Nichijou

[Hathen]

This is just a normal clip from an espisode, but this one alone shows how crazy this anime is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApKE01R9DyY

Ugh, that was more annoying than funny. Nice, fluid, simple animation was a joy to look at, but goddamn that girl was grating.

For the record, I liked Azumanga Daioh. I haven't watched much of any other slice of life show but that clip just tells me to stay away. I watched Lucky Star and thought pretty much only the Konata and Akira stuff in it worked, because they were the only ones with anything interesting/funny to say without being annoying. The rest of it tried to be about normal girls and felt nothing like that, because the characters felt more like caricatures/archetypes than people. Stupid hair colors don't help when you're trying to make a slice-of-life.

[ZeronHitaro]

This is just a normal clip from an espisode, but this one alone shows how crazy this anime is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApKE01R9DyY

Ugh, that was more annoying than funny. Nice, fluid, simple animation was a joy to look at, but goddamn that girl was grating.

For the record, I liked Azumanga Daioh. I haven't watched much of any other slice of life show but that clip just tells me to stay away. I watched Lucky Star and thought pretty much only the Konata and Akira stuff in it worked, because they were the only ones with anything interesting/funny to say without being annoying. The rest of it tried to be about normal girls and felt nothing like that, because the characters felt more like caricatures/archetypes than people. Stupid hair colors don't help when you're trying to make a slice-of-life.

Honestly I don't think the hair color argument holds water anymore. Maybe back in the 90's or even early 2000's when color hair was more a "punk"-ish thing. But these days it's really not that unusual to see a teenager or two of relatively "normal" status sporting anything from green to purple just on a typical visit to the local mall.

[Hathen]

It matters when the entire cast looks like this, especially when I'm supposed to believe that this is a Japanese school. The majority of people still don't go through the trouble of dying their hair or wearing color contacts. You don't see me batting an eye at Yomi in Azumanga because I'll buy that she is the only one among them that decided to dye her hair in some capacity. Also because of the limitations of budget in most anime shows, the eye/hair colors do not look the least bit like what hair or eyes look like when they've been dyed/highlighted/covered by contacts. Even if we ignore all that, the characters never point out/discuss it. The only reason that the characters have features covering every part of the rainbow is to save lazy artists from actually putting any effort into sensible character design/was done simply to make the characters more marketable, and you know it.

[Dice]

I don't really like the argument, but I see what you mean.  I thought the same; she was designed in a way for the sake of being the peacock of the bunch, essentially. 

[Annubis]

I'm supposed to believe that this is a Japanese school. The majority of people still don't go through the trouble of dying their hair or wearing color contacts.

In manga/anime, pink, neon-green and aqua blue are all natural hair color.

[Hathen]

The problem isn't the fact that anime has crazy hair colors, it's that it has crazy hair colors in this setting. I'm not going to complain about Magic Knight Rayearth having characters like it does. I know the difference between fact and fiction; do you know the difference between authentic and inauthentic fiction?

I don't really like the argument, but I see what you mean.  I thought the same; she was designed in a way for the sake of being the peacock of the bunch, essentially.  

It's worth noting that the orange-color is probably the most popular highlight/dye in hair color in East Asia, which helps it along. Purple, red, blue, etc highlights exist, but are incredibly rare, let alone an entire head full of that color. Last time I remember seeing blue hair was someone doing that for a concert, and that was a wig...it takes an absurd amount of time to dress up for that sort of thing, so it's not something you'd see at school every day.

It just doesn't match with the idea that these are supposed to be normal people doing mundane, everyday things, unless you have a character who has a trait of being purposefully outlandish (See: Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter for example).

The funny thing is, these hair colors would feel out of place even if this was all taking place in an American school...it fits even less in a Japanese school. God forbid if Singapore ever gets a animation industry, that would be even more laughable. Even the kids doing something as simple as bleaching their hair around Asian countries are associated with rebellion...taken to its extreme, it's stereotyped to being kids that tend to ditch school or join gangs and the like (Gyaru culture, for instance). Yet, the characters portrayed in these stories tend to be pretty mild-mannered, good kids. Actually, GTO nails what you might see at a typical East Asian school pretty well.

So you see, it's not the outlandish hair colors that annoy me...it's the setting it takes place in and the way it's handled.

[Kevadu]

You are thinking waaaaaaaaaaaaay too hard about this.

The hair colors don't mean anything.  It's not supposed to be died or anything else.  These are highly stylized characters that don't look particularly realistic in any way, so why are you freaking out just because they don't have realistic hair colors?  If you were to suddenly plop these characters into a realistic setting their bizarre proportions would be far more disconcerting than their hair colors, and yet you seem perfectly fine with that.  But you then go and write four paragraphs about how their hair colors are unrealistic.  To me that just seems like a completely arbitrary thing to single out.

In short, the hair colors are not intended to be realistic nor are they intended to carry any meaning.  This doesn't bother me in the slightest and I'm not sure why it bothers you so much.

[Hathen]

They're supposed to be representations of actual high school students. Where the line is drawn for each person is obviously different- I'm simply explaining why stupid hair and eye colors are irritating to me for this particular genre, which is based in trying to make you laugh in relatable real-life occurrences.

[ZeronHitaro]

They're supposed to be representations of actual high school students. Where the line is drawn for each person is obviously different- I'm simply explaining why stupid hair and eye colors are irritating to me for this particular genre, which is based in trying to make you laugh in relatable real-life occurrences.

Personally I'd say you're expecting too much of the genre. Expecting "slice-of-life" to hold to reality's standards in Japan is about the same as expecting American "reality tv" to have real people rather than over dramatized archetypes.

I'd say more directly "weird hair color" in SOL equates in the comparison to the "vast overuse of makeup" in RTV.

[Hathen]

I don't think it's unreasonable when GTO, School Rumble, and Azumanga Daioh all keep pretty well to reality in this regard, though I guess the first in the list is arguable for the SOL genre. The latter two are undoubtedly part of it though.

Anyway, I generally wouldn't drop a show just because of that, it just doesn't make any good impressions. More important than the actual designs, to me it says a lot about the philosophy the artist decided to adopt when creating the manga/show.

[Kevadu]

But the manga (where the actual character designs were made) was in black and white!  There was no 'philosophy' in place here...

[Hathen]

What? Even most light novels (Haruhi, Full Metal Panic, etc) have their characters in color in covers or promotional art just fine.

[Kevadu]

Covers and occasional special pages will have color, yes, but the original magazine serialization is entirely black and white.  Those things only come later.  And are you seriously arguing that the artist is relying on color to distinguish the characters when 99% of the time they're in black and white?

[Hathen]

I don't interpret it as the artist needing to use different colors to code their characters (Though sometimes that's the case as well), I interpret it as an artist not bothering to keep the premise in mind when designing the characters. For me, earnesty is a lot of what makes up SOL; the hair color thing is just one factor of it. God forbid I actually pay attention to what they put on the screen/page.

Like I said, it's not a make or break point for me- in my original post it was a pretty minor complaint anyway. I simply elaborated. My main complaint was that the scene shown wasn't funny.

It actually goes back to the whole earnesty thing. The scene is about some girl acting stupid while the principal inexplicably performs wrestling moves on a stray deer. Compare that to, say, a cockroach running free in the classroom in Azumanga or the Strawberry Marshmellow cast continuously annoying Nobue at her part-time job.

[ZeronHitaro]

Personally I think Ric chose a bad scene; then again by my personal tastes nearly anything with Yuuko centralized is bad simply because the character's over reactions annoy me and her segments tend to go on for way too long.

If I were to highlight the series I would say anything involving the "backstory" behind the Wooden Cubes, Professor/Nano scenes, and pretty much anything and everything involving Sakamoto are the best things to show off the story's ability to be zany yet heartwarming with more than a few traces of nonsequitor craziness.

Like Nano freaking out when a friend comes over (as she already has a paranoia complex about being a robot and people thinking she's weird) and trying to keep their local talking cat from talking.

And no one can deny they've at least freaked out their pet once in a similar manner.