History Main / ImplausibleHairColor

* Violet from ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles'' has long raven black hair while both her father and younger brother have yellow hair and her mother has brown hair. It's possible that her parents carried a black recessive gene.
** Black genes are very rarely recessive, and is always dominant over blonde hair, so the only source of the gene would be her mother, who likely would not have it due to having brown hair. However, considering her personality, it is likely not natural.

* ''[[Manga/AhMyGoddess Ah, My Goddess!]]'' would fit into plausible hair, except that one of ThoseTwoGuys 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. (He's also a leather-and-shades-wearing punk biker with spark plugs for earrings; it's likely that he bleaches it -- see the notes for ''Midori no Hibi'' below.)
* ''Franchise/{{Digimon}}'' generally has hair colors that naturally occur on humans (except for a few, like purple-haired [[Anime/DigimonAdventure02 Miyako]]), but for a nearly all-Japanese cast, we're talking an inordinately high amount of blond, red, and brown hair.

* Allen Walker of ''DGrayMan'' has naturally white hair. However, this is justified as it's the result of intense psychological trauma, his original hair color being brown.

* Tamaki, Renge, and Honey from ''OuranHighSchoolHostClub'' all have blond hair, and the Hitachiin twins are both redheads.

* Most of the ''FruitsBasket'' cast has either typical black/brown hair or blond/red hair. Some of the Zodiac members have more unusual hair colors, but this is [[{{Animorphism}} due to their curse]], and others will remark about the unusual color.

* The characters in ''{{X1999}}'' all have fairly typical black or brown hair, but Kotori and her mother both have inexplicable wavy blonde hair.

* The Medicine Seller in ''{{Mononoke}}'' has very pale blond hair in feudal Japan, which, like his IcyBlueEyes, FacialMarkings and PointyEars, goes [[UnusuallyUninterestingSight inexplicably unnoticed]] by those around him.

* In ''SailorMoon'', Usagi and Minako both have blonde hair, while Makoto has auburn hair.

* Revy from ''BlackLagoon'' has has purplish-black hair. Hair dye may be involved.

* Mariko from ''ElfenLied'' has blonde hair in the manga, despite both her parents being Japanese with realistic hair colors.

** There's also the blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman from the Zashiki Warashi arc, though she gets a shocked reaction out of the innkeeper

* In ''A Game of Thrones'', the three children of King Robert Baratheon all have blond hair, even though Robert is dark-haired and every other child ever born to a Baratheon and Lannister (all of the Lannisters are blond, including Robert's wife Cersei) has had dark hair. [[spoiler:The children are later revealed to actually be the offspring of the queen's brother Jaime. Cersei hated her husband and hardly ever slept with him, but had carried on a sexual relationship with her twin from childhood.]]

* [[http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080524190135/aceattorney/images/a/a7/Miles_bodyshot.png Miles Edgeworth]] from the [[AceAttorney Ace Attorney games]] has grey hair literally every time he is seen in full colour. His chronologically earliest appearance is at the age of ''twenty''. [[DarkAndTroubledPast Stress]], [[OrphansOrdeal maybe]]?

* Pretty much all the main characters of {{Megatokyo}}. This is tricky to spot because nearly all the strips are black-and-white, but you can see it in the rare coloured strips and book covers. Kimiko has a light-brown-blonde colour. Erika's hair is orange-red. Largo's hair is the same colour as Erika's (a bit darker in some illustrations). Ping's hair changes colour but is usually very pale. Miho's hair is purple, but given [[DarkMagicalGirl who]] [[MindScrew she]] [[IllGirl is]], it may not be natural.

[[caption-width-right:339:They're all Japanese. Even the redhead. Yeah.]]

* Tamaki, Renge, and Hani from ''OuranHighSchoolHostClub'' all have blond hair, and the Hitachiin twins are both redheads.

* ''MidoriNoHibi'' has plausible brown or black for all characters except the leads, blonde Seiji and greenheaded 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 "[[MeaningfulName midori]]".)

* 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 HeroicBastard.
* The Medicine Seller in ''{{Mononoke}}'' has very pale blond hair in feudal Japan, which, like his FacialMarkings and PointyEars, goes [[UnusuallyUninterestingSight inexplicably unnoticed]] by those around him.
** There's also the blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman from the Zashiki-Warashi arc.
* Misa in Manga/DeathNote, though it's possible she dyes it.
** For that matter, Light has light brown.
*** And Near's is snow-white. There's no particular reason to believe he's Japanese, but it's not substantially more plausible for a Westerner. Fan theory states that he's albino, which could theoretically make him Japanese, but this raises the question of why his eyes aren't red (although Real Life albinos eyes aren't always "red").
* In SailorMoon, Usagi and Minako both have blond hair, while Makoto has auburn hair.

** Usagi herself counts for this, since her earth parents have black hair and blue hair, yet she and her brother are blondes

** Orange hair: [[TheHero Ichigo]], [[BarrierWarrior Orihime]] (Ichigo's hair is [[AllThereIntheManual 'honey']] and Orihime's is [[AllThereIntheManual 'caramel']]; in the anime, they both have a very similar shade of orange)

* {{Soul Eater}} has a variety of hair colours ranging from the implausible to the [[YouGottaHaveBlueHair impossible]]. An example of the former would be Maka's hair, in that her mother is suggested to be Japanese and her father has bright red hair (worth noting that the other Japanese women do have black hair). Maka's own hair is more a light brown or blonde.
* [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in ''SketDance'' in the [[DatingServiceDisaster online dating plot arc]], where Himeko and Bossun become e-mail sweethearts without knowing it. Since Himeko told Bossun through e-mail that her hair is dark (and it's otherwise blond), when they are about to meet each other for the first time, she dyes her hair black to keep the masquerade. When Bossun (not knowing why she is at the meeting place) asks her why she dyed her hair, she answers that it's none of his business and that it's anyway unnatural for a Japanese to have blond hair.

* Almost every character in {{Saiyuki}}, making the Chinese have rainbow hair and the Western foreigners have silver hair when they're only 19 years old.
* Sage/Seiji Date in RoninWarriors/Yoroiden Samurai Troopers is blond yet [[AllThereInTheManual explained to be from the prominent Japanese Samurai family]] of DateMasamune.

* Mariko from ''ElfenLied'' has blond hair in the manga, despite both her parents being Japanese with realistic hair colors.

* {{Eyeshield 21}}: For all its wackiness, is actually pretty good about hair colors. Most of the cast either has brown or black hair, and those who don't clearly dye their hair (they all have black eye brows). However, there are still a few exceptions in the cast; most notably, Taka's been a white-haired pretty boy since childhood, Agon was light-haired as a child, and Sakuraba's hair ranges from light brown to blonde.

* Although the artist of {{Manga/Liar Game}} hasn't actually picked a hair color for Akiyama, he is always drawn with his hair ranging from a light reddish-brown to ginger to gold. Despite being Japanese.

** Tamaki is half-French and Renge is full French. They, at least, have a reasonable explanation.
*** Renge is at least half-Japanese on her father's side. Just look at her surname: Houshakuji.
** The twins have brown hair in the manga.
** Honey's hair is more of a very, very light brown. Renge's hair is more of a light brown, as well. And, Tamaki's hair was originally also light brown before the anime changed it to blond to emphasize his foreign heritage.

!! Examples

Some characters have hair colors that are possible, but very uncommon for the setting, like blond and orange in feudal Japan. The show is otherwise realistic, but the writers don't want all the characters to have the same hair colors.

* [[ChickMagnet Miles]] [[HoYay Edgeworth]] from the [[AceAttorney Ace Attorney games]] has grey hair literally every time he is seen in full colour. His chronologically earliest appearance is at the age of ''twenty''. [[DarkAndTroubledPast Stress]], [[OrphansOrdeal maybe]]?

* [[ChickMagnet Miles]] [[HoYay Edge]][[Asexuality worth]] from the [[AceAttorney Ace Attorney games]] has grey hair literally every time he is seen in full colour. His chronologically earliest appearance is at the age of ''twenty''. [[DarkAndTroubledPast Stress]], [[OrphansOrdeal maybe]]?

*** And Near's is snow-white. There's no particular reason to believe he's Japanese, but it's not substantially more plausible for a Westerner.
*** Fan theory states that he's albino, which could theoretically make him Japanese, but this raises the question of why his eyes aren't red.
*** Most Albinos don't have red eyes.

*** There is an actual reason for Chibi-Usa's pink hair. In the original manga designs, Usagi was going to have pink hair herself. Though that decision was scrapped, Chibi-Usa's pink hair remained.
*** Not ot mention Usagi's mother is pink-haired in the manga, so it could be a recessive trait

* In ''WeissKreuz'', Aya's hair is ''bright red'', and Yoji and Omi are both blond. Yoji's might be bleached, but flashbacks indicate that Aya and Omi's hair colors are most likely natural (and their other family members are all dark-haired).

* {{Soul Eater}} has a variety of hair colours ranging from the implausible to the [[YouGottaHaveBlueHair impossible]]. An example of the former would be Maka's hair, in that her mother is suggested to be Japanese and her father has bright red hair (worth noting that the other Japanese women do have black hair). Maka's own hair is more a light brown.

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* It was lampshaded in ''TheNanny.'' Grandma Yetta frequently mentioned that it was odd that the dark-haired Max had three blond children.

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* The main villain of DemolitionMan (played by Wesley Snipes) is a black man with blond hair. No explanation for this is ever given.

* ''{{Bleach}}'':

* On ''AvatarTheLastAirbender,'' Suki has red/auburn hair despite practically the entire [[TheVerse Avaverse]] being an Asian FantasyCounterpartCulture.
** It's definitely not red--it's more of an auburn or even sienna (some kind of "warm" brown), and in some episodes, it looks like a darker, more ordinary brown.

* Violet from {{The Incredibles}} has long raven black hair while both her father and younger brother have yellow hair and her mother has brown hair. It's possible that her parents carried a black recessive gene.
* WesternAnimation/{{Coraline}}'s parents both have dark brown hair while her own hair is blue.
** Coraline's hair is actually dyed blue. You can see in the picture with her and her parents at the zoo that her hair is brown like her parents.

** Blond hair: [[DarkSkinnedBlond Harribel]], [[YamatoNadeshiko Yuzu]], [[EccentricMentor Urahara]], [[BewareTheNiceOnes Kira]], [[HardDrinkingPartyGirl Rangiku]] and [[SubordinateExcuse Kiyone]] (both are [[AdaptationDyeJob turned]] red-blond in the anime), [[SelfMadeOrphan Yukio]].

** Orange hair: [[TheHero Ichigo]], [[BarrierWarrior Orihime]] (In the anime, Ichigo's hair is [[AllThereIntheManual 'honey']] and Orihime's is [[AllThereIntheManual 'caramel']])

** Orange hair: [[TheHero Ichigo]], [[BarrierWarrior Orihime]] (actually orange-chestnut in the manga, but orange in the anime)

* ''Manga/AzumangaDaioh'' 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.

* Sage/Seiji Date in RoninWarriors/Yoroiden Samurai Troopers is blonde yet [[AllThereInTheManual explained to be from the prominent Japanese Samurai family]] of DateMasamune.

* ''{{Digimon}}'' generally has hair colors that naturally occur on humans (except for a few, like purple-haired [[DigimonAdventure02 Miyako]]), but for a nearly all-Japanese cast, we're talking an inordinately high amount of blond, red, and brown hair.
** The blonds of ''Anime/DigimonAdventure'', Yamato and Takeru, are [[ButNotTooForeign part-French]], and [[DigimonSavers Touma]] is part-Austrian, so that, at least, is reasonable. The same explanation doesn't seem to be the case for the other blonds present in the series, [[Anime/DigimonTamers Yamaki]], [[Anime/DigimonFrontier Izumi]], [[Anime/DigimonXrosWars Kiriha, and Yuu]] (the latter of whom has a brunette sister).