It is All About the Hair: The Color of Normal

In our last look at hair color and character personality archetypes, we look at brown. Brown is pretty much the color of normal. Brown haired characters tend to be stable, consistent, and predictable. They tend to be the most likeable of the archetypes.

Brown haired characters are fine with just being themselves and accept their place in life.  They are as earthy as their follicles. However, browns can mix traits of other archetypes. They run from honey-brown (which mixes brown with traits from yellow) to ruddy brown (which mixes brown with traits from redheads). As browns darken, they start to pick up traits from the black archetype.

Fuu from Samurai Champloo is an example of a brown. Fuu is likeable and consistent. She is always after food and landing into trouble.  Compared to her companions Jin and Mugen, she is stable and generally fine with herself. Although, in the series she does sometimes wish she had larger “knockers.”

Hair color archetypes serve as shorthand to help the audience quickly recognize the type of person they are watching. They play into shared personality expectations between East and West. Some colors, like redheads, are imports from the West. In any case, the archetypes allow authors to focus on fleshing out the interesting aspects of a character that sets them apart from the usual stereotype. There is often limited space to tell a story and sketch a character (particularly in anime), and hair color provides a shorthand to help with the sketch.

The archetypes allow authors to play with audience expectations. Characters that work against conventions are jarring for audiences; they are interesting. However, they require more time to illustrate such a personality.

The hair color archetypes I’ve covered in this series are by no means completely cut and dry. Think of them as blood types or astrological symbols. There will always be exceptions. Using hair color to shorthand personality traits is a relatively new phenomenon considering manga  was primarily a black and white medium. By extension, anime originally used hair color to help the audience tell the difference between similar looking characters. As anime increased in popularity, audiences developed expectations for characters with certain hair colors.

Of course, sometimes hair colors are used for characters because it makes them look cool or look correct.

What do you think? Is hair color related to character personality?