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Action Heroine Cheer Fruits is one of those shows where the names of the lead characters contain names of colors, and those names match up to some color theme that the character has (in this case, it's the characters' hair colors).

Except... it only does it for some of the main characters, which is weird.

Characters that are "color-coded"

Akagi An Midorikawa Mana Aoyama Genki Momoi Hatsuri

Akagi An (aka = 赤 = "red"); Midorikawa Mana (midori = 緑 = "green"); Aoyama Genki and her sister Aoyama Yuuki (ao = 青 = "blue"); Momoi Hatsuri (momo = 桃 = "pink" / "peach")

Characters that aren't "color-coded"

Shirogane Misaki Kuroki Roko Kise Mikan Shimura Kanon

Shirogane Misaki (shiro, written differently = 白 = "white"); Kuroki Roko (kuro = 黒 = "black"); Kise Mikan (ki = 黄 = "yellow"); Shimura Kanon (shi = 紫 = "purple")

I guess there might not be a deeper answer to my question than "because that's how they decided to write it"; I just can't help wondering if I'm missing out on some next-level punnery or something. (Seeing as we already have nonrealistic green- and blue-haired characters, as well as yellow- and black-haired ones who aren't the characters with those colors in their names, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to add purple- and white-haired characters into the mix.)

senshin
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  • without having seen the anime in question, I can't be certain, but is it possible that their "colors" refer to specific personality traits? That question alone might spark some interesting research into the social associations Japanese people might have with respect to colors (cf. blood type/personality). For example, "black" in Japanese seems to carry an association with "evil," similar to the way English would refer to something like "black magic." – HotelCalifornia Oct 17 '18 at 17:50
  • I think that Akagi's hair is hardly red. Akagi reminds me of its voice actor Miku Ito and Kize reminds me of its voice actor Yamasaki Eri. I wonder if there was some political consideration to make the image of the voice actor and the character closer, IMO. – Blue Various Sep 06 '20 at 20:36

1 Answers1

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Just for a comment;

The relationship between the letters in their names and the color of their hair is an interesting view point.

Super Sentai's world view seems to be included in this work, and as shown in the picture below, the girls wear Super-Sentai like costumes. I think they were designed to match the color of the costumes with the color of their hair.

enter image description here

Also, it seems that when Japanese anime features young and cute voice actresses, they often incorporate their characteristics into the characters they portray. For example, Kize Mikan seems to be similar to Yamazaki Erii.　This could be a sort of the avatar.

Blue Various
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