Now we all understand that when it comes to video games, rules of normalcy can be bent, especially when it comes to character appearances.

It's possible to have female characters with large breasts and they won't fall-over every time they try to stand up, or to have male characters that carry huge swords that are taller than them even if they look like a skinny high school student rather than a muscle-man type.

It's kind of the unspoken rule that people should just go with what's in the game and just pay attention to the story and the rest of the game.

But I've noticed that one particular theme occurs a lot, being hair styles and their colors, and that brings me to the one particular hair color: Silver

Now automatically the idea of silver hair is "cool" to most people. Silver isn't something that can be seen in real life except when you've become old are just really stressed. Silver hair has that appeal to people that it's uncommon and a person with silver hair must be something other than a normal human being to have that kind of hair. And anything not normal or uncommon is considered "cool".

With that thought already in our brains, when we see someone with silver hair, we already deem them someone "cool" within the game.


Perhaps the silver hair has been done just a little too much. Silver-hair has now become more of a stereotype than anything else really. And when you actually analyze most of above characters, they're arguably not as cool in the game story despite their appearances.

I suppose over-all what I'm saying is that utilizing silver-hair isn't bad, but now that almost every game company has at least one character with silver-hair, why not give the natural hair colors some more spotlight, eh?

It has sort of become the Japanese RPG equivalent of a hook and an eyepatch yeah, and it is the easiest way to identify any villains/anti-heroes early on in the story haha. And yes it probably should be retired. Along with all the other cliches and the overall extreme conservatism that has ridden JRPG's for the biggest part of this decade.

Silver hair is a stereotype for characters who aren't as cool as they may appear?

Eh...

Well, I haven't paid it much mind. I'm not particularly concerned with the hair color of gaming characters. Silver hair may be a tad overdone, but I don't see it as any sort of problem.

Thanks for the comments guys. I really appreciate knowing that my threads aren't just taking up space on this sites ^^

I'm not saying that I don't like silver-hairs, but characters I've seen with silver hair (non-game related as well) are considered cool, so I just find it hard to believe it's a huge coincidence that cool character happen to have silver hair, therefore my argument is that does having silver hair make them cool?

...Maybe that should have been in my original post...

In Japan, the hair colors that characters are given have some symbolism to them.

Silver or white hair tends to mean that the character is going to be extremely powerful.