Unkempt Beauty / Video Games

• Advanced V.G.: Satomi's hair is always short and mussy, because she lives in poverty, so she's self-conscious about her looks compared to the other waitresses. Yuuki begs to differ, because Satomi's cute regardless of her hair, or even because of it. Which is accentuated by the beauty mark on her left cheek and her natural athleticism. All reasons why Yuuki nurses a one-sided crush on her.
• Alice: Madness Returns: In contrast to all of her Wonderland outfits, London Alice's dress is tattered and dirty, while her face is pale, gaunt, and lacks her usual lipstick and eyeshadow. And yet, she still looks just as lovely.
• In Amagami, Kaoru Tanamachi's most distinctive feature is her SEX HAIR, and many fans believe that she's much more appealing because of it.
• Karlach from Baldur's Gate III is a tiefling barbarian who has been fighting in the Blood War of Avernus for years, which means that she's an imposing, broad-armed warrior woman in her physical prime, perpetually drenched in sweat, and the recipient of multiple scars, mutations and infernal cybernetic components that would firmly lie in Body Horror territory. She's a complete babe in spite of it all though.
• Another male example is the hero from the Breath of Fire series. Although his later incarnations become slightly less unkempt with each game, the original has long, wild hair and a tattered cape that makes it look like somebody took a potential Bishounen and left him to be Raised by Wolves. This is how you make an attractive dragon-themed character, people.◊
• Sayori in Doki Doki Literature Club!. She has visibly messy hair and her school uniform is worn somewhat haphazardly. As the protagonist points out, her ribbon is not straight and looks loosely tied, her shirt is slightly unbuttoned, the collar of her shirt is crooked and has a toothpaste stain, and her blazer is fully unbuttoned (in this case, the blazer is a bit too small, and the protagonist tried to button it up before admitting that it feels strange to see it that way). It doesn't harm her cuteness one bit. However, it is a sign of her finding looking after herself difficult due to her depression.
• Dragon Age: Inquisition:
  • Blackwall serves as one. He has long, black hair with an equally long scruffy beard to match for it and is quite dashing. A female protagonist may even have the option of romancing him if she wishes.
  • Cassandra is a knight whose boyish haircut, propensity to wear armor as much as she can, and scar do nothing to detract from how attractive she is.
  • Sera was probably trying to be a Butch Lesbian with her patchwork clothing and terrible haircut (she hacked her hair off with a knife). Since she's an elf, she ends up as a Lipstick Lesbian with messy hair.
• Dragon Quest V: Debora Briscoletti's hair is a black mass of bristly hair locks which go everywhere. And still she always looks beautiful and sophisticated.
• Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse has Sakuya Haibara with long, beautiful hair that is disheveled and sometimes hangs into her face. Given her illness, she likely doesn't have the priority to take care of it or her attacks make her too crazy to care. Despite that, several notes (and even Misaki) mention how beautiful Sakuya always looks.
• Final Fantasy XIII: Fang's hair is pretty wild, hangs in her face at times, and generally can't be tamed... and she looks just wonderful like that.
• Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2. Yet despite her patchwork clothes, she does look rather good for living in a Crapsack World.
• Nami from Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life wears more modern and casual clothes than most in the game; sneakers, a plaid vest, cargo shorts, and a tee. In the original game, she had straight, combed hair but in all future titles, she has messy hair that looks like she just climbed out of bed. Nami is by far the most popular bachelorette in the Forget-Me-Not Valley games and even appeared in Harvest Moon: Magical Melody as a reporter.
• Haven (2020): Kay says that Yu, without makeup, is more beautiful than the "Mate" chosen for him, with makeup. Yu claims she actually is wearing makeup but trolls him by leaving him guessing on whether she is or isn't.
• In I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, Sym's hair is noted to be perfectly kept for someone who lives in the wilderness.
• Zigzagged with Hellen Gravely in Luigi's Mansion 3 when you finally fight her. On one hand, she's less pretty when her make-up is running. On the other hand, her usual Beehive Hairdo being unkempt isn't too shabby. On the other other hand, she is going through a rough time with King Boo losing faith in her. On the other, other, other hand, she is quite infuriated at Luigi for the whole fight.
• Ellie from The Last of Us. Somewhat justified because she is in a post-apocalyptic world where appearance care is far from being a priority. The rest is just her being boyish, but still noticeably pretty. The same can be said for other women seen in the game such as Tess, Marlene, and Maria.
• From other characters' dialogue in Neverwinter Nights 2, Elanee (being a druid) is constantly rather dirty, has never touched a comb/toothbrush in her life, and smells rather earthy.
• Persona 5:
  • The nameless protagonist is this in spades. He has a shock of curly, tousled black hair, bad posture, and hands that are perpetually shoved into his pockets, and is loved by many as a very sexy character in the fanbase.
  • His homeroom teacher, Sadayo Kawakami, fits this too. While she dolls herself up for her second job, she is still quite pretty outside of said job even with perpetual bedhead and plain clothes.
  • Royal adds Takuto Maruki, who has big, blocky glasses, disheveled hair and noticable stubble. This does not stop him from being a Chick Magnet in-universe.
• Heather from Silent Hill 3.
  • Henry and Walter from Silent Hill 4 qualify as well, the former being a man who hasn't showered, changed clothes, or gotten a good night's sleep in about five days; and the latter being a serial killer.
  • The character artist and CGI director for Silent Hill 2, Sato Takayoshi, invoked this with Maria's overtly sexual design while giving her age spots, believing a woman with flaws to be more appealing and realistic.
• In the Japanese version of Splatoon one of the Squid Sisters lines has Callie complaining that redoing her make-up after each battle is a bother, to which Marie states Callie doesn't even wear make-up. In both the North American and European translations it instead becomes Marie making a snide comment about how she doesn't wear make-up, unlike Callie, and is naturally pretty.
• Skies of Arcadia: Legends: Aika is what you'd get if you re-imagined Pippi Longstocking as an Air Pirate. Marco even calls her, "Scarecrow Hair", because her massive pigtails look more like corn stalks and stick out like a pair of handlebars. This didn't stop Vigoro from getting hot and bothered when he first saw her and spends the rest of the game trying to get her in the sack.
• The Walking Dead: For a young girl growing up in a zombie apocalypse where showers are rare and where she spends most of her time covered in walker guts to survive, Clementine remains adorable-looking nonetheless. Louis and Violet still find her attractive in ''The Final Season'' despite her unkempt appearance.
• XCOM 2: Lily Shen wears no makeup and her hair is not styled, because she's too busy being the Avenger's chief engineer, inventing all sorts of fun toys for the troops and being addicted to work. Even then, you'd be hard-pressed to call her 'ugly'.
• Yandere Simulator: Oka Ruto. She stays up all night studying the paranormal, leaving her with Messy Hair and Exhausted Eye Bags. Despite this, she still looks cute and is one of the rivals pinning for Senpai's heart.
• From Yggdra Union, Gulcasa's knee-length hair is always rumpled-looking and flyaway—so much so that when character designers wanted to conceal his identity for the prequel, the most important alteration was his tying it back neatly in a ponytail. General consensus seems to be that he looks more mature (and more masculine) with it loose and messy.

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