Silver Hair: Is it Over-rated?

Fusionist

Fusionist

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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.

Here are some examples from just the Final Fantasy series:


FFVII: Sephiroth

sephiroth-t.png


FFVIII: Ultimecia

9941461.jpg


FFIX: Kuja

Kuja.jpg


FFX: Yunalesca

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FFX-2: Baralei

Baralai.jpg


FFVII Advent Children: Yazoo, Kadaj, and Loz

AC_Kadaj-Yazoo-Loz.jpg



FF Origins: Emperor of Palamecia

Palamecia_fmv.jpg


And other games...


Kingdom Hearts: Riku

rik.jpg


Kingdom Hearts: Ansem

kh-78.jpg


KHII in General:

461654866_c08ec53c55.jpg


Devil May Cry 3: Virgil and Dante

bestoriginalsongs_dmc3.jpg


Legend of Dragoon: Lloyd

lod-lloyd.jpg


Star Ocean 3: Peppita

Pepittarossetti.jpg



(And damned if I can name every silver-haired character in video games; those are just from the games I actually played. But anyways...)
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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?
 
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I hadn't noticed tbh. When it comes to hair all I ever notice is the bizarre styles. I guess it's just another hair colour in a fantasy game to me like blonde or brown. I don't really pay attention to these things

Crazy hairstyles however I do. When I saw Seymours big hair, I just knerw he was gunna be an arse. And when I saw Yunalexca I shit myself :wacky:
 
Hmm, I'm not sure the creators are trying to give off that impression that silver-haired characters are "cool". It just so happens that they used silver for one of their characters...same with blue, green, red, purple, yellow, black, etc. I don't give it that much thought to be honest, as I really don't think there's any special meaning behind it. That's a very good insight though, I'll give you that.

Damn busy server message...

Anyway, I was going to add that I don't view silver-haired as being overrated. xD Honestly, I"ve seen more green-haired characters than I have silver-haired ones. It all depends on how many games players have played and if they view the same thing. Personally, I just don't have anything against silver hair in general.
 
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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.
 
I always thought that Kuja and Yunalesca's hair had more of a lavander tint to them as opposed to silver. Palamecia's has more of a blue tint. Ansem, Vergil and Dante's all look more white to me than silver, but yeah. Just my opinion. I actually am quite fond of the silvery hair on some characters. Also, the only reason why Kadaj, Yazoo and Loz have silver hair is because they're Sephiroth remnants, so that was an indefinite given. You can't really add them, seeing as they all embody some part of Sephiroth.
 
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.
 
i think the use silver hair for bad guys because it makes them look even more evil and when it is used for good guys such as Dante, Virgil and Nero is because it gives them the look of being bad ass and awesum
 
Eh, the whole silver-haired motif is sort of annoying to me, tbh. I like realistic appearances in video games and anime, however rare that may be. Exaggerations on certain features probably led to me not favoring that character as much, and so as far as the silver-haired characters go, I don't like most of them. It's probably not because of their hair (seeing as how I still like Riku and Baralai), but I think these companies could afford to tune down on the crazy styles and all that. I want something innovative, damnit! xD
 
To be honest, regarding Sephiroth and Riku I couldn't see it any colour other than silver, but silver hair in Japan is like the big thing for games and animes...especially the animes. Hair colour doesn't bother that much though, unless its a really stupid colour...and I only just noticed that both Dante's and Nero's hair are more white in DMC4 o_O
 
Overrated probably isn't the right term for it. As it's been said it's more of a JRPG cliché with those with white/silver hair being 90% of the time either a villain, badass or associated with the games resident elf-like race.

Usually it's probably all three.
 
My friend and I have a theory that it's all because of the wig industry. He's always trying to cosplay some character with white hair, and he is naturally brown-haired, so no amount of bleach is going to fix that. Therefore, he always has to buy a white wig.
 
I think hair color is an interesting thing. For most people, only one hair color really suits a person. Brunettes going blonde rarely work out well, for example. I'm not a fan of silver hair when its forced... but for some characters it really couldn't be anything else.

Was two guests reading this thread. Thanks GoogleSpiders
 
people that dye there hair silver imho are usually narrow-minded and easily led often following some silly idea they or there mates had thinking "Sephiroth has it, it must be cool!" only to end up looking like a dufus with horribly coloured hair that makes them look like a giant rag-dolly :P
 
I'll add a couple more silver-haired video game characters.

Magus, Chrono Trigger: http://www.gamedepiction.com/media/ct-magus1.jpg

chaos, Xenosaga: http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q258/tiki81/Xenosaga/chaos20xeno3.jpg

Actually, there are quite a few of silverhaired folk in the Xenogears/Xenosaga continuity.

I'm actually not too sure if I see a pattern concerning the silverhairedness in video games. Square-Enix definitely seems to use them as a villain motif, but in general I think that in video games/anime in general it's more of a design feature more than anything.
 
It's the silver hair that make a character cool,but it's the character who makes the silverhair look cool.
I like silver hair on characters but I adore it only when the character is cool.Yes,sometimes it is overrated by many cause they think that someone is awesome for their hair...Such a stupidy that exists around the world.But what can we say.Many characters lack originality,like I see many silver-haired characters are usually the bad guy.What's with that,I didn't know there was a rule like that.
 
hehe i wouldnt call it silver hair, id call it gray and i would recomend colouring it.
This seems to be quite a common trait in FF games i cant think of examples of it being in other games. Usually the person in question is too young to have a full head of grey hair, maybe its meant to make them look more sinister, i dunno.
Either way i cant say it bothers me, even when i first played VII i didnt think anything odd about a man with long gray hair. Its a video game, i expect things to be different.
 
Silver, or greyish white...is a realistic hair-color. None of the "silver" haired people have hair that looks metallic imo.

Hey maybe Sephy had a midlife crisis ..well which he did...and that is why he has old man hair? :awesome:

Now if you said it's blue..or green...then that wouldn't make any sense at all.
 
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