This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Chrome Newfie: Regarding white hair... I notice that there is specific combination of female + white hair + dark skin that, most of the time, adds up to powerful sexpot (or at least a character powerfully driven by emotions). Urd from AMG is a canonical example, but consider Sara from Hand Maid May or Sanae from Hanaukyo Maid Tai: La Verite. Definitely not characters associated with dignity!
Ununnilium: Possibly White-Haired Pretty Boy + Dark Skinned Redhead?
jjmcgaffey: Another thought about white hair/dark skin - Storm (Ororo) from the X-men (all forms - comics, movies, animated series) is definitely describable as a 'force of nature'! And at least in the comics, she frequently needs to overtly control her emotions, to prevent them reflecting in the weather around her.
Looney Toons: I'm sorry, unnamed person at 68.41.26.104, but Shampoo's hair isn't highlighted with purple shades, it's pretty explicitly light blue or lavender, depending on the episode or OVA in question.
Unnamed Person: Well, yes. But isn't it still black in the manga? Which is not surprising, because Xian Pu is Chinese?
/me goes off to look for those Ranma ½ manga
Looney Toons: Indeed. She is black-haired in the manga. I mis-took your point, which I thought was that lavender highlights were used with her hair and mistaken for her hair color. Perhaps you should move it down a couple paragraphs to the discussion about changes in hair color that occur in the transition from manga to anime.
Ununnilium: Done.
Citizen idly wonders whether or not this entry might benefit from liberal use of bulleting, etc...
Kilyle: Agreed. Need to put in some better organization that the eyes can follow more easily.
Sabbo came here to mention that, but it looks like he was beaten to it. Sabbo thinks that people need reminding though... Well, it's not like he could be bothered to do it. :P
Scrounge: added the "Pink Hair Rule" note, since "guys never have pink hair" seems to be the only thing about this trope that is set in stone. Don't think the Pink Hair Rule on its own warrants its own page, though, so this seemed like where it belongs.
BT The P: The Keet guy from Gravitation, Shuichi, has pink hair, but he is extremely feminine.
What? Yeah, I saw part of it, what of it? The Anime club at my old college was full of Shonen-Ai fangirls, so I had no choice! Leave me alone! I'm tired! My feet hurt! Shut up! *sulks*</Farnsworth>
Binaroid: Seiryo from Tenchi Muyo (and especially Tenchi Muyo! GXP) is another "pink boy" of Anime.
Ununnilium: Cut it out. Shon Gojo in Saiyuki also has pink hair. (As did both the male and female aliens from the Doom Tree arc of Sailor Moon, but then again, they also had green skin.)
Scrounge: I should have seen THAT coming. My bad. ^_^;
Kilyle: If pink hair has no easily identified underlying principles, do put that in the text. Pink hair is common enough and should be brought up, even if we can't say anything useful about it.
Antheia: But Sha Gojyo's hair is supposed to be red, not pink ("crimson" was the word used in the fansubs).
Ekrim: Shouldn't it be noted that Lina Inverse is a brunette in the manga, OV As, and to an extent the first series? For some reason her hair only became red/orange as the series progressed, and is brown in every other reference.
Thausgt: I always chalked this up as being an interesting commentary on Japanese aesthetics of physical beauty. There's an element of racism involved, as the Ainu will attest, but 'real' Japanese are supposed to have lacquer-black hair and dark brown eyes. Not that exceptions to this rule were never seen, but the Tokugawa Shogunate's policy of keeping Japan closed to the outside world (except for silk imports) for two hundred years probably cultivated an attitude that different hair colors were not possible. And then, along comes Commodore Perry, who shocked the Shogun's court not only with mechanical clocks, miniature railroads, and rifles, but a crew of men with red hair and green eyes, and yellow hair and blue eyes, and curly brown hair and grey eyes... Well, maybe all the guys with blue hair and orange eyes were on the *next* boat.
Not sure if people are deliberately avoiding lists of examples on this article, but if not I have a non-anime example. In Doctor Who in the 80's, it was decided to colour-code the hair of the main characters to make it easier for children to tell them apart (!). This meant Peter Davison (as The Doctor) had his hair lightened, Turlough had his dyed a bright orange and Tegan had hers dyed dark.
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Unknown Troper: School Rumble has a particularly good example concerning this, but I just don't know how to spell or type it out. Basically the manga clearly identifies that everyone has black hair in the Japan setting, besides the foreign students, and those who dyed it. The anime version, on the other hand, gives everyone different colored highlights instead of the normal black hairstyles. Like it's not blatantly a new color, but you can obviously see the new tinge or green or blue, etc...
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R Taco: My inner Pungeon Master wishes the title was Haireotypes.
Question from the peanut gallery: Is there a page that explains the "Hair Color Theory" trope? That is to say, the trope where characters of similar hair colour will tend to pair / be paired off? probably the easiest example I can think of would be from the webcomic Questionable Content, with Dora and Marten, but it originateS (IIRC) from the old Josh Phillips webcomic Avalon. There was a lot of speculation over pairings and hair colour there, along with PSL.
