All the colors of the spectrum
homogeneity & fascism create the former.
self expression is often trampled upon. And it won’t change any time soon.
Tis why I’m in a hurry to emigrate.
I think it’s like with birds? Like if you can see further into the colour spectrum a black bird suddenly has colourful plumage. Maybe if you’re in a cartoon universe you can see more colours
Bocchi, is that you?
A testament to character design.
I don’t know how accurate it is, but I heard a compelling explanation:
In Western animation, character models are generally more cartoonish and extreme, so it’s easy to tell them apart. In anime, characters tend to be more realistically proportioned and homogenous, which makes them much harder to distinguish. Crazy hairstyles and colors help make the characters easily distinguishable.
“Realistically proportioned”
Like it or not, this is what peak male performance looks like
Unrealistic Male Body Standards SMH
Average Yaoi Anatomy 🥀
Ok, but that’s a pretty unusual art style for an anime.
Yeah, that’s why I said “tend”. There are plenty of exceptions but they are exceptions.
Search “crowd Japan”. No a single of those hair colors.
It is becoming a bit easier to express individuality in Japan, but that definitely does not apply to most people working a corporate job. Any given picture of a crowded Japanese street that indicates rush hour will have a bunch of people in suits/etc with standard hair. Off hours or in the bigger cities there might be a more interesting sample.
There is brown however, so the meme is still technically inaccurate.
Yeah, it looks very much like that picture, at least in any crowd I’ve seen. Japanese society is pretty uptight about visually standing out too much. It’s all relegated to specific locations or events. Comiket is one example, because the many attending cosplayers are impossible to spot outside of the actual location (unless you count their luggage). Compared to similar events in europe, most of which are way smaller, you’ll see extravagantly dressed people with bright hair colors in a large radius and on public transport.
From what I’ve read, many schools have or had in the past dress code requirements requiring the students hair to be black.
That’s how you know who the important characters are.
Same with clothes. Japan average fashion is very gray.