The Twelve Kingdoms Forum

I've always been a bit confused about Youko's hair. Was it red to begin with or was she always dying her red hair a different red?

it was always red,even though not as the bright red as she got now.
she dy'ed it when she was on the run with yuka back then

I think youko's hair at first is black. Then its become red gradually in hourai...The anime never show this part though. I remember i read it from the novel

Her hair was red in Japan, but when she wore braids it looked darker. Also, it was redder on the ends than it was close to the scalp (normal with sun-washing - my hair is the same way) When she arrived in Kou her "shell" came off and her hair turned bright red.

I do remember that clearly from the anime and it had always been red. In fact, her mother wanted her to dye black because she stood out too much because of it and it made her seem like a rebelious girl. It does become brighter when she regains her true form. It is interesting the subtext of the hair coloring since in Japan someone like Youko would be the last person to dye her hair in a bright color. It kinda reminds me this new fad that Japanese girls have adapted in which they tan their skin dark and color their hair blonde, almost white, trying to go against the traditional Nihon beauty standards of dark hair and pale skin like the geisha embody.

carlanox wrote:I think youko's hair at first is black. Then its become red gradually in hourai...The anime never show this part though. I remember i read it from the novel

In the novels, her hair was red to start off with; auburn, to be precise. Youko was asked by her mum and her teacher to dye her hair black. In the anime, this was reflected. As earlier mentioned by Neko-chan, she dyed her hair to brown while in Kou in order to hide, because her red tresses were pretty distinctive.

yuene wrote:
In the novels, her hair was red to start off with; auburn, to be precise. Youko was asked by her mum and her teacher to dye her hair black. In the anime, this was reflected. As earlier mentioned by Neko-chan, she dyed her hair to brown while in Kou in order to hide, because her red tresses were pretty distinctive.

Eugene's translation has her mother saying "You're getting red again" which never made sense to me, since it doesn't seem like she'd dyed her hair before. Oh, but it says "she'd been unusually auburn for a Japanese", so maybe she's had black or dark brown hair with a natural reddish tint, and her mother was complaining that the dark was fading relative to the red.

In the novel Youko did not dye her hair, even though her mother made the suggestion that she should. However it was clear that her hair was red, therefore her mother was afraid of people thinking that Youko has dyed her hair. Youko usually braid her hair so that it would look darker.