Anime Hair

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Why yes, these are my natural hair colors. Why do you ask?
"Now go... And never mock my sideburns again!"
—Mikuni, Duel Masters

A catch-all term used for anime and cartoon characters with bizarre, improbable, or just plain goofy-looking hairstyles.

Usually, the most important characters of the story will have wild spikes or a cool-looking hairdo in order to stand out among the crowd. It may be one or more different colors that don't appear naturally in real humans (blue is a popular choice). Sometimes the hair appears semi-transparent, with the character's eyes visible through it, although this presumably represents hair fine enough that it isn't completely obscuring, rather than anything outré. Anime Hair is very common among protagonists of anime/manga for the Shōnen manga, although the trend seems to be headed to more plausible styles: compare Son Goku's hair to Ichigo's. If there's a White-Haired Pretty Boy in the cast, there's a good chance that white hair will also be Anime Hair.

Forms of Anime Hair include:

Examples of Anime Hair include:

Advertising

  • Implausibly, Garnier started marketing a hair-styling range called "manga hair" around 2005 or so, complete with commercials full of bounding Goku-coiffured gents and ladies. Inconceivable!

Anime and Manga

  • Stocking from Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt has hair that is 2 colors. The 'inside' is pink, and the 'outside' is purple.
  • In the world of crazy hair, there is nothing that comes close to Yu-Gi-Oh. It would be easier to list the characters in the series who don't have anime hair, but that sure as hell won't stop us from trying.
    • Yugi Muto (pictured) is an absurd example, as he has two sets of colored spikes. One is yellow, with a much larger red-tipped black layer on top of it. This gets even weirder in a flashback showing the Pharaoh as a baby, which seems to imply that those actually are his natural hair color(s).
    • Yugi's friends have weird hair, too. Otogi has standard black spikes, but Honda's hair is a giant brown horn. Anzu and Jounochi both have very poofy hair that sticks out at least several inches from their head.
    • Kimo, Pegasus's henchman from the Duelist Kingdom arc, has a hairstyle like Honda's, except it points straight upward.
    • Mai has a hairstyle very similar to Yugi's, except it's much longer.
    • Bakura, Dartz, and Marik all have very spiky hair that would put Cloud to shame.
    • Siegfried has pink hair.
    • If you think the hairstyles are bad, consider this: every time we see a younger version or past life of a character, their hair is exactly the same, except possibly shorter. The only exception is Isis, who has loose hair as an adult and braids in a flashback. So the hair is apparently genetic.
    • The dub has a moment in the Virtual World filler arc where a villain hoping to defeat and possess Yugi talks about how he'll be happy to walk free, but he'll have to shave his (Yugi's) head first. This is the only mention anywhere of that hair, and it wasn't in the original.
      • The Abridged Series has Yugi respond saying that "Nobody, but no-o-o-body fucks with the hair."
    • Maximilian Pegasus, who is in his mid-20s, has silver hair that looks like some sort of corrugated sheet metal. And apparently, it's been like that since he was 12.
    • The legacy lives on in its two successors and their movie together. Best examples include:
      • 'Crabhead' Yusei Fudo, who canonically gets it form his father.
      • Jun Manjoume/Chazz Princeton with spikes that look like they were stolen from a chainsaw.
      • Sho/Syrus's big, light blue flop of a do.
      • Paradox's golden locks, earning him the Fan Nickname, 'squidhead'. Hmm...'Starfish', 'Jellyfish', 'Crabhead', 'Squidhead'...Apparently Kazuki Takahashi loves his sushi.
      • Yuuma from Yu-Gi-Oh ZEXAL must be seen to be believed. He has possibly the weirdest hair the series has yet. and that really says something.
    • Parodied in Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series. Kimo always refers to himself in the third person as "my hair", and claims that it has super powers. At one point he refuses to let Joey into the tournament because his hair "isn't stupid enough", but fortunately Yugi's hair is "stupid enough for two people".
  • Being created in the late 90's, Togusa from Ghost in the Shell, a man from the 2030's, is doomed to be haunted by his spectacular mullet throughout all adaptations of the manga.
  • Pick any Saiyan character from Dragon Ball. It gets even weirder once they go up to Super Saiyan levels. When Goku reaches Super Saiyan level three, he grows golden hair all the way down to his feet.
    • Not only that, but pure Saiyans retain the exact same hairstyle outside of powered-up states throughout their lives unless cut, and even then, it'll grow back to the same way it was before provided it wasn't cut too much.
    • Gets a nod in the movie when Goku tries to slick back his hair for a party - only for it to spring back up. Bulma only has a few blue streaks in her hair, though.
  • The title character of Yotsuba&! has green hair in four little pigtails that stick out at angles around her head. They indicate a four-leaf clover, as that is also the meaning of her name.
  • Duel Masters, at least in the Gag Dub, hangs several lampshades on it. Apparently, when these guys aren't obsessing over card games, they're obsessing over their hair.
    • Shobu has the standard-issue spikes. It's implied that he uses a heavy-duty gel.
    • Kokujo has long black hair...down to his ankles. At one point, he's irate because a rematch with Shobu causes him to miss a hairstylist appointment.
    • Mikuni's sideburns are so awe-inspiring that the third-season dub changed his name to "Johnny Coolburns".
  • Nekki Basara from Macross 7 has spikes that form an even sharper point above his head.
    • Crazy hair is actually expected from a Rock musician.
  • Ippo Makunochi of Hajime no Ippo has Anime Hair so bad that, on the rare occasion he tries to tame it for a date, it invariably poofs out again within seconds.
  • Otaru of Saber Marionette J also manages to have two-tone spiky hair. Given how often his low income is pointed out, you have to wonder how he can keep affording hair care products.
  • Ryu from Shaman King starts off with a pompadour that sticks out a good two-and-a-half feet from his face. Oddly enough, when roughly half of it gets cut off early in the series, it stays off.
    • This becomes a running gag through the series. The tip gets cut off, and a smaller pompadour grows out of the tip. The tip of this gets cut off. Repeat. And then the whole thing gets SPLIT DOWN THE CENTER. It continues the process.
    • And then, Boris Tepes Dracula slices off both of the half-pompadours, leading to Ryu passing out. And THEN Ryu gets back up and randomly regrows the whole dang pomp to its original "Ultra Pompadour" form just before he kicks Boris' batty butt.
  • Pretty much everyone in Tenchi Muyo!!, although Tenchi and Seina themselves are a little reasonable in the spikiness level. Washu, on the other hand, has the part around her face deliberately styled to look like a crab, and then you get to the ponytail....
    • It looks like she has a bush glued on her head.
  • Most of the female My-HiME cast has relatively normal hair styles, although in a small rainbow of colors (including Natsuki, whose hair is blue). There are three major exceptions, though:
    • Shiho's unique pink double-pigtails,
    • the young teacher Midori's bright red spikes, and
    • the even younger Alyssa and her "blond Washu feathers."
  • The title character of Hikaru no Go is a borderline case. Anyone with black hair and a bottle of peroxide can have blond bangs, but this qualifies due to the sheer length of time he keeps it, aging from 11 to 16 with the two-tone hair.
  • Aside from his huge blonde afro, Bobobo has what looks like a long, thin moustache... that's actually two of his nosehairs. WTF?
  • Spoofed in This Ugly Yet Beautiful World. Takeru has "bed hair".
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Part 3... yeesh. We have Polnareff, with hair like a blue push-pop. But topping him is Abdul, with what can only be described as six vertical curly straws for hair. And then you get to Part 5 and there's Giorno. Wow. He could probably catch bullets with these things.
    • Although most characters seem not to notice, some people do, and Josuke tends to get pissy if people make fun of his giant pompadour.
  • Astro Boy has two small "spikes" of hair which, according to Tezuka, was based on his own bed-hair.
  • One Piece has the Baroque Works villain, Mr. 3. His hair is a crazy topknot shaped like a big "3". And it's almost always ON FIRE.
    • And that's only the tip of the iceberg! You've got Buggy and his blue pigtails, Franky's outrageous Ace Ventura 'do that deflates when he's tired, Igaram's pale-blond powdered-wig-esque monstrosity that's full of GUNS, Dr. Hiriluk's wacky medical cross-shaped hair....
    • There is also Baroque Works' Miss Doublefinger, who could turn her giant curly blue afro (along with the rest of her body) into sharp spikes, professor Clover from the island of Ohara, Robin's place of birth and his clover leaf styled hair and it may be argued that Crocus' Crocus flower head ornaments, former crewmate to Gold Roger and acting doctor to the great whale Laboon, might in fact be a colorful crop of hair. At any rate, One Piece is full to the brim with outrageously fun character styles, and has a plethora of hairstyles.
  • Shione in Mamoru-kun Ni Megami no Shukufuku Wo has a serious case of anime hair going on. She goes well beyond Princess Curls and into some hairstyles that wouldn't look out of place in a Dr. Seuss book.
  • Don't forget Usagi Tsukino in Sailor Moon. Those twin ponytails that reach to her ANKLES are first tied into the large knots we see on top of her head before they dangle that far down. Apparently, she's never heard of a haircut....
    • In Usagi's defence, at the beginning of the series the pigtails 'only' reached her hips, and the buns were smaller, and the manga gives a reason to why her hair gets so long, that being her body changing to what it was like when she was Serenity, but even then, Serenity (both Princess and Neo-Queen) takes it to entire new levels, with the buns being the size of apples, and the tails being so long they trail a couple of feet across the floor when she stands up, and she wears stiletto heeled shoes as well!
    • Some people haven't in real life, either. Look at country singer Crystal Gayle, for example. And note that Usagi's hair style does exist in real life, and predates the anime, though it's uncommon and the knots/buns are usually around half that size.
    • The Amazons Quartet; It's hard to find a hairstyle weirder or more impossible to reproduce than Jun­Jun's. (She's the one in green, in case you were wondering.)
    • Chibi Usa and Chibi Chibi take the odango to a next level with pointed and heart shaped buns in pink and red respectively. Even better, Chivied Usa's hair is naturally pink, even though her mom is blonde and her cad's hair is black.
  • In Mai-Otome, secondary villain Tomoe has her hair done long on her right side, but cut short on her left. The aforementioned Shiho has double drill-hair in this universe... not surprising, given that spirals are part of her whole schtick.
  • Lampshaded in the Rosario + Vampire manga when Moka refers to her younger sister Cocoa (a.k.a. Kokoa) as wearing an "anime-like hairdo". (Ironically, however, Cocoa's hairstyle isn't particularly unrealistic, while Moka's is nearly floor length and turns silver on occasion.)
  • Kenpachi from Bleach is a solid example. His hair is pulled into spikes with little jingle bells at the end... bells, people! Amongst the upper crust Soul Reapers Renji and Byakuya also qualify. There are also some stellar examples amongst the Visoreds and the Arrancar.
    • Of course, Kenpachi's hair also doesn't really fit here since he purposely styles his hair into those crazy spikes, and when left alone, his hair hangs down in a rather normal way.
    • Kenpachi's hair style is parodied in the actual anime. One omake has him taking a long time to get ready because his arm wasn't tall enough to attach the bell to his highest spike. Being such a Badass, he obviously can't ask any of his subordinates for help.
    • As tamer examples, it is worth mentioning Rukia and Ururu. Their hair don't seem very outlandish, except there is always a strand of it over their faces, even during battle scenes. Bonus points for Ururu's case, whose strand for some reason is always divided in an upside-down "Y" shape, framing her eyes and nose.
    • As of the fourth movie, when Rukia was dangled upside down by Gunjo, that strand of hair of hers didn't even move an inch. Hell, her hair, apart from the tufts of it at her shoulders, weren't moving at all.
  • Eve of Black Cat and her Expy counterpart Golden Darkness of To LOVE-Ru certainly qualify, given their ability to turn their hair into fists, blades, or virtually any other item the situation calls for.
  • Jessie/Musashi from the Pokémon anime has very long red hair in the shape of a drop or comma... and is always looking the same whatever the angle of view. And the hairdo also seems perfectly rigid—she once slapped both James and Meowth with the tail of her hair.
    • Lots of characters in the Poke-verse have oddly-colored, gravity-defying, or just plain wacky hairstyles. It's far more common to see a character with an improbable (or downright impossible) hairstyle than a realistic one.
    • Subverted unexpectedly with Emerald's debut in Pokémon Special. His croissant-shaped hairdo is revealed in a flashback to be manufactured... his real hair reaches to his knees. Ruby was seen helping him gel it back into a crescent, raising the question of what the Pokémon world's hair gel manufacturers put in that stuff.
  • Magari Kazuma has the usual static-y spikes, but Nora's hair is styled to make his head resemble a dog's body, with inumimi bangs/sideburns and a long pony- doggy-tail.
  • Kakashi from Naruto. He got hit by two attacks that disintegrated his gloves, his vest, and his headband; yet his hair was still perfect!
    • Sasuke's hair, Jiraiya's long, flowing, spiky white hair, or Chouji's (part two) long, brown spiky hair? Which admittedly isn't all that amazing, until he uses his Human Boulder technique and uses his hair to turn himself in to a human hedgehog (Jiraiya also used a similar attack minus the rolling).
    • More typically, Kisame and Ao both sport the same Johnny Bravo-esque "hair all sticking up to a point above their forehead" do,
  • Many characters in Steel Angel Kurumi have odd hair, but Mikhail's hair takes the cake. Note that it's not wind that makes strands just float out there; they stay that way inside, too, with absolutely nothing to move them.
  • Mahou Sensei Negima has Ricardo, the Hot-Blooded senator of Megalomesembria who sports a hairstyle containing five curvy spikes that makes his head look kinda like a starfish.
    • Ken Akamatsu's comments alongside early drafts for Kazumi Asakura describe her hairstyle as inspired by a pineapple...
    • Also Fate's siblings, Quintum and Quatrum. Their sister Sextum has much more normal hair though.
  • Anyone and everyone in Demonbane.
  • Half the cards from Cardcaptor Sakura have thematic hairdos that border on the absurd. The other half have Nice Hats.
  • In Solty Rei the main character has hair that looks like a hollow four leaf clover. But she's a robot so maybe it makes sense.
  • Vash the Stampede from Trigun. In the anime his hair is one of the ways Meryl and Millie track him, and in the manga he earns the nickname "Spiky". For his early style, which points strait up, apparently without the aid of gel, and in spite of gunfights, dust and sand.
  • Takuma from Elf Princess Rane takes the cake, being a full parody of anime hair. It's sky blue, has two tendrils down the front (the one on his right is thick and goes down to his feet, ending in a curl, while the one on his left is straight, thin, and goes to around his belt), and is styled into an epic curled horn on his left. Said horn is so massive that he regularly has to prop it up with his hands.
  • The Pretty Cure franchise has given its heroines a few hairstyles that are weird even by Magical Girl standards. Cure Black and Cure White had pretty tame 'dos, but things have gotten more ridiculous with each new series. It started getting extreme with Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash Star, where both of the heroines had pony tails that stuck more or less straight up; possibly reached its peak when Yes! Pretty Cure 5 introduced a heroine with and odd (pink) variation on the Odango hairstyle where instead of buns, she has rings, and another who has weird cones on either side of her head with corkscrew-like pigtails coming out of them; and calmed down a bit in Fresh Pretty Cure, where the most bizarre hairstyle was an extremely long, lavender side ponytail that looked more like a giant drill than anything.
  • Fairly averted in Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei. While still different than what most people would see in real life, it's still fairly realistic. Blue hair is totally averted. A side effect is that this sometimes makes some of the characters (chiefly the girls) a bit hard to tell from one another.
  • While most of the characters from Detective Conan have fairly normal-looking hair, Ran Mouri (Rachel Moore) has a spike of it jutting out above her forehead.
  • In Soul Eater, the hair of the eponymous character is white and spiky and Black☆Star's is light blue and also spiky (but resembling a star), but Ox Ford spends much time fashioning his into two tall, pointed 'pillars' of hair and was otherwise bald until recently.
  • In EP4 of Umineko no Naku Koro ni, Deadpan Snarker Ange told Battler to "Leave the jokes to your hairstyle." Said hairstyle is spiky enough to warrant the jab. Natsuhi's hair inexplicably changes color halfway down her ponytail, too.
  • In Noein, not only is Karasu's hair spiky, it's somehow swept out sideways. What does he do, dunk his head into a toilet bowl full of hair gel?
  • Psy from Heroman has what could be best described as Spike Spiegel's hair on crack.
  • The female cast of Kimi ga Nozomu Eien sports a variety of utterly bizarre hairstyles and colors, perhaps exmplified by the hair of major character Mitsuki, which is ocean blue and roughly the length of her ENTIRE BODY ( before the Time Skip anyway). Made even more jarring by the fact that the series bills itself as a "realistic" slice-of-life drama.
    • The hair color/style has nothing to do with how "realistic" the drama is. Also, except the improbable hair color for people who are suppose to be Japanese, their hair are pretty much normal or at least probable, even if you don't compare them to the crazy hair in other animes.
  • The hairstyles of the significant characters seen so far in Shiki range from totally normal to typical spikes to this and this. The deaths are thus far less baffling than some of these hairdos.
  • Anyone who's seen an episode of Ladies versus Butlers! would agree that Flameheart's hair falls into this category nicely. I mean, come on folks! They're drills!
  • Miu from Piano had a rather strange hairdo, especially considering the Slice of Life setting of the series.
  • Sae Sawanoguchi from Magic Users Club has hair that looks like it's made up of a series of Raggedy Anne-esque rectangles.
  • Yaiba's hair is quite spiky. Other examples include Kotaro Fuuma and Goemon Ishikawa.
  • Saint Seiya and their endless amount of Eighties Hair.
  • Nia from Gurren Lagann. It's pastel blue and yellow in color, and the long hair running down her back resembles cotton candy in consistency.
    • It also acts somewhat like a flame at times, for instance, when wind blows, it will flow in the wind like a flickering flame, and if you pay attention small parts will fly off and disappear like small bits of flame.
    • She probably got it from her dad...
  • Sena's hairstyle from Eyeshield 21 is a cross between Goku's, Astro Boy's, and Tsuna's, as well as being two tone (though he actually develops that later on, so he probably dyed his bangs). Evidently, the hairstyle's genetic, as his dad has the same thing, except with a receding hairline. Almost as if to lampshade his very anime-esque hair cut, when he gels in down it looks EXACTLY like Astro Boy's. Milder examples are Ikkyu's Vegeta-do, Kurita's chestnut spike, Mizumachi's blonde bedhead, Monta/Komosubi/Tomgano/Yukimitsu's spikes, and Sakuraba's hair antennae.
    • Hiruma's is a subversion. It looks typical shonen hair, but in his flashback, it's revealed he has perfectly normal black hair. The spiky blonde do is part of his image. The same with Kotaro, whose constantly bushing his hair to make it stay spiky.
  • Doi from Wandering Son. Not to the extent of a lot of other examples, and it does resemble styles that a lot of teenage boys in Japan sport, but it still counts (especially in later appearances).
  • Ryu and Jinpei of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman have very bad cases of Anime Hair. Apparently instead of combing their hair in the morning they stick a finger in a live socket to arrange it. And Jun's Curtains Match the Window.
  • Bakugan has a few of these. Aside from the typical natural green hairs and gravity-defying spiky hair, one character even has green hair except for a small red forelock.
  • Kodomo no Jikan gives us Rin and Mimi, who must have never even heard of a haircut. Knee length pigtails (with eight pink balls) and a ponytail just as long, respectively.

Comics

  • Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. Hobbes once lampshaded it. "Does electricity make your hair do that?"
    • Calvin gets literal Anime Hair in one comic when he uses Crisco to style his hair into two large spikes as a Shout-Out to Astro Boy.
    • He also takes this Beyond the Impossible in one strip, where he sleeps on his hair and wakes up with the front part matted down. He decides he likes it so much, he gels it to stay that way. Hobbes suggests he gets curlers for the back, but we don't see that.
    • Hobbes once told him that his "hat hair" didn't look too different from his normal hair.
  • Depending on the artist, Quicksilver sometimes ends up with hair antennae that defy gravity.
  • In Teen Titans, Starfire's hair goes down past her waist and merges with the stream of energy left behind when she flies.
    • Same with Karolina from Runaways. In this case, though, the stream of energy is her hair (she's a pseudo Energy Being).
  • The lack of this in comics is almost as absurd as its prevalence in anime. Aliens species (even ones from a thousand years in the future) have hair cuts and colors that would be perfectly normal today.
  • Star Wars Princess Leia's Danish bun hairdo looks even weirder in her manga incarnation.
  • Alanna Wolff of Supernatural Law has very dramatic hair.
  • Norman Osborn, arch-enemy of Spider-Man, has got to the only white guy over thirty in all of fiction with red-headed cornrows.
    • Well, him and his son. And Sandman. Was that just the style back in those days?
      • It seems to be a highly stylized version of the tight, wavy hair some Jewish men (like Henry Kissinger) have.
  • Wolverine. This page has a detailed analysis of his unusual and distinctive hair style.
    • Wolvie's crazy hair is parodied by Lobo. Lobo's hair seems to stand up like porcupine quills all on its own! Lobo's crazy hair is parodied by Bloodwulf, who sticks his hand in an electrical socket to get it to stand up like that.
  • The Flash: Bart Allen - Impulse/Kid Flash II - is probably best known for his insanely huge auburn hair and yellow eyes, so much so that they're an instant character marker. It wasn't part of his original design, but the first artist for his ongoing series exaggerated it to be such, and it's mostly stuck, though the length seems to be fluctuating wildly right now. Here's an analysis on how different artists (up to 2005) draw his hair.
  • Liz in the comic strip Committed, and her daughter Tracy, both have a haircut that goes high above their heads, then curls forwards like a dolphin's fin (and Tracy also has a variant Ahoge that sticks out from the back of her head rather than the top.) The father, Joe, has hair that goes straight forwards instead of up, making him look like he's balancing a platter on his head. It's best demonstrated with an image.
  • Any character drawn by Chris Bacallo, but especially The Endless and Shade the Changing Man.
  • Clea, Doctor Strange's disciple/lover traditionally has two curling locks of hair that meet over her forehead in a way Aqua Net can only dream of achieving.


Fan Works

"JUST YOU WAIT! ALIEN! HE'S AN ALIEN! IT'S THE ONLY EXPLANATION! HOW ELSE COULD HIS HAIR DO THAT? ALIEN!"

    • It was lampshaded before that, in the first episode no less. By the narrator.

No one knows why his hair does that. Is it static electricity? Is it hair gel? No, probably not.

    • Dr. Brainstorm also has it.
    • As does Thunderstorm, his old college rival and brother.


Films -- Animation

  • Apparently, Syndrome from The Incredibles was a Super; his power was the ability to make that hair stand up. Either that, or he's secretly a Saiyan, since his hairstyle matches Vegeta's exactly.
    • Or he's Freakazoid!...
    • MAD Magazine posited that he just suck his finger in a lamp socket every morning.
  • For some reason, the wolves in Alpha and Omega have this.


Literature

  • Billy Kong in Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony takes great pride in his spiky, multicolored hair. The narration even refers to it as "manga hair."
  • Agrivex in Lonely Werewolf Girl, uses obscene amounts of hair gel and metallic dyes to achieve improbable spiky hair styles. It's noted in narration if her Aunt ever did sacrifice in a volcano (It Makes Sense in Context) her hair would probably be untouched.


Films -- Live Action


Live Action TV

  • Cat Valentine in Victorious has hair that she dyed an unnatural color.
  • The hair of Sōsuke Esumi (Go-On Red) from Engine Sentai Go-onger, for lack of a better term, goes in the wrong direction, and actually looks like a live action version of Yugi's.
  • Beakman from Beakman's World. In one of the rapid-fire question segments, he claims he keeps his hair like this "with super-strong hair glue".
    • And in yet another, he claims that that's not his real hair, and reveals...a 'do that's even more Animesque!
  • And if Beakman's an example, then so is Kramer from Seinfeld.
  • Male Centauri from Babylon 5 have their hair styled into the shape of a fan as a status symbol (while the females shave their heads). As the show went on it was brought slightly more under control.
    • Ambassador Delenn of the normally hairless Minbari's hair after her transformation into a half-human appears to be this, but JMS confirmed that its seemingly impossible configuration is made possible by a gap between her bone crest and skin.
  • Mrs. Slocombe from Are You Being Served has very unusual hair indeed. She wears it in a beehive, and in every episode it is a different unnatural color. Sometimes it's blue, sometimes it's pink, etc.
  • Lampshaded twice on Hannah Montana, with the outlandishly-colored wigs and fashions Lilly Truscott wore as her Paper-Thin Disguise as her alter-ego Lola Luftnagle. See here.
  • Cheyne, from Season 15 of The Amazing Race. He had fans wondering how much hair gel he had to bring with him to keep his hair looking that spiky throughout the entire race.


Music


Mythology

  • Cú Chulainn in his ríastrad as described in the Táin Bó Cúailnge -- "The hair of his head twisted like the tange of a red thornbush stuck in a gap; if a royal apple tree with all its kingly fruit were shaken above him, scarce an apple would reach the ground but each would be spiked on a bristle of his hair as it stood up on his scalp with rage."
    • Also, his normal hair is brown at the roots, red in the middle and blonde at the top that went to at least-his mid-back.


Professional Wrestling

  • Sheamus has spiky red hair that only adds to his unique look.
  • The Miz also tends to sport a very strange hairstyle—especially in his early days in WWE—that looks not unlike a rooster's comb.


Toys

  • LEGO employed full-force Anime Hair in most of the minifigures in the LEGO Exo-Force line, inevitable being that it was designed with mecha anime in mind. Interestingly, the accompanying animesque character art has everyone's hair looking (relatively) normal, starkly contrasting with the minifigures themselves.


Video Games

  • The Final Fantasy series is famous (though some would say infamous) for this.
    • Final Fantasy II
      • Emperor Mateus is proof that the series embraced this trope long before it became memetic. He sports what can best be described as an eighties-style Horned Hairdo.
    • Final Fantasy VII
      • In the original game, Cloud Strife has golden spikes that seem to shoot off in every direction. It is lampshaded often, and has earned him the nickname of 'Spiky' from his allies. His hairstyle is less extreme in future installments of the Compilation.

Shantotto: "Your hair is a distraction!"

      • Zack Fair also has improbably spiky dark hair in his recent appearances in Crisis Core and Advent Children, but like Cloud, his hairstyle is slightly toned down compared to the original game.
      • Sephiroth is the designated White-Haired Pretty Boy, with silver hair extending down past his waist and two long forelocks framing his face.
      • Reno of the Turks has fiery red spikes, which sets him apart from his completely bald partner-in-crime, Rude.
    • Final Fantasy VIII
      • The villainness Ultimecia sports a fairly impressive Horned Hairdo that bears some resemblance to Mateus'.
    • Final Fantasy IX
      • The villain Kuja has hair that appears to coalesce into feathers.
    • Final Fantasy X
      • The villain Seymour has bright blue hair molded into shapes that could only possibly be achieved with a truckload of cement.
      • Wakka's gravity-defying peak shows him to be no slouch in the absurd haircut department either. Even underwater.
    • Marche in '"Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has a big strand of hair that curls straight up at the front of his head while having some strands of hair on the back of his head that flow out like a ponytail with a mind of its own.
  • While the style may be tamer in Fire Emblem, the colors certainly aren't. see for yourself.
  • Crono from Chrono Trigger is sometimes referred to as "the kid with the punk haircut".
    • That's probably because the original character designer was Akira Toriyama
  • Lloyd Irving from Tales of Symphonia's hair stands at least eight inches high, with spike-like structures jutting about. Also, his hair bounces back and forth if you make him turn around on the overworld screens.
  • Just most of the Org-13 members in Kingdom Hearts has sufficient spikiness... especially Axel. The lone female member, Larxene, has Hair Antennae.
    • Sora and Riku? Anime Hair all the way. This is even lampshaded when the party meets Tifa. (Heads-up, she's looking for Cloud.)

Tifa: Have any of you seen a guy with spiky hair?
(Donald and Goofy stare at Sora, who tugs at one of his own spikes)
Tifa: (chuckles) Spikier.

  • Ryuuta Ipongi from Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan. Kai Doumeki from the game takes this one step further, as he even has a spiky beard.
  • Ghost Trick: Everyone has ridiculous hair. Sissel, Lynne, Beauty, and Emma stand out in particular. Seriously, how the hell does Beauty's hair even work?! Then again, the game is made and designed by the guy who created the Ace Attorney Series.
  • Along those lines, you could say that Sonic the Hedgehog is what happens when a Funny Animal gets anime fur. (Well, it is blue, after all.)
    • The most visually prominent with Silver.
      • Blame it on the later design decisions; early designs for Silver had almost the same hair design, but with the vital difference that it fell backwards instead of sticking straight up in defiance of gravity and probably several state laws. (The "sticking-straight-up" effect was reserved for when he was using his psychic powers.)
  • One must wonder how much hair gel the Elite Beat Agents' Agent J uses to get his hair super-curly in front. It just seems to leap out like a tongue.
  • Birdie from Street Fighter has a mohawk with a perfect circle punched through the middle of it.
  • Disgaea generally has spiky hair across the board, though there are some notably odd styles, such as the giant cinnamon-roll pigtails that the archers sport, or Axel's purple lightning-shaped eyebrows.
    • Badass freakin' Overlord Zetta may deserve special mention despite the short amount of time he spends in humanoid form. Artwork and his in-game sprites depict him with long, red, spiky hair, as per Nippon Ichi's general design. The more detailed cutscenes, however, show that he doesn't have hair so much as he wears an impeccably styled bonfire on his head, complete with bat-shaped licks of flame.
    • Laharl also deserves a nod, as his hair splits into two "antennae", which are equal to his total height.
  • In Golden Sun and sequels, the weirdest hairstyles and colors belong to Adepts with elemental powers. Non-Adept characters have more normal styles and colors.
  • Will/Ed from Advance Wars: Days of Ruin has this. How is it that he manages to keep that hairstyle despite an apocalypse?
  • Rival Schools has its fair share of funky hair as well. First there's Shoma, who has three huge spikes of hair sticking out of his backward-facing baseball cap. Then there's Edge, who styles his long blonde hair into really tall spikes, and even uses it as a blunt weapon by headbutting (as if he uses Plaster of Paris for hairgel to give it such hardness). Taking the cake, however, is Yurika, who has excessively large Princess Curls and cinnamon bun-esque curls at the top of her head (the latter might have served as inspiration for the previously mentioned Ron DeLite, considering Capcom owns both Ace Attorney and Rival Schools).
  • Akira Yuki and Jacky Bryant from the Virtua Fighter series have super spiky hair. The big polygons in the older games made Jacky's hair really spiky.
    • Goh Hinogami not only has super spiky hair, but it's blue.
  • The kid heroes of the Ape Escape series tend to have spiky hair of different degrees, with the most well-known being Spike's, for obvious reasons. Also, Specter is an example of anime fur, being a monkey and all. Another honorable mention is 3's gadget inventor Aki, whose hairstyle can only be described as "puffy".
  • Being based on Polnareff from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Benimaru Nikaido can be described as having a "yellow push-pop" of hair. Though he can occasionally be seen with it hanging down in long, wavy tresses, so perhaps he employs static electricity to maintain his usual style.
  • Ruru of Magical Battle Arena has drill-hair. And by drill-hair, we mean that her hair has been styled to look like a literal pair of drills. Operating drills. That spin.
  • The Guilty Gear series is rife with examples, but the far-and-away winner is Millia Rage, given her ability to use her already outlandish hairstyle to kick your ass.
    • BlazBlue continues this trend with pretty much everyone.
  • The Tekken games give us the Mishima clan... Heihachi with his head-wings and Kazuya and Jin with their rather pointy upswept 'dos. And Paul clearly has the same stylist as Jean-Pierre Polnareff.
  • Graffiti Kingdom. Oh where to begin... Pixel has hair that could hold a laundry basket with ease, Tablet's head is dominated by two towers of cyan hair, his sister Palette has gigantic neck-wings of the same color and Deskel, one of the bosses, uses his mustache as a set of arms.
  • The game Bayonetta is probably the exemplar of this trope. Not only is her hair ridiculously long, she uses it as her SOURCE OF CLOTHING, and controls it in such a way that it's a deadly weapon.
  • Ichiro Ohgami, from Sakura Wars, has hair that, unless cut, refuses to be anything but spiky. Fortunately, his hair isn't anywhere near as ridiculous as most of the examples of this trope.
  • Blood Elves. And since some of their hairstyles were copied and made available to humans and a couple other races, them too. But the Blood Elves will forever be the Children of the Anime Hair.
    • As will the female Gnomes, and they were there sooner!
    • One notable female draenei hairdo is so spiky, it can be hard to distinguish it from their actual horns.
  • In The Legend of Zelda, though pointed in the wrong direction, and too pixelized to tell in game
  • When Mega Man's helmet comes off, it's just slightly scuffed up. Proto Man, on the other hand...
    • Bass also has awesomesauce hair without his helmet.
    • Geo in Mega Man Star Force has a somewhat absurd crest with spikes that'd put your eye out. There's even a special gap in his helmet for it, even in Zerker form in 2. He gets different, but no less anime, hairstyles in the Saurian and Ninja forms.
  • Neku from The World Ends With You has pretty spiky hair which would probably be spikier if it weren't weighted down by his headphones.
  • The designers of Inazuma Eleven must have lots of fun with this trope since Shonen Hair, Multicoloured Hair and many others are in full effect.
  • Since the Rance Series has a large variety of girls, there are a large variety of hair styles as well. Kaloria from Rance VI has large Hair Antennae, Alkanese from Rance Quest has ridiculously ruffled long hair, and Sill in the games before Sengoku Rance had an pink afro.


Visual Novels

  • Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright possesses what could be classified as "hedgehog hair", with spikes that protrude behind his head. His wannabe double, Furio Tigre, has similar spikes on his head. (The red skin kinda gives him away, too.) Lampshaded in the second game, where Max Galactica dubs Phoenix "porcupine-head".
    • Somewhere in the third game, Phoenix comments that he has born with that spiky hairstyle when Maya asked about it.
    • The Anime Hair hardly ends there, either. Pearl has a big pretzel on the top of her head. Ron DeLite has a pair of cinnamon buns on the side of his head that sproing outward when he's upset (which is often). Detective Luke Atmey's hair looks like he shaved his head, broke a plate, took the biggest piece, spray-painted it bright yellow, and glued it to his head. Redd White and April May both have unnatural hair colors -- dark blue lavender and bright pink, respectively.
    • Apollo Justice Ace Attorney takes it farther, Daryan has a 'do that's oddly suggestive (he claims that it's a shark, but considering how it droops when he loses confidence, well...), Drew Misham's looks like half of its hair was frozen at an angle from its head, Wocky Kitaki has tricolored hair(an orange curl in the middle, two yellow spikes, and the rest is brown) and both Gavins' hair makes a G at the side while the lower part looks like a drill.
      • This trope also gets subverted in the case of Apollo's hairstyle: the directors state that his twin spikes aren't natural and he gels them very carefully every single morning. He even says at one point:

So I use a little hair gel, chill!

  • Fate Stay Night, with the Hound of Culann (see 'mythology') having blue hair, Archer having spiky white, Rider purple rapunzel hair and Gilgamesh looking like a DBZ reject.
    • Though in Archer's case it's a side effect of using projection magic and white hair isn't unnatural to begin with.
    • Note that Lancer has a blackish blue hair, a hair color that is mistaken by many people to be blue but was meant to be black. Type Moon uses this often, examples include Ciel, Sakura, and Rin (though hers is mistaken to be green), all of which are said to be black by Word of God. Rider was never human so she has a excuse.


Web Comics

  • In Gunnerkrigg Court, Red is quite annoyed to discover upon becoming a human that her hair lays flat. In her prior life as a fairy, she had shoulder-length hair that stuck straight up.
  • Karn, of Adventurers!, uses Hero Hair brand hair gel.
    • Massively lampshaded here.
  • On a less drastic note, many characters in Misfile have incredibly shiny hair. Lampshaded in this Crossover comic.
    • A more recent character, Logan, is a textbook example of Anime Hair.
  • Lance from Gold Coin Comics.
  • Jiro from Sakana has hair that looks like a shark fin.
  • Oasis from Sluggy Freelance sports some insanely large quadruple ponytails. Like her knives and assassin outfit, this hair style is seemingly regenerated every time she comes Back from the Dead.
    • Lampshaded in this strip.
  • Played with in Questionable Content, in Steve and Marten's first battle with Vespavenger, where Marten comments that his hair isn't spiky enough to convincingly pull off a battle-pose.
  • Hsin in Rhapsodies. Though in his case he just uses too much hair product.
  • Penny Arcade's main characters have very zero-G hair, but Gabe once had it styled to maximum spikiness.
  • Megatokyo: Largo's hair. As pointed out in one of the books, Solid Snake has a mullet, and Largo's hair seems to be as long in the opposite direction. Shirt Guy Dom comes in to point out that this is usually referred to as 'disdain for gravity.'
  • Casey and Andy. Andy's hair has this spike that sticks forward like a narwhal. At one point, the artist decided to revert to the really pointy former hairstyle, and had Andy invent a machine to make his hair pointier.
  • Cyanide & Happiness: Subverted in general, as nearly every character is drawn without hair at all. Parodied specifically in this strip.
  • Referenced by name in this strip of Umlaut House.
  • Homestuck: John's hair has been described as Bed Hair 2: Bed Harder. His Troll counterpart, Karkat takes that style Up to Eleven with some impressive Shonen Hair. Yet both of their hair styles are downright tame in comparasion to Gamzee, whose hair easily makes up a third of his body and bends and sticks in impossible ways.
  • El Goonish Shive has some rather odd hairstyles, although largely confined to the supporting cast, apart from Grace's enormous Hair Antennae. Noah has really long hair with Peek-a-Bangs and a ponytail that doesn't look entirely attached to his main hairdo, Vlad's hair has weird bits that stick up at the back despite having Rapunzel Hair (also bicolored hair; it's blond with black tips), Damien had a weird mullet-thing, Hedge's hair is basically a bunch of hedgehog spikes... the list goes on.
  • Nosfera from the web comic of the same name sports a mild example.
  • Mike, as well as several of the customers, in Mike: Bookseller.


Web Original

  • Ani-Mae, from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe has Anime Hair. Then again, she's the living incarnation of a Japanese cartoon character. Her hair is often neon cornflower blue, and spikey in the usual gravity-defying manner. And of course, she's got the Angst-fringe that always covers one eye.
  • Rob and Wyn from the web fiction serial Dimension Heroes, who seem to have the only gravity-defying hair in the whole series.
  • Tennyo of the Whateley Universe literally has anime hair, since she's stuck with the hair of Ryoko and can't cut it or even dye it.
  • Marona from Land Games actually ties her dress together with locks of her own hair.


Western Animation

  • Perfect Hair Forever parodies this trope by giving the Big Bad, Coiffio, ludicrously giant wavy hair that constantly changes color.
  • Mandy of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy has blond hair that forms two horns, as befitting of her devilish nature.
  • The eponymous character of Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius regularly receives flak from various people for his ice cream/fudge swirl of a head.
  • The Simpsons: Marge Simpson, anyone? She's technically eight-and-a-half feet tall with that blue beehive of hers.
    • There's also Bart and Lisa's "hair". In one episode, we discover that Marge cuts Lisa's and Bart's hair using templates (they look like spray paint stencils...).

Lisa: Yeah, um. The templates had a great run, but we want our hair to look like people hair.

  • Toph's hair-dome in Avatar: The Last Airbender; how does a blind tomboy who spits at personal hygiene maintain that? How?
    • I always guessed she just uses the dirt she never washed out of her hair to bend it into the right shape.
    • Look closer. It's not a dome, it's long hair held up in a bun with a headband and short bangs/fringe. This is most obvious in the episode when the Gaang dress up to enter the Earth King's party and she wears her hair down for the first (and only) time.
    • Also, Zuko's season-one ponytail thing looks... improbable at best.
  • The Real Ghostbusters. Egon Spengler. To this DAY, I'm trying to figure out how he got that curl... tube... thing.
    • The movie established that he wanted to drill a hole in his head. Presumably, he got as far as his hair before Peter could stop him.
  • Robin in the animated Teen Titans is given spiky, upright hair (which according to one waking-up sequence requres half a jar of gel). And let's not even get into Jinx's [dead link] hair.
  • Futurama's Fry has what is described as "horn hair". Although he can slick it down when he wants to, according to the episode with Eighties Guy.

That Guy: Hair gel?
Fry: No thanks. I make my own.

  • Cindy from the The Boondocks, whose hair bears a striking resemblance to Cammy's.
    • Don't forget Jazmine's hair-poofs.
  • Hak Fu from Jackie Chan Adventures has spiky red hair. But seeing as he's a parody of an anime character, it's to be expected.
  • Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World, where Pocahontas gets various crazy hairstyles during the song "Wait 'Til He Sees You".
  • In Code Lyoko, Odd Della Robbia has spiky blond hair with a purple spot in front. The prequel episode implies that it isn't naturally spiky (at least in the real world), but that he uses gel to keep it that way, inspired by his Lyoko avatar.
    • But it seems like the purple spot is natural, since it doesn't fade when he takes a shower, goes swimming, or, in one episode, is almost drowned by XANA.
  • Danny Phantom: Vlad Plasmius. Seriously, HOW does he style his hair like that? Does he just dump 300 L of hairgel onto his head?
    • Don't forget Dark Danny a.k.a. Dan Phantom. His hair is a FLAMING PONYTAIL for crying out loud. It's not just an effect, it actually sets a gas tank on fire.
      • Ember got dibs on the flaming ponytail before him, though.
        • And Skulker before her.
        • They did date, apparently...
    • Danny himself qualifies, too. He has a spiky, reverse mullet of some sort: business in the back, party in the front. Meanwhile, every other human (and many a ghost, even) on the show has varying degrees of perfectly normal hair you'd find in everyday life.
    • Sam has a pony tail that somehow stays upright and falls forward.
  • Freakazoid!'s Skunk Stripe hairdo.
  • Johnny Test sports spiky blond hair with orange-tipped highlights.
  • American Dragon: Jake Long: Similar hair can be found on Jake, only Jake's is black and green-tipped. Oh, and did I mention he keeps it in dragon form?
  • Dib's hair on Invader Zim is like a scythe blade, pointing back over his head. Possibly hereditary, since his dad has a similar hairstyle, except it's shaped more like a lightning bolt.
    • Well, we do see in one montage into the future well, kinda that his hair continues to grow longer, with more "lightning jaggies" showing up as he gets older.
    • Hell, look at Gaz's hair style, which looks like the open mouth of a crocodile. Weird hair must run in the family.
  • The title character in Aeon Flux, along with some minor characters.
    • Subtly lampshaded in one episode when Aeon accidentally gets her hair wet and it falls in her face. She has to comb it straight, indicating that she in fact makes an effort to make it look like that. At later points in the series she is again shown with straight hair.
  • When the Rowdyruff Boys first showed up to mess with The Powerpuff Girls, they had pretty normal hairstyles. But once Him resurrected them, in addition to removing their initial weakness, he made their hair grow out and spiked them up a bit. The girls' reaction upon seeing their new hairstyles, of course, is to laugh.

Brick: Stop laughing! What are you laughing at?
Blossom: (mockingly) Oh no, look who's back with mean hair!
Bubbles: (also mockingly) Oh, whatever shall we do?
Buttercup: (the same) How can we defeat their scary new hairdos?

  • Pretty much everyone in Trollz has this, except for Simon, the Big Bad, and Jasper, who USED to have an enormous afro. Then Amethyst cast a spell and removed his hair permanently.
  • The Doctor Who CG-animated special "Dreamland" took David Tennant's already-odd hairstyle and gave it a bit of an upgrade.
  • On Jimmy Two-Shoes, Jimmy has hair that sticks straight up in the front. Saffi and Jez, meanwhile, have their hair piled up high.
  • On KaBlam!!, Sniz has this green moehawk that needs A TON of hair gel to keep up.
    • Also, Henry's hair seems to be straight, curly, and spikey at the same time.
    • Larry, too. He's usually seen woth pretty messy red hair. He even complained about it in one episode.
  • In Exo Squad, the hairstyles of 22nd century Earth defy description. Random strips of hair are shaved off, and weird combinations of hairstyles exist (such as a mohawk/mullet), for both men and women!
  • Thundercats 2011 has an abundance of oddly-styled Multicolored Hair amongst its Catfolk protagonists, that's quite deliberately Animesque, like Lion-O's raspberry-red Shonen Hair mane, Wilykit's bright-red purple Skunk Striped Delinquent Hair, and her brother Wilykat's Idiot Hair.
  • Every character in Storm Hawks to some degree, most notably the main characters.


Real Life

  • Mohawks, bihawks and all other non-winged hawks.
  • The late Nineties and early 2000's was a time of rather bizarre hair. (For shorthand, the majority of the time *NSYNC was popular.) One of the more sedate was spiky peroxide-blond hair. Dying it unnatural colors like red, blue and green wasn't uncommon, and in general mens' hair got a little weird.
  • The Rupicola, also known as the cock-of-the-rock, is a bird that lives in tropical and subtropical rainforests whose bright orange crest nearly covers its entire face.
    • Pretty much every species of Bird of Paradise would count, too.
  • The competitors of any Beard and Mustache Championship, mainly in the freestyle category. The others are hilariously like a dog show for facial hair. http://www.worldbeardchampionships.com/
  • Andrew Jackson, in his $20 bill portrait.
  • Japanese female pro wrestler Bull Nakano. And people say the Polnareff / Benimaru / Paul Phoenix hairdo is impossible!
    • HABBEB IT!
  • How about hair that can stop a bullet? Briana Bonds, of Kansas City, Missouri, was shot in the back of the head (with a 40-cal bullet) by a man she'd been dating. Her hair weave protected her from anything more than slight bleeding. Check it out.
  • Emo/Scene boys and girls.
  • Ryan Conferido from Quest Crew has this... Sometimes.
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