This Week in Anime

A Parade of Pink Anime Girls

Steve
Because it looks rad! Column over. Thanks for coming.

There is a certain je ne sais quoi about pink hair in anime. If you pulled a rando off the street and asked them to doodle an anime character, I bet at least a 50% chance of a pink coiffure atop that dome. It's an indelible part of the medium.

I was trying to rack my brain for what my first pink exposure was, but I couldn't come up with anything definite. It could have been Chibi-Moon, so let's go with that.

Here's a fun Steve fact: pink was my favorite color as a kid. It's still up there for me, but I distinctly remember gravitating towards girls' toys because they got to be the best color.

I think it's interesting (maybe even constructive) to look at pink hair as a trend—possibly one with a single origin point—that has branched out over the decades into several different phenotypes. Like the evolutionary tree. And since we're on the subject of Sailor Moon, let's look at magical girls. You kinda can't escape how gendered pink is, so it ends up being part and parcel with a genre explicitly aimed at little girls. If you picture a magical girl protagonist in your mind, they'll probably be pink.

It's visual shorthand for "this is a magical girl, and she is the leader." Take Precure, for example. This is a compilation (from user OliveMountainYT over at Reddit) of all the pink Pretty Cures over the years. This image is four years out of date, so there are even more of them now—a veritable battalion of pink.

It's the rosier equivalent of the red ranger in a sentai series—a familiar character archetype and easy to build on.

The pink-haired boy is a rarer breed due to the aforementioned arbitrarily gendered nature of the color, but they deserve a spot in this column. My favorite example is Jiro from Concrete Revolutio, who rocks a very hot pink and looks dashing while doing so.

Still, there certainly are not as many examples of pink men as there should be. I also appreciate characters who prove that pink doesn't have to sit on one side or the other of the gender binary. Astolfo from Fate/Apocrypha is probably the poster child for gender non-conforming pink.

Another recent point for nonbinary pink hair goes to Kiui from Jellyfish Can't Swim At Night, an imperfect show that nevertheless nailed their character's arc.
Kiui's also a rare example where it's canon that a character dyes their hair pink, instead of it being naturally unnatural. In Kiui's case, it's a thematically relevant color change, too, because dying their hair pink relates to their journey of discovering and expressing their queer identity, in defiance of however society perceives them. Kiui rules.

I guess I'm partial to pink and queer characters because the protagonist of my favorite anime ever is pink and queer. I am, of course, talking about Utena, but I'm more specifically talking about the butch short-haired Utena from the movie, which is how I was introduced to her. It's an iconic look.

The Utena movie also confirms that your hair color determines the color of the motor vehicle you transform into. The more you know.

That's what I did! Even if you don't enjoy and/or understand it, I can guarantee an unforgettable 87 minutes.

Utena is also a good segue into another pink-haired phenotype from my thesis: leading lady pink. Do you need a female protagonist (magical girls not included)? Do you need a main love interest for your male protagonist? Why not make her hair pink? You certainly won't regret making her hair pink.

I'll admit that this is a broad category, but to be fair, my thesis is a work in progress, and there's a lot of pink hair out there. Yoshino from Sakura Quest? Pink. Chitose from Girlish Number? Also pink. Kobayashi? Salmon is a shade of pink. Nazuna? Okay, hers is pretty grey, but there's enough pink in there to count.

Some pinks are pinker than others. When I think about a character who embodies the spirit of pink hair, one girl who instantly springs to mind is Nadeshiko from Laid-Back Camp. Now that is pink right there.

I'd call that a drastic improvement. An even better question is, what do I do with Link from The Legend of Zelda? He only has pink hair in his sprite for A Link to the Past, but I still have to count it. Taking stock of other recent leading ladies, I don't believe we can ignore Bocchi's impact on the public image of pink.

A solid choice. Although Bocchi the Rock! is no slouch in the "older pink-haired guitarist with personality issues" department.

Bocchi's real innovation is turning pink into a cognito-hazard. If you put blue and yellow cubes next to any pink blob, people are going to see Bocchi now. That's a terrible power they've wrought.

And speaking of the dark side, Pink Subversion is another phenotype I'd like to posit. Because as pink hair became synonymous with cuteness and spunkiness, it was inevitable that artists would begin to use that color to disarm their audiences. Take, for instance, Elfen Lied. I don't think that opening salvo would have had as much cultural impact if Lucy's bright shock of pink hair weren't visible beneath that helmet.

Yuno is a perfect example! The power of a pink yandere was so great that Sakae Esuno copied her, hair and all, into Big Order. Hey, if it ain't broke...
We can see this seep into later series and become more routine. Akudama Drive's Doctor even has rose-colored glasses to match.

Absolutely true on all accounts. With highlights becoming more prevalent in anime character designs, I think we have to take those into account when defining pink characters. Wonder Egg Priority's unique spin on magical girls, for instance, doesn't have an obvious "pink one," but Rika does sport a single pink highlight. That's gotta count for something.

Pink hair isn't going away, either. When I first started researching for this column, I assumed that there would be fewer pink characters as time went on. I mean, all fads come and go. But pink hair sure has some longevity. And it's not like it's been relegated to obscure series only. Aira from last year's blockbuster DAN DA DAN is loud, pink, and proud.

Anon from BanG Dream!: It's MyGO!!!!! is another hilarious modern innovation on the pink archetype. She looks like a typical girls' band anime protagonist, but she's a menace to society, and all the better for it.

I also love when pink is used to accent the retro-ness of a character design. Live from Mayonaka Punch has one of my favorite designs from last year. There is just a timelessness to it.

This show wasn't very good at all, but Kisara from Engage Kiss looks like she was ripped out of a teenager's 2004 DeviantArt gallery. That's a fine vintage.

Lol, and I didn't even think of delving into VTubers, an anime-adjacent scene that is awash with pink. Something tells me this shade of hair isn't going anywhere.

While you're out and about with your lover, admiring the roses literally and figuratively, don't forget the real reason for the season: throwing ourselves one by one into the gaping, pink maw of Nadeshiko The Devourer.