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Saw this in a magazine once.


No Idea how it works, but one of my relatives said they used something similar for most of their life O__o

I have to wonder if Nanami's hair is a sort of French braid, because otherwise, the length of her hair would never be able to wind around her head like that when braided. I've had hair longer than that, and I'm sure even that wouldn't have worked.

Again, French!

Actually, it's a look that was popular with ne of the French mistresses -Montespan I think. The only difference was that when she wore that style, she wore her hair in two falls of curls at the end of the roll. So Anthy has connections with the mistresses of French Royalty. Niiiiice.

Raven Nightshade wrote:

As for Nanami. The troubling part about her hair is when Utena cuts the braid during the duel. If it's a separate piece (not to be confused with the novel), then it makes sense because I didn't see any uneven sections of hair later. If it's a braid of her own hair, then it would have been totally FUBARed, barring artist error.

I always assumed that it was one of those mock-braid headbands, and that she wore it to keep her bangs out of her face (growing them out..?) but then again, she sported the same hairdo when she was little so I dunno. I also thought it was a visual reference to Madame DuBarry from Rose of Versailles.

morosemocha wrote:

Actually, it's a look that was popular with ne of the French mistresses -Montespan I think. The only difference was that when she wore that style, she wore her hair in two falls of curls at the end of the roll. So Anthy has connections with the mistresses of French Royalty. Niiiiice.

Madame du Montespan... when I was reading about her I couldn't stop thinking about Anthy...

That damn wizard needs to keep his nose out of my BIZNESS.

Have you noticed that Anthy's hair looks different every time it's down? When she's having sex with Akio, it seems like her hair is knee or ankle-length and kind of chaotic. Then there's that one shot at the end of episode 31 where Anthy throws herself back and the hair looks more like big purple wings. And when she's sleeping next to Utena, it's kind of tame, but it looks completely different than when she leaves at the end of the series.

Actually, one of the things Gio and I had noticed about Anthy's hair is that it's actually drawn differently at a specific point in the series, and in such a way that you can't attribute it to animation. Take a look at Anthy's hair when she's Utena's bride as opposed to when she's Touga's bride-- you'll see her hair is much more angular when she's with Touga. I wish I could dig up pics, but I'm at work right now.

So it's not that far fetched to say that the hair might be symbolic...

Yasha wrote:

Actually, one of the things Gio and I had noticed about Anthy's hair is that it's actually drawn differently at a specific point in the series, and in such a way that you can't attribute it to animation. Take a look at Anthy's hair when she's Utena's bride as opposed to when she's Touga's bride-- you'll see her hair is much more angular when she's with Touga. I wish I could dig up pics, but I'm at work right now.

So it's not that far fetched to say that the hair might be symbolic...

I'd be more ready to put it down to symbolism if SKU had better animation as a whole. Otherwise You could put it down to different and/or inconsistent animators. I noticed while watching Sailor Moon SuperS that every few episodes the characters are drawn pretty differently. And sometimes the characters slowly change as the artist...adapts to the character you could say? When watching Tsubasa, I watched the first season and went back to look at an earlier episode and was really surprised at the difference in Fai's hair.

But don't let me ruin your fun being such a spoil-sport. Poptart?

EDIT: dig up pics!!!!

Last edited by YamPuff (04-12-2007 12:32:57 PM)

I'd been thinking about this for awhile, but I could never remember to post it.

Series Anthy has wavy hair, Series Utena has straight hair.
Movie Anthy has straight hair, Movie Utena has wavy hair.

Why the switch in hair textures?
Is there some correlation between who gets the wavy hair and who gets the straight hair in the anime?
Why isn't Juri's hair in her trademark sausage curls in the movie?
Why do Ruka and Touga get the mutant forelocks and Saionji doesn't?
And do we chalk all this up to character design choices? Is it really that simple?

I know I just asked a bunch of questions I didn't answer, but I'm not sure myself.

Raven Nightshade wrote:

Series Anthy has wavy hair, Series Utena has straight hair.
Movie Anthy has straight hair, Movie Utena has wavy hair.

Apparently this was hotly debatedly right to end of the planning of the movie, there's a lot of design work of their hair switched. Akio was still the bigger debate though, judging from how much design work he got.

Raven Nightshade wrote:

Why do Ruka and Touga get the mutant forelocks and Saionji doesn't?

Curly hair would be hard to give a mutant forelock to.

I really need to collect up caps for that Anthy thing Yasha mentioned, since I have the stuffs for it now.

ShatteredMirror wrote:

I also considered Nanami's hair (well, her whole appearance really) was drawn as it was to remind us visually of Madame Du Barry.

Yeah, according to wiki, she was intended to be a copy of Du Barry, all the way down to her lost, unrequited love, at least according to the Du Barry of Rose of Versailles.

I'm thinking... wavy hair, perhaps it has something to do with "steadiness" of a person's heart? But, that wouldn't make sense because I don't think Miki is clear as to what he really wants for himself.

On another note, I think as far as hair length is concerned, I don't think they really matter as much as the fact that the characters who are literally hiding their secret passion/feelings would manually change their hair. Juri curled up her hair since the day she felt she lost her chance to confess to Shiori. Anthy tied her hair back because she can no longer trust/love anyone anymore, and therefore, refuses to express how she really feels and begins to serve as a projection of other people's thoughts. Movie!Utena tied her hair ever since Touga died, or in her opinion, broke up with her.