alt title(s): Implausible Hair Colour
Well we do never see Chiyo-chan's parents...
Some anime characters have hair colors that are possible, but very uncommon for the setting, like blond and orange in feudal Japan. This is when the show is realistic, but the writers don't want all the characters to have boring black hair.
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. Having recessive blond hair when only one of the parents or grandparents is of European ancestry is not.
Examples
Anime & 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 (pictured above with black-haired Osaka and Kagura), 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 redheads.
- 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.
- Ultra Maniac has a few people with blonde hair. Nina is justified because she's a witch but on normal people, it's a bit jarring.
- 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.
- 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.
- Some versions of Area 88 give the lead character blonde hair for no readily apparent reason, though it could be quasi-justified by him being a Heroic Bastard.
- The Medicine Seller in Mononoke has very pale blond hair in feudal Japan, which, like his Facial Markings and Pointy Ears, goes inexplicably unnoticed by those around him.
- There's also the blonde-haired blue-eyed woman from the Zashiki-Warashi arc.
