You can see different bright hair colors in Japanese Anime and some of them are not normal colors for human. At first, I just think because Animation is a fantasy world authors give characters different colors because those colors are hard to see in normal every day life and those colors are pleasing to the eyes. However, I was just curious about does it have meanings behind all those colorful hair in Anime, and I found out they do have meaning for Hair colors.
The Black Hair(kuro)
This is Japanese people’s normal hair color so this color do not bring a lot of meanings behind it. So people have black hair color can be everyone in daily life. But we can also in black hair for characters who are noble ladies from traditional Japanese culture, princess or idols. I believe black hair also means high honor and elegant, and the authors want to pay respect to traditional historical characters.
The Pink Hair
he pink hair is my favorite, a lot of characters I like are pink hair. Usually for the pink hair it represents innocence pure and almost silly character. You can a lot of pink hair are belong to children or young girls. I saw a lot of characters in Shojo manga have pink hair. They are very innocent and have romantic thoughts toward to love. In Pink hair, the moe Phenomenon also shows in it. A lot of pink hair characters have moe feelings to them, childish, innocent and person to love.
The Brown Hair
Another normal hair color for Japanese and close to everyday’s life. So those characters with brown hair are very friendly and kind. He or she is usually close friends to the main characters and they provide support to the main characters. The brown hair characters do not have a lot of personalities even helpless or unnoticeable sometimes. I think it is pretty interesting that characters have normal hair color are not main characters and you will see a lot main characters have bright, colorful hair.
I saw a quote is pretty interesting about hair colors: ” the brightness of a character’s hair communicates how down-to-earth and otherworldly a character is”.
I totally agree this opinion. You can see it very clearly in the Movie “paprika”. In the movie, the character Paprika has bright red hair, she is the fantasy version of Chiba. she is dreamy and out of this world. In contrast, Chiba has dark black hair, and she is serious and hardworking and more down to the earth everyday woman.
Behind the Screen 