hair, even in the "real" world. It's a dye-job, as her hair appears to be albino (pale lavender) despite the rest of her, plausibly-under-the-circumstances a deadened shade of the deep red she dyes it.
  • In Elite Beat Agents, Agent Foxx has silver hair. Meanwhile, Cap White has pink hair... and she's a white blood cell. Also, Morris seems to have purple hair, Derek has red hair, and J's is orange. Don't get me started on J's hair ''style''...
  • Humans in the freeware (and soon to be WiiWare) game Cave Story tend to have dark green hair (of the few we see, anyway). Supposedly, this is because the game's creator found that black hair wouldn't stand out enough against the caves' dark backgrounds. There's also Misery, who has blue hair (or green, depending on whether you're looking at her in-game sprite or her character portrait...).
  • The Servants in Fate Stay Night don't count, but a couple of the humans have strange hair too — most obviously the Matou siblings, Sakura (purple) and Shinji (blue). You don't want to know how Sakura ended up that way...
  • Ciel in Tsukihime.
    • Ciel has bluish black hair, predominantly black if you look carefully. In text, meaning according to the author, she has black hair. Dunno what color her dad had but her hair color is probably evident to the fact that her mom was Asian.
  • This troper can't believe that no one has mentioned Persona 3's blue-haired Main Character. Complete with peek a bangs. His hair is one of the many things that makes him unbelievably sexy, IMHO.
  • There are lots of odd haircolors in the Lunar games, but an NPC in the first town in Silver Star Story calls Luna 'The pretty blue-haired lady', so apparently blue hair isn't that uncommon.
  • Phantasy Star of course.

Web Animation
  • Homestar Runner spoofs this when a fan named James asks what Strong Bad would look like as an anime character. Strong Bad decides that he'd be shiny, he'd have huge green eyes, he'd have cooler boots, and blue hair, for some reason. Humourously, on one main page, scrolling over "Store" gives 1-Up (Homestar Runner's anime counterpart) blue hair.

Web Comics
  • Zoe from Sluggy Freelance is shown as having blue hair. Since no mention has been made of her mother berating her for dying her hair, we must assume that's her natural color. (Though in an Alternate Universe, she has purple hair.) This is possibly the result of Pete Abrams's computer monitor not being properly calibrated during the early days of the strip; the same problem also caused Zoe's skin tone to be lighter than intended, forcing Pete to scrap his plans for making her half-Cuban.
  • While most of the Girl Genius characters have perfectly normal hair colors, one character, Zeetha, has green hair. This is remarked upon, and presumably is less weird in the Lost Kingdom she comes from.
    • Don't forget the Jagers, whose hair ranges from green to purple. Justified because they aren't human.
  • In El Goonish Shive, Tedd's father has blue hair, Tedd himself has purple hair, and a goth girl has green hair. Several characters were surprised to learn that Susan's dark blue hair was a dye job. There have also been various background characters with green, blue, or purple hair. Dan stated that all hair colors except Susan's are natural.
  • In Gunnerkrigg Court, some of the Suicide Fairies gain natural hair colors when they become human, while some of them keep their original colors, like green or purple. They all have gray eyes.
    • Also, Antimony and her mother have pink hair. However, it's possible that this is actually red hair represented as pink, much like how black hair is sometimes rendered as a dark shade of blue or purple.
      • Antimony's hair is most likely red, considering how one kid called her "carrot top".
  • In The Order Of The Stick webcomic, blue hair (both light and dark) is common in characters from the Japan-inspired and aptly named Azure City. Purple or teal hair is also possible.
  • In Schlock Mercenary, Keenspot co-CEO Darren "Gav" Bleuel dyes his hair bright blue. No, really. I mean, seriously bright.
    • Fairly early in the strip, but spoiler tagged just in case, Gav is perfectly cloned, including his hair and memories, 950 million times, making blue the single most common hair colour in the galaxy in the space of a second.
  • In The Law of Purple, blue hair, along with black, brown, blond, and red hair, is a natural hair color for humans. Any other strange color means either that it's a dye job or that the person isn't human.

Western Animation
  • Taken to an extreme with Doug which not only has a rainbow of hair colors, but skin colors as well. Doug's best friend Patty is a Dark Skinned Blond, and his other best friend Skeeter has blue skin.
  • Ignoring the yellow skin, the characters of The Simpsons include some naturally blue-haired characters such as Marge and Milhouse's family. There are even some purple-haired people such as Patti and Selma.
    • There's also characters with green hair (Krusty, Sideshow Mel) and maroon hair (Sideshow Bob.)
  • For no reason whatsoever, Tommy's father in Rugrats has purple hair. In the All Grown Up spin-off, Tommy inherits his father's unnatural hair color, suggesting that it's actually genetic.
  • While not an anime, Jem fits into this trope. While one could argue that most of the characters are just dyeing their hair, since they're all rockstars, but a flashback to the main characters childhoods reveals that no, with the obvious exception of Jem (being a hologram and all), all the kids had blue, purple, and pastel red hair even when they were kids. The heck?
  • Music example: 2D and Noodle of Gorillaz both have blue hair, and it's been proven that it's natural for both.
  • Aelita from Code Lyoko has natural pink hair both in her Lyoko avatar and in the real world. She inherited it from her mother, who is shown in flashbacks to sport the same hair color. It stands out as the rest of the cast has a normal range of hair colors for French kids (assuming Odd's purple spot is dyed).
  • Then you have Transformers Animated and Sari, whose hair is magenta.
    • This troper thought it was a dark red.

Improbable Examples

Anime and Manga
  • Rurouni Kenshin, the redheaded ronin from 19th century Japan. Though redheads are known to exist naturally in Japan, they're still incredibly rare.
    • This is lampshaded in the first episode where one of the characters identifies Kenshin as the Battosai because of his red hair and the scar on his cheek.
  • Naru from Love Hina has red hair, and Kitsune is blond.
  • Azumanga Daioh has Chiyo, who is a redhead. Most of the other characters have black hair, though, which makes this at least at a little more plausible than the other examples.
  • Ah My Goddess would fit into plausible hair, except that one of Those Two Guys is blond. Aside from him, all characters in Ah My Goddess either have black hair or are goddesses or, in a few cases, both. Considering that one guy is the one human who has blond hair, it's pretty close to actual Japanese demographics.
  • Digimon has hair colors that naturally occur on humans (except for a few, like purple-haired Miyako/Yolei of season two) but for an all-Japanese cast, we're talking a whole lot of blond, red, and brown heads.
    • The blonds, Yamato and Takeru, are partly European, so that at least is reasonable.
    • Do Jou and Ken have stylized black hair, or is it dark blue/indigo?
      • Meh, the jury's still out. It's been out for years.
    • Let's not forget the Digimon Emperor and his spiked hair which is not one but TWO shades of blue!
  • Kidou Tenshi Angelic Layer has a few blondes here and there amongst the black and brown. (The outrageous hair colours are reserved for the Angels, who are all robots.)
  • Tamaki, Renge and Hani from Ouran High School Host Club all have blond hair, and the Hitachiin twins are both brunettes (though it's a lighter shade of brown).
    • Tamaki is half-French and Renge is full French. They, at least, have a reasonable explanation.
  • Mai and Ayako from Ghost Hunt are redheads, while Takigawa has brown hair. (John Brown is Australian and blond.) It is implied, at least in Mai's case, that she dyed her hair.
  • Midori No Hibi has plausible brown or black for all characters except the leads, blonde Seiji and greenhead Midori. However, Seiji having brown hair in flashbacks implies that he dyes it, leaving Midori the only character with an impossible hair colour. Her real body has hair a darker shade of green. (By the way, the Japanese word for green is "midori".)
  • Most of the Fruits Basket cast has either typical black/brown hair or blond/red hair. Some of the Zodiac members have more unusual hair colors, but this is due to their curse, and others will remark about the unusual color.
    • This is lampshaded several times. The most hysterical lampshade would probably be when the student council president demanded that Hatsuharu show him physical proof that that was his natural hair color... and Hatsuharu complied. By dragging him into the nearby bathroom.
    • In the manga, Kyo's homeroom teacher prevents him from skipping class by threatening him with a box of black hair dye.
  • Practically all the main characters of Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro have blond or silver hair, although in many (but not all cases), this is to show either that character has criminal connections (dyed blond hair is common in Japanese street gangs) or is not human.
  • The characters in X1999 all have fairly typical black or brown hair, but Kotori and her mother both have inexplicable wavy blonde hair.
  • There are a surprising number of auburn-haired Japanese in Martian Successor Nadesico, but it's otherwise realistic if you consider blue or purple hair to be stylized black, and you remember that Ryoko and Inez are both dye-jobs (and Inez's nationality is pretty vague anyway). Ruri gets a pass for being a Rei expy (see below).
  • Akagi Shigeru of Akagi and his body-double Hirayama Yukio both have silvery gray hair, despite being fairly young. No one in the series thinks it's strange at all.

Plausible Examples

Anime and Manga
  • Keeping to its policy of uber-realism, all the characters in Welcome To The NHK have black hair.
  • Most characters in Neon Genesis Evangelion have black hair, except Asuka, the Charlie Dog redhead, and Rei and Kaworu, who we'll excuse due to the weirdness surrounding their nature. Rei in particular has blue hair despite being an albino, but for the previously mentioned reasons, we'll excuse this too. Ritsuko is a blonde, but it's not natural; she's a brunette (she missed her eyebrows). Also, we're going to say Misato has stylized black hair, not purple. Change this if Word Of God says her hair is purple.
    • Basically, this means that Eva is an impossible hair show with justification.
    • Misato's hair is properly black in Rebuild of Evangelion.
      • In the manga, it looks much more like stylised black. A number of other subtle-but-unlikely colours are also changed, including Shinji reverting to brown eyes instead of blue.
  • The Rebuild art for the new character Mari Makinami started out realistically with dark hair, then brown in most official pics, then... purple in the merchandise like the keychains and the plugsuit art. Figures.
  • The protagonists of Fullmetal Alchemist have blond or light brown hair, but given that the show takes place in a thinly-veiled inter-war Germany, it's plausible.
    • But then there's Rose, who has pink hair...
      • She is probably dyeing her bangs, as the rest of her hair is dark brown.
    • Also note that in the manga, having blond hair and golden eyes like Ed, Hohenheim, and manga Al is shown to be a characteristic of ethnically Xerxian people. Also, while in the anime, Ishballans had dark hair and Scar's was implied to have turned white as a side effect of either trauma or his brother's sacrifice, in the manga, all Ishballans have white hair.
  • Almost everyone (minus the Charlie Dog) in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei has black hair, which is odd considering how strange the show is about everything else.
  • Most of the characters in Irresponsible Captain Tylor have either brown or black hair. The only exceptions are either characters of non-Japanese descent (such as Harold or Jason), greying (Mifune and Hanner), or aliens (Azalyn, Dom, and Shia Has). Much like Zetsubou Sensei, this is surprising considering the nature of the show.
  • Any non-black-haired Inuyasha character is a demon or part-demon, and even many of them have black hair. When depowered, Inuyasha's hair becomes black.
  • Cardcaptor Sakura. Even the mages have brown or black hair. Fall outside this and you're a being created completely by magic.
    • Except for Kaho Mizuki, the red-haired Japanese woman...
    • In the manga cover artwork, Sakura has been shown in varying degrees of blonde, from yellow blonde to strawberry blonde. Tomoyo's hair has been shown to be purple rather than stylized black, and Sakura's mother, Nadeshiko, has greenish brown hair in the anime and purple hair in the manga like her first cousin once removed, Tomoyo.
  • The .hack// franchise, but you'd never know by looking at it. The technicolour cast you see on screen is represented by their online avatars, and all their real life selves have brown or black hair. Hotaru doesn't count.
  • Black Lagoon, all Asian characters have dark hair, some western characters have blond or red hair.
  • Almost all characters in Mermaid Saga have black or brown hair, with the exception of one woman whose hair turned white due to severe trauma.
  • Mushishi plays this one straight by having everyone have black or dark brown hair, unless they've been Touched By Vorlons or have something else supernatural about them.
  • Genshiken is high on the realism, as befits its slice-of-life nature. Almost everyone has black or dark brown hair, and the rest use artificial colouring.
  • Everyone from Earth in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha has brown hair except for Alisa (who's American) and Suzuka's household (which still fits if taken as a Mythology Gag, as they're adapted from a family in Triangle Heart 3 Sweet Songs Forever composed of Japanese Vampires and Robot Girls). Blonde Fate passes as a "foreign exchange student" in the second season because of this. People from magical worlds have all kinds of hair colours.
  • A few people's hair edges towards slightly too light in Serial Experiments Lain, but otherwise, everyone has black or deep brown hair.
  • Everyone in Paranoia Agent has naturalistic brown, black or grey hair. The art is also notable for being detailed and realistic enough that you can actually tell characters apart by their facial features.
  • Suprisingly for a shonen series, the hair colours in Soul Eater are largely made of light and dark brunettes with a smattering of blondes and redheads. Which considering the series is set in the global headquarters of an organisation in America is perfectly acceptable. The only exception is Black Star's changing colours(greens, bright reds, blues, whites), and Death the Kid's streaks, the latter of which is remarked upon and lamented by the character(and justified in that he's not human) and the former is the kind of person who would die their hair outlandish colours to stand out. The remaining outlandish colours belong to monsters and witches, who don't really have to follow the rules. Soul Eater, however, has pale gray, almost white hair.
  • In Tenchi Muyo, Ayeka has purple hair (or blue), Sasami has blue hair, Ryoko has a cyan/silver color, and Kiyone has dark green hair. However, this appears to be to highlight them as aliens, as all humans have black hair.
  • Chrono of Chrono Crusade has purple hair, and Aion has white hair, but considering that they're both demons this could just be pointing out their odd nature. Azmaria has white hair, but also has red eyes and pale skin, so she could be an albino. The rest of the human cast range from blonds to redheads to black hair, but since the anime is set in America it's not that odd to have the heroine be blond and blue-eyed.
  • Seras from Hellsing is a light blonde (or redhead, depending on the production), and Sir Integra is a platinum blonde; justified, because both are British.
  • Angel Densetsu is grounded in reality, so people with unusual hair colors stand out, and it's almost always dye-jobs. Takashi, a minor antagonist, has bright red dyed hair that he uses to intimidate people and look unique. It doesn't work on the protagonist, who thinks he's suffered a head injury and accidentally knocks him out in a fervent attempt to get him to the nurse's office.
  • Ghost In The Shell has characters with hair colours like purple and aqua, but since people have access to fully-cybernetic bodies, it's justified. It's also quite rare, the vast majority of characters still have brown or black hair.
  • In Planetes, everyone has realistic hair colours, and the shades are always appropriate to the country of origin (even if having a reddish-brown Japanese woman is pushing it a bit).
  • All the characters of Youre Under Arrest have realistic hair colors.
  • Justified in Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou in that the robots have unusual hair colors (green for Alpha, pink for Kokone), but all the humans have realistic hair.
  • The characters of Patlabor feature realistic hair colors. Noa's red hair is a bit unusual for a Japanese person, but not impossible.
  • The characters in Legend Of Galactic Heroes have realistic hair colors, for their races at least. The redheads and blondes are usually Caucasian, and the Asians are limited to brown and black.
    • Except for main character Yang Wen-Li who is usually shown with... dark blue hair.
      • What, no-one mentions Dusty Attenborough? His hair is 'green' for heaven's sake! And it's not like the Alliance Military allows dye-jobs... or 'does' it?
  • All of the characters in Samurai Champloo have black, brown, or grey hair, save for foreigners and couple of very obvious bottle blonds. The pink-haired old man from episode 21 appears to be an exception to the otherwise realistic hair colors, but, pink hair dye is probably available in the show's version of Edo Japan.
  • The characters in Axis Powers Hetalia are all drawn with realistic hair colors, though there is a large number of blond countries.
  • Every character in Kimagure Orange Road have hair colors from tan-brown to brown to black. Except Jingoro, but he is a calico cat.
  • Kaleido Star: The show takes place in the United States, and the central character is Sora, a Japanese girl who has moved there. Everyone in the cast has normal hair colors, ranging from blonde to strawberry blonde to black, except for Sora, who has purple hair. (Even the other native Japanese who visit her have realistic hair colors.)
  • Kazuma of Nora has normal, if a bit spiky, black hair, save for two blond chunks in his bangs (It could be dyed, but... isn't he supposed to be Student Council President?).
  • How could someone forget the examples in The Twelve Kingdoms novels? The starting setting is a plausible, normal Japan, where people have the Japanese hair colors and such. Then, the main character, Youko Nakajima, has an almost literally red hair, and it's completely natural (although people accuse her of dying it red to bring attention to herself). Then, a platinum blond (almost white-haired) Japanese looking guy appears from nowhere and wants to take Youko to his world (making people assume he's a gangster, and she's secretly his girlfriend). When she finally goes to this world, between all the suffering, she sees Japanese-looking people of all skintones and hair colors. All colors in the rainbow, literally. The anime shows it with beautiful detail, but not as much impressive as it's the novel description. But taking in consideration they are sorta like aliens...
  • In Martian Successor Nadesico, Ryoko has green hair. However, in a flashback to her childhood, she has brown hair. In other words, she's clearly dyeing it. (Now what to make of Yurika's violet hair...)

Comic Books
  • Silent Dragon, which is set in Japan and heavily inspired by anime, has the redheaded Renjiro and the blonde Suki. However, Renjiro is an android (he has black hair in his human body), and Suki is an obvious dye job.

Video Games
  • The protagonist of the Wing Commander series, called "Bluehair" by his creators (and later named Blair as a reference to his blue-haired days, when he's played by Mark Hammill). This was a result of the limited color pallete available to VGA displays of the time.
  • A major rule in Lufia is that if you see a girl with blue hair, you're looking at this game's incarnation of Eris, Sinistral of Death. The one exception, Iris from the second game, has green hair that turns blue once The Reveal hits.
  • In the Soul Calibur Ivy and Cervantas have ghostly white hair (Ivy apparently even had it as a child) both are the results of Soul Edge. Tira in the 3rd game has blue/green hair, but she is covered in bodypaint and her hair is black is the 4th game.
    • For Create-A-Soul (and by extension, Chronicles of the Sword, where a few preexisting examples exist) however, this is in full force, most likely for use with every other example here.
  • Carmelita Fox in the Sly Cooper games is a blue-haired vixen. In game 2, she gains a partner, Neyla, who seems to be a pink- or purple-furred tiger (her head's always covered so one can't see hair there). The only other named female, Penelope, is a blonde mouse.
  • Cham Cham from the Samurai Shodown series is either a green- (player 1 colours) or blue- (player 2 colours) haired Cat Girl. Everyone else seems to have realistic hair colours (or, in many cases, nonexistent hair).

Web Comics
  • PeeJee in Something Positive has an range of odd hair colours, usually purple. It's dyed.
  • Pretty much everyone in Megatokyo has completely possible hair colors: Piro is an American blond, Largo is an American redhead, Kimiko and Erika are Japanese brunettes, and Yuki and Dom have black hair. The only exceptions are Miho, who dyes her hair purple, and Ping the Robot Girl, who shifts through several animesque colour schemes.
  • In Misfile, most characters have believable shades of red, brown, or blonde hair. However, Vashiel and Rumisiel have different shades of grey, dispite only being teenagers, and Emily's hair is blue (although only apparent in the few color pictures). Vash and Rumi are angels, so they have an excuse, but Emily is a normal human. Some fans believe that Emily has black hair and is only colored blue for shading, but Word Of God hasn't confirmed either as of yet.
  • Aggie of Penny and Aggie has blue hair, and her friend Lisa's, at least as depicted on the cast page, is various shades of unnatural red. Since both are considered members of their high school's "alternative" culture and the strip in general is realistic, it's safe to assume the colours are bottled.
    • Katy-Ann also has pink hair, which she explicitly said was dyed in a recent strip.
      • Aggie had brown hair before her teens.
  • Molten Blade features mostly normal hair colours, although a few characters have more vibrant shades than would be expected in reality, eg. Fred's yellow hair and a minor character with dark blue hair
  • In Get Medieval, a panel awarding grants for scientific research is a bit unsure about an applicant who has dyed her hair pink. Another member of the board points out that actually she is from a planet with a rather broad idea of acceptable genetic modifications.
  • In Namir Deiter, siblings Roxanne, Blue, and Issac all have blue hair (inherited from their mother). Joy also sported pink fur, but that turned to be a (since discarded) dye job.

Western Animation
  • Pepper Ann's Milo Kamilani has extremely dark black hair, which "projects an iridescent blue sheen".
  • Avatar The Last Airbender is one of the few fantasy worlds to have significantly less hair-colors than in real life: Suki has auburn hair. Yue has white hair (which was an effect on being healed by the moon spirit). Everyone else's hair is brown, black, or white/gray from old age. This is probably because the series is set in an obviously Asian-influenced world. Asians in Real Life typically have dark hair.
  • Frida of El TIgre has bright blue hair. So does her father and her unseen grandmother, implying that it is genetic. That, or certain members of the Suarez family must dye their hair blue.
  • Chris from Monster Buster Club has blue hair.
  • Coraline in The Film of the Book has blue hair. Though at one point there is a picture of a brunette Coraline with her parents. We're dealing with an eleven-year-old rebel here.
    • Which is also a nice subtle hint that her parents aren't quite as uncool as she's making them out to be.
  • One of the Kanker Sisters on Ed Edd And Eddie sports blue hair, and it's never made clear whether it was just a creative coloring choice or just another sign of the sisters' lawlessness and lack of supervision.
  • Titan AE's sole Japanese character, Akima, has (partially) purple hair. This might not have been intentional, but it's still rather uproarious when thought about.
  • Although the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles usually portrayed people with realistic hair colors (unless it was obviously dyed), two exceptions stand out: mutated human Sydney, whose hair is shown to be blue when she reverts back to human, and Mr. Mortu, whose human disguise sports hair colored a light shade of purple, despite the fact that his cover is that of an executive at a company.

Pale Skinned Brunette
« Amazing Technicolor Index »
Shy Blue Haired Girl
Hair Colors
« Anime Hair »
White Haired Pretty Boy
Youkai
« Anime Tropes »
Yonkoma
Wild Hair
« Hair Tropes »
⊗
Creative Commons License
This wiki is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.