This is not a serious post you guys. Don’t get upset and start valiantly protecting your favourite pink-haired waifu or anything. I quite like pink-haired girls both in and out of anime myself. But I had this random thought and I wanted to share it.
I once wrote a weird and very silly post about how the long-haired girls always ended up with the guy in anime and surprisingly, readers ended up having some fun thinking up of examples. I thought I would do something similar to this post cause I had fun thinking of it.
So Spoilers for Sailor Moon for sure and potentially for any show with pink-haired girls?
But first how about a bit of context. I was watching Teekyuu which is a short nonsensical anime about a bunch of girls in a tennis club. It makes me giggle and one of the episodes had me genuinely laughing out loud. Anywho, one of the girls has pink hair and is the airhead of the gang. Because of the dynamic between her and the dark bleu haired lead, I was reminded of Yuru Camp and how Rin and Nadeshiko were with each other. Then I realized that airhead Nadeshiko also had pink hair. This naturally got me jumping to the thought: are all pink haired anime girls kind of dumb?
Now it’s not like I have a repository of pink hair anime girl facts in my head or anything. I just sort of started thinking about the ones that naturally came to mind and since I’m watching Fire Force, I thought of Inca and Hibana. Nope, neither are dumb at all. In fact, they can be occasionally deviously smart. But Inca seems pretty evil and although Hibana made a face turn she started out rather ruthless and an antagonist herself.
My brain is pretty simple. After all, I had pink hair for years. So I just immediately amended my hypothesis, are all pink haired anime girls either kinda airheaded or kinda evil. Stick around, if nothing else, you’ll get to see screencaps of cute pink-haired girls. That’s worth it, right?
Since I am apparently allergic to research, I just went on with analyzing the random pink-haired girls that came to my mind and next in line for some reason was Chibiusa from Sailor Moon. She joins the cast as a little kid so it’s not really fair to evaluate her intelligence but she is related to Serena. I’m just saying… One thing we do know though is that she grows up to become the rather evil dark lady. We may be onto something here.
Megumi from Shiki… I guess it’s not her fault she got turned but man is she enjoying it! Evil it is!
OK, how about some famously pink haired girls. Yuno for Future Diaries. Look, I don’t want to get into whether she’s just misunderstood or the moral subtleties of Yanderes. I think we can at least agree she’s not exactly an angel… For the purposes of our post, she goes into the evil pile. The evil pile is entirely made up of sexy pink-haired ladies. It’s not a bad pile to be in…
Madoka!!! I had to strain a bit but of all the characters in the series, Madoka is probably the slowest on the uptake and the most intellectually passive. Also, I had decided that Madoka is in fact Walpurgisnacht, corrupted and infinitely powerful through Homura’s meddling. So she gets her pick of piles. Controversial but I think we can make it work.
Who’s next… Let’s see how about Lucy from Elfen Lied? For those of you who haven’t seen the show, morally not so bad but very very murdery…Lala for To Love-Ru, smart with inventions but airheaded with everything else, Ebisu from Noragami, she does like to act like an airhead and she brings misfortune, Ram from ReZero, calling her evil is a huge stretch, she is a snarky sarcastic demon though,…
There are a lot of shows with very popular pink haired girls I haven’t watched. I have no clue if Zero Two is a super-smart, kind, understanding girl. She seems to have a strong personality from the little I have seen.
And I do can think of examples that don’t fit in either. Utena is neither slow-witted nor evil at all for instance. There’s also… wait I’ll find someone. Oh, there’s Kanon from The World Only God Knows. I love her.
But Mina from MHA plays the ditz and Junko from Danganronpa…well…There was the main character of Granbelm but she was clueless and Shikimi from Love Tyrant who was a bad guy. Oh and Happy Sugar Life… Sato was really really misunderstood?
I’m saying it’s not a steadfast rule that girls with pink hair in anime are either the slow one or the mean/evil one but I find it surprising how often it happens. Or maybe it’s just the anime that I watch. I’ve been imagining two big piles of pin haired anime girls for a while now and it’s very distracting. I’m sorry if the latter part of this post made nonsense…
Actually Lucy can be both depending of her memory. I mean she’s not evil but sometimes she’s scary! And I was thinking of Pretty Cure Saga: when there’s a pink coloured one, she’s mostly the “airheaded leader”, aren’t they? 🤔
I have never watched Pretty Cure. Magical girls also have a long history of pink hair
I only watched the first and second season but somehow I got to know every other characters 😂😂
How about Mirai Kuriyama from Beyond the Boundary? She is very good and not at all an airhead. And my absolute all time favorite pink haired megane.
But she’s blonde. I guess a bit peachy. I just never thought of her as pink haired. Might depend on the screen
My mom dyed my hair the wrong color in high school once, and it came out a crazy fuchsia color. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she messed up 😂 As for Yuno being a pink haired evil chick I always thought she was just super cr*zy, but then I remember her parents were hella evil. So I think to myself, is she really evil? Or Psychologically traumatized because she was abused by her parents, and has a very reckless way of dealing with that trauma? She was doin some pretty disturbing things I will admit tho haha.
The two pink-haired girls from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (Reimi Sugimoto and Trish Una) don’t fall into either category, although the tropes likely did not exist yet when Araki wrote them in the 1990’s.
To be honest, it might not exist now…
Miyuki Tanaka from Lucky Star is an example of a pink haired girl who is neither evil nor airheaded 😊 She’s more along the smart shy type if you ask me. Ditto for (ugh) Inori from Guilty Crown (I hate that show)
I disagree that Madoka is kind of an airhead though! If you ask me I think she’s the smartest of the five girls considering she actually took the time to consider her wish and her own emotions didn’t rashly get in the way (compared to Sayaka, Mami, Kyoko or Homura best waifu). Sure she might appear slow but as they always say, slow and steady wins the race! Of course let’s forget about the other 144+ different Madokas across different timelines…
Second Lucky Star reference. I have not watched the series.
Fair enough
No worries, IMO it’s something you can pass 😁 There’s nothing too significant about it.
I’m not exactly sure how pink came to mean ditzy or evil (I think it’s less ‘evil’ and more ‘beautiful yet potentially dangerous?’ though that doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily) in the language of anime hair colours, but you’re right, it is a bit of a trope. Maybe we’re supposed to perceive them as a rose: beautiful, elegant; but beware the thorns. You’ve got me overthinking this now!
I reckon you could do a similar post about how grey- or purple-haired characters tend to be the serious/diligent/strict type, or how red/orange haired characters are usually the overzealous hotheads of a series, how blondes (especially female characters) might be promiscuous or haughty, etc etc.
Just like blond hair is virtually synonymous with ‘western’ culture in anime, white hair is also kinda associated with ‘middle-eastern/islander’ cultures, for some reason (I use quotes around the cultures because we’re talking about Japan’s extreme, almost humorously-broad interpretation of these cultures). You’ll find a lot of tan-skinned characters in anime, especially fantasy settings w/ parallels to the real world, have white or silver hair.
Anyways, great post. Obviously– as it’s compelled me to start talking too much again 😅
Oh I really love that rose metaphor! That is very good.
Miyuki Takara from Lucky Star has pink hair is really smart and not at all evil so there you go.
-K.Anthony
There I go indeed
We’re kinda looking at the intersection of two different tropes here, the “Rose-Haired Sweetie” and the “Evil Redhead” (er, Pinkhead?). So I guess the exceptions would be the girls who aren’t kind and cheerful but aren’t deliberately mean and cruel, either. Utena’s interesting because she does sorta fit the “kind and cheerful” mold, but more in that it’s part of the heroic/chivalric ideal that she aspires to. Her true nature is more complicated than that, but that’s fitting for a show that thrives on defying simple stereotypes.
As for the first ones I thought of who are outside those boxes, Pinkie already mentioned Nodoka from Saki, and there’s also Signum from Lyrical Nanoha, who has a stoic personality and definitely isn’t evil despite being introduced as an antagonist (OTOH, Caro from the same franchise is a classic “Rose-Haired Sweetie”). I’m not sure if you’d describe Kallen’s hair from Code Geass as red or pink – it’s kind of halfway in-between, so maybe it depends on your TV’s color settings – but she also doesn’t really fit neatly into either trope.
I haven’t watched code Geass yet but I definitely will
Hmm…I’m trying to think of which pink haired anime girls I know about🤔🤔 And then I thought about Zero Two from Darling in the Franxx. I never finished that show, but I do know that from what I have seen of it, she wasn’t very sympathetic. Looking through a couple of the comments here, I think your post certainly has at least some turth to it lol 😂😂
Truth…not turth…no idea what turth is😂
It was such a random thing to notice
I now have to wonder whether there’s an evil pink-haired airhead in anime. My quest, so far, was unsuccessful.
Also, Teekyu!!! This show must hold the anime record for words per second. Also, IIRC, the pink haired girl, in the opening, seems more like a helium head, since she floats away? Am I misremembering? It’s been a while, and the show’s not coherent enough to leave coherent memories.
Helium head suits her very well.
Momo (Lala’s sister) is the mastermind behind the Harem Project. I don’t think she’s evil and she doesn’t strike me as an airhead.
I love how you described Elfen Lied as “murdery.”
I never made it to Momo.
That feels like one of the saddest sentences I’ve read all week.
My avatar has pink hair! I would if I could afford to pay for the dye!
Then Again I am evil and Ditzy.. so I guess I have to end up in two piles! That doesn’t sound healthy for me!
As for the few anime girls I don’t think fit in your piles:
Nodoka from Saki seems to be neither evil nor ditzy.. she is childish with having a plushy but not particularly ditzy.
Koito from Bloom into you is not evil I think.. maybe letting a girl on is evil.
Ram from Re: Zero is scary at times but not very evil, I don’t think she is a ditz either?!
Mine from Akame Ga Kill is more Shallow than ditzy I think!
Jibril from No Game No Life is more lusty than evil.. though that could be deemed evil ..but can angels be evil?!
Sakura is show to be very smart and even though she can be very mean..and even a terrible person at times I don’t think she is evil. Though kissing Naruto to pretend love him is pretty evil!
Yuki from school life definitely fits on the Ditzy Pile though and that vampire girl that gets a tractor driven over her head in Shiki.. is evil enough!?! Witney in Pokémon is pretty Ditzy as well!
Ram is kinda mean. I put her in my evil pile! Jibril was an actual bad guy in the movie if that counts…
Evil is a big word, I tried to explain it what I mean is vaguely the mean girl archetype but it didn’t sound great in the title.
I think Ram can count as evil as in being a mean girl, I am just not sure she is consistently mean, like I would not say the trait is dominant? I stand correct on Jibril then though, did not even know there was a movie :O
It depends on the character that they are portraying in which having pink hair is just a coincidence.
Good point
I have pink hair ! I can be derpy too , and maybe evil 😂 . I think another good example of someone with pink hair who was a bit of trouble maker was the Team Skull girl from Pokemon , and of course there was the pink haired girl from Kill La Kill although she eventually joins the protaganist side . Still good article ☺️
I have pink hair too 😉
Pink hair girls unite !!