Blue Haired Anime Girls Never Win

One thing that’s fun to do is analyze the trends in anime characters and see what patterns we can observe. In addition to those huge, expressive anime eyes — which, oddly, Westerners always perceive as large and expressive even when they’re more realistically-sized — one of the unique things that defines anime characters is their hair. Anime hair comes in many colors, which send signals about that character’s personality traits. Some general categories include:

Green hair is often paired with moe characters who are designed to be attractive to the viewer right from the start. (Lum, C.C.)
Red haired characters are full of fire, often possessing amazing skills and inexhaustible levels of genki. Often paired with the tsundere trope. (Asuka, Yoko Littner)
Purple hair shows a high-born nobility and elegance, but also pride. (Hitagi Senjogajara, Kagami from Lucky Star)
Pink hair goes well with both cute moe girls and sexually attractive heroines, or else characters that tear down these expectations (Yuno Gasai).
Blonde hair is often paired with characters who are of foreign ancestry and/or wealthy. They’re often powerful and above the rules others must follow (if female).
White or grey haired characters are calm and quiet. They often conceal some secret, often supernatural.
Brown or black hair is the closest to ordinary Japanese coloring, making them common colors for male or female main characters.

Then there are blue-haired characters, who are generally pure-of-heart, cool like clean water, and often introverted or shy. There’s one other trait that seems to with characters with blue-haired characters: not being chosen romantically. Though they’re sweet and caring and put up a good fight, there’s something about blue hair that keeps things from working out in the end. It’s like the anime version of the Red Shirts from Star Trek. Someone, think of the blue haired anime girls!

(Characters above: Rem from Re:Zero, Ami from Toradora, Sayaka from Madoka Magica, Kanna from AnoNatsu, Nagato Yuki from Haruhi, Ichigo from Darling in the Franxx, Kuroneko from Oreimo, and Earth-chan.)

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