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View Full Version : Why is anime hair always wild and nuts? Do your D&D(or other) follow this?



randomhero00
2011-01-27, 05:36 PM
Mine often do unless I'm playing an elf of course. My characters often have spiky, mohawk like hair with different shades depending on character (druid = green mohawk).

What's the deal with this? I should also point out its usually male anime characters that have spiky, mussy hair. Females get there's done all nicely. The closest one can hope for is a samurai like pony tail.

edit: and now this is making me want to make a character with short, combed hair. hehe

Biffoniacus_Furiou
2011-01-27, 05:38 PM
This spell (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/continualFlame.htm) can and often should be cast on a character's head/hair.

Edit: Get it cast Heightened to 9th level and you don't ever again have to worry about magical darkness effects. At standard rates that should be only 1580 gp.

KillianHawkeye
2011-01-27, 05:40 PM
No, because we don't play games based on anime.

Blackfang108
2011-01-27, 05:44 PM
No, because we don't play games based on anime.

Pretty much this in my games, too.

We're all Anime fans, but we tend to play D&D as more of a Western-Style fantasy.

In the 50 or so odd characters I've seen over the years, I think I've only seen one or two with spiky hair, and one of those was after Lightning damage. :smallbiggrin:

Granted, most of my characters tend to wear hats of some sort, or (in the most recent case) not have any hair at all. (4e Goliath)

Tengu_temp
2011-01-27, 05:47 PM
Always? Wrong. There's a lot of anime where character have plausible hair, both in terms of colors and laws of physics.

Pretty much all the games I'm playing or DMing can be described as anime-like, but my characters tend to have realistic hair - one of them has purple hair, but that's a side-effect of her special abilities. The only of my settings where abnormal hair is natural is the Nanoha game.

randomhero00
2011-01-27, 05:50 PM
This spell (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/continualFlame.htm) can and often should be cast on a character's head/hair.


I really laughed hard, lol thanks. And I'm so going to do that now...

But as to the 2nd question, does anyone know why anime artists always give their characters unkempt hair?

Loki Eremes
2011-01-27, 05:50 PM
Mine often do unless I'm playing an elf of course. My characters often have spiky, mohawk like hair with different shades depending on character (druid = green mohawk).

What's the deal with this? I should also point out its usually male anime characters that have spiky, mussy hair. Females get there's done all nicely. The closest one can hope for is a samurai like pony tail.

edit: and now this is making me want to make a character with short, combed hair. hehe


GREEN MOHAWK YOU SAY?

http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/1842/greenmohawk.jpg


And... its not only you, I think Slayers is the responsible.
I generally tend to imagine D&D world anime style.

AND I PITTY THE FOOL WHO DOESNT

Tvtyrant
2011-01-27, 05:51 PM
Any players of mine who pick gnomes or elves tend to have green or purple hair that is spikey, so yeah it comes up. Humans tend to be normal, and Dwarfs all seem to have red hair and scottish accents.

shadow_archmagi
2011-01-27, 05:54 PM
my characters wear hats exclusively

Tengu_temp
2011-01-27, 05:54 PM
But as to the 2nd question, does anyone know why anime artists always give their characters unkempt hair?

Because it makes the characters more distinct and easy to recognize. And, as I said before, a lot of anime does not do that.


And... its not only you, I think Slayers is the responsible.
I generally tend to imagine D&D world anime style.


Slayers is mandatory watching for any fantasy RPG players. Especially those who treat their games way too seriously.

Grumman
2011-01-27, 05:56 PM
My characters tend to have ordinary, brown hair. The only exceptions have been drow (who have naturally white hair), a warforged, and Ashley, the escaped subject of a Mad ScienceMagic experiment.

Scarlet-Devil
2011-01-27, 05:56 PM
Lately I've been playing a lot of exotic characters with more unusual hair/eye/skin colours, but in the past I've stuck to more realistic, worldly looking characters. One exception though, is a bard I played very briefly who was designed with the quirk of giving himself strange hairstyles; every day he would use prestidigitation to colour his hair something bizarre and style it differently.

Continual Flame is brilliant by the way :smallbiggrin:.

VeisuItaTyhjyys
2011-01-27, 05:58 PM
Kind of unrelated, but I don't get why the "dwarf=all sorts of Scottish" thing took off as hard as it did.

Frozen_Feet
2011-01-27, 06:00 PM
Wild hairstyles make characters easier to distinquish. In cartoons laws of physics aren't getting in the way, so the artists can let their inner fashion designers and hair stylist run free.

However, it's not "always"; anime is a varied media, there are characters with perfectly normal and well-kept hair. It's not just anime, either; plenty of Western animation has equally ludicrous hair styles and outfits.

In less visual media like roleplaying games, such things tend to matter less; there aren't rules for getting your dye just right for the same reasons each game with knights doesn't have detailed heradlry section for making your own coat of arms. It's not likely to come up.

dsmiles
2011-01-27, 06:01 PM
Slayers is mandatory watching for any fantasy RPG players. Especially those who treat their games way too seriously.

But...but...roleplaying is SERIOUS BUSINESS!! :smalltongue:

AslanCross
2011-01-27, 06:02 PM
Kind of unrelated, but I don't get why the "dwarf=all sorts of Scottish Vikings" thing took off as hard as it did.

Fixed. I honestly don't know where that started either. (Yes, I know Vikings didn't really wear horned helmets, but lots of people still think they do.)

While I do draw my D&D characters in anime style (http://aslancross.deviantart.com/gallery/8840905), that's more because that's how I draw and not because I think D&D looks like that. And even my male characters usually don't have Cloud Strife/Trowa Barton hair.

EDIT: For the record, the "Sol Vicious" in that gallery is based on Sol Badguy, and isn't really an original character.

Knaight
2011-01-27, 06:06 PM
It really depends on the setting, but usually no. If my characters have hair that resembles anime hair, its because it was a realistic anime, at least in that regard. However, hair is usually a fairly trivial trait as far as I'm concerned, meaning that when I GM or play everyone else is able to picture my character however they want in that regard.

There has been a grand total of one major exception. An NPC (Dangerous recurring antagonist) in one of my most high magic games was a powerful magical spirit that could take corpses for a body. She was under the command of a necromancer, and as such was hidden away in a cave to keep her identity secret, and got into a habit of tweaking corpse bodies to make them look better. In some cases, this meant rather ridiculous hair.

Yora
2011-01-27, 06:08 PM
I like me some anime style in my RPG.

But that's mostly Princess Mononoke and Moriboto, those characters all have reasonable haircuts.

dsmiles
2011-01-27, 06:12 PM
Granted, when I DM, it's all Slayers-esque comedy/action style, but I never once envisioned (nor described) my characters as fitting either the "anime" tag or the "dungeonpunk" tag. My characters all kind of fall under the "classical fantasy" or "steampunk" tags (depending on the setting).

Cerlis
2011-01-27, 06:24 PM
indeed, its cus anime is based off manga. Manga is usually black and white with a few special editions and covers color printed

So if every character had normal black hair (a high percent, if not majority, of anime characters who live in the "real world" are Japanese) then it would be very hard to distinguish and icononize them. But this character has black spikey hair, while that one has a black poneytail. that one has spikey hair too but its blue (so white on the black and white page).

Indeed many have "normal" hairstyles that still are a bit icononize and exagerated.

Like the rich prick from Yu-gi-oh. you can tell how his hair is just normal straight long hair, but cus of the artstyle its all pointed in the back and the bangs, making it iconic hair.

Knaight
2011-01-27, 06:27 PM
I like me some anime style in my RPG.

But that's mostly Princess Mononoke and Moriboto, those characters all have reasonable haircuts.

If I were going to lift anything from those it would be cultures and characters. Moribito has an absolutely brilliant setting, Mononoke has a very nice character conflict with several very well characterized roles.

Ravens_cry
2011-01-27, 06:34 PM
If I were going to lift anything from those it would be cultures and characters. Moribito has an absolutely brilliant setting, Mononoke has a very nice character conflict with several very well characterized roles.
Maybe not in D&D, but Porco Rosso, and to lesser extent, other works based on the Interwar period stir my creative juices something crazy. You got air pirates, mercenaries, and military men and woman, all flying in planes that still showed signs of individual achievement.

Czin
2011-01-27, 06:41 PM
Mine often do unless I'm playing an elf of course. My characters often have spiky, mohawk like hair with different shades depending on character (druid = green mohawk).

What's the deal with this? I should also point out its usually male anime characters that have spiky, mussy hair. Females get there's done all nicely. The closest one can hope for is a samurai like pony tail.

edit: and now this is making me want to make a character with short, combed hair. hehe

Anime hair typically looks like it would require hair gel or something else to get it to stick.

In reality, if you don't maintain your hair for a long period of time, it just frays, cracks, and just generally gets messy. Going on a long adventure away from civilization would probably give you a super bed-head if your character hasn't been taking care of their hair if my hiking experiences have taught me anything. It would most certainly not give you shonen hair (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShonenHair). Of course, prestidigitation is probably enough to maintain one's hair (health, probably not hairstyle though), and thus obsoleting the need for any actual work to maintain your hygiene. As for keeping your hairstyle? Well...your character had start practicing with that brush and mirror because I have yet to come across any spell that can keep that maintained (shapeshifting spells being excluded for obvious reasons.)

SuperFish
2011-01-27, 07:59 PM
The only of my settings where abnormal hair is natural is the Nanoha game.

This sentence makes me incredibly happy and incredibly jealous.

Scarlet-Devil
2011-01-27, 08:23 PM
Anime hair typically looks like it would require hair gel or something else to get it to stick.

In reality, if you don't maintain your hair for a long period of time, it just frays, cracks, and just generally gets messy. Going on a long adventure away from civilization would probably give you a super bed-head if your character hasn't been taking care of their hair if my hiking experiences have taught me anything. It would most certainly not give you shonen hair (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShonenHair). Of course, prestidigitation is probably enough to maintain one's hair (health, probably not hairstyle though), and thus obsoleting the need for any actual work to maintain your hygiene. As for keeping your hairstyle? Well...your character had start practicing with that brush and mirror because I have yet to come across any spell that can keep that maintained (shapeshifting spells being excluded for obvious reasons.)

Blast it man, there needs to be some kind of rule against linking to TV tropes :smallmad:; it's too hard to stop clicking on links once you're there :smallsigh:.

Agrippa
2011-01-28, 02:48 AM
Slayers is mandatory watching for any fantasy RPG players. Especially those who treat their games way too seriously.

Off topic question Tengu_temp. If Slayers counts as mandatory viewing for D&D what would count as mandatory reading? The Barsoom series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barsoom) and the Song of Roland were listed among suggested reading material in First Edition. Could you give me a list of your own?

Aemoh87
2011-01-28, 02:50 AM
I historically have targeted characters with anime hair first. Idk why my monsters hate them so much, but they do.

dsmiles
2011-01-28, 02:59 AM
Off topic question Tengu_temp. If Slayers counts as mandatory viewing for D&D what would count as mandatory reading? The Barsoom series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barsoom) and the Song of Roland were listed among suggested reading material in First Edition. Could you give me a list of your own?

TT doesn't seem to be around, but I'll give you my take on it (short version):
The Belgariad, The Mallorean, The Cleric Quintet, The Wheel of Time series, The Black Magician trilogy, The Dwarves series, and The Orcs series. I'm currently reading The Bartimaeus Trilogy, and while not essential for DnD, it's a good read.

Eldan
2011-01-28, 04:46 AM
After having done it, I think every D&D player should at least read one or two Lankhmar stories (not more of them, they get a bit samey pretty soon).

A barbarian and a thief travel through the world, raiding temples, plundering dungeons, defeating wizards and slaying monsters. A very clear influence on D&D.

starwoof
2011-01-28, 04:55 AM
I always draw elves with crazy anime hair, usually a variation of a brightly colored mullet. I never play elves though since I can't stand having a constitution lower than 18. If I did you can bet that they would have weeeeird hair.

My Shadowrun character has crazy hair, but hey, it's Shadowrun.

pilvento
2011-01-28, 10:14 AM
for some reason bald characters never end well in our campaing so now i belong to the anime hair stile group too.

Tengu_temp
2011-01-28, 11:00 AM
This sentence makes me incredibly happy and incredibly jealous.

If it makes you feel any better, that game is on hiatus for a few months now. But it will be back.


Off topic question Tengu_temp. If Slayers counts as mandatory viewing for D&D what would count as mandatory reading?

Discworld.