Anime Characters with “Blonde” Hair

Anime is a funny place, where characters can have the most outrageous hair colors like pink or blue or blonde, yet no one ever thinks it strange that pure-blooded Yamato Japanese would have hair coloring like this. And yet, there are a few shows in which “Western” features of anime characters are discussed overtly as a character feature. One example is Kodaka Hasegawa from the anime Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai (“I Have Few Friends”), a transfer student who inherited blond hair from his diseased British mother, and because this makes him look like a yankii — a delinquent youth who dyes his hair blond and rides a motorcycle, no direct relation to the English word “yankee” or to Americans — he comes off as scary and isn’t able to make friends easily. There are plenty of other examples, including the three characters from Please Twins, who know they’re related because they all share the same mysterious blue eyes, possibly inherited from a foreign mother, or Alice Tsukishiro from the Da Capo eroge and anime, who is half-European. To the Japanese, the blending of foreign and Japanese features is very pleasant, and haafu people are seen as possessing the best of both worlds. There are many famous “talents” and TV newscasters who are of mixed Japanese ancestry, and, er, quite a few JAV stars as well.

Kodaka is half-Japanese with “yankee” hair, yet no one thinks that Sena looks non-Japanese?