While not quite as prevalent as it once was, anime is the medium of the wide and varied hair color. Everything from sky blue to bubblegum pink could be found on characters without much searching. However, for as varied as hair color can be, with each color representing distinct traits of a character, there will always be an army of normals to even things out.
Brown is average. There are more brunettes in the world than any hair color. However, even though black hair should symbolize the color of normal for Japanese anime, they still use brown for everything from your standard harem king to your good old childhood friend. Brown is the hair color you give a character when they don’t need or want to stand out. It can also be used when you want their personality to be more unexpected or balanced between all the other hair color archetypes. Yet, even though it represents normal, brown, being an earthy color, is also all about representing stability too.
So who are our top picks that perfect exemplify this average Takashi hair color?
Best Anime Characters With Brown Hair
Sousuke from Full Metal Panic
Sousuke is kind an interesting case, because in a way he isn’t very average. In Full Metal Panic, he is a pretty spectacular soldier, but as you find out, he’s pretty terrible at being an average school boy. That is part of the comedy of this anime. He looks pretty normal, but it ends up being pretty difficult for him to blend.
Kosaki from Nisekoi
Ah, Kosaki. As the childhood friend girl trope of Nisekoi, it is only natural that she is the only one to have a normal hair color. Due to the big personalities of her mother and sister, Kosaki grew up timid except for that one brave moment when she gave a locket Raku so that they would know each other if the met again later.
Sorata from Pet Girl of Sakura Hall
In many respects, Sorata is one of the most normal people staying in Sakura Hall. In fact, in the beginning he aims to work hard to move back into the regular dorms because Sakura Hall is filled with so many weirdoes. However, despite his average looks, he has a few quirks that shows he belongs in the dorm.
Haruhi from Ouran High School Host Club
Haruhi and her brown hair is so normal that a bunch of boys can’t even tell she is a girl at first when her hair is cut short. Yet, once they do discover this, she becomes fast friends with a bunch of eccentric rich men. You could say that Haruhi’s sheer normalness is a sort of stability and grounding point for the otherwise insane members of the host club.
Keiichi from Higurashi: When They Cry
Higurashi is not known for its normal hair colors, except in Keiichi, the main character. As this anime got its start as a visual novel, typically the protagonists are as normal as normal can be since they are telling the story. While Keiichi has a bit more screen presence in the anime, he still needs to be the normal anchor of the story.
Yui from K-on!
All the girls in K-On are meant to be cute, but they are also meant to be relatively normal. Yet, the main character of that normalcy is Yui. While the plot gives all the girls their fair focus, Yui and her desire to learn kicks it all off.
Tabata from The Daily Lives of High School Boys
Tabata’s character design is purposeful. They made him as normal and average looking as humanly possible, and made his character distinctly strange. He does weird things, but he does them in such an innocent normal way that they are made to seem even stranger.
Nagisa from Clannad
Nagisa was meant to be that normal, innocent girl while still being able to function. She is essentially that perfect childhood friend trope without having that childhood friend back story. However, while some of the other girls have more normal circumstances, their hair color more so speaks to their wild and varied personalities, while Nagisa is made out to be the perfect average girl that brings stability to Tomoya’s life.
Shuu from Guilty Crown
No one in Guilty Crown is what you would call average, but Shuu was made out to be that sort of main character that starts off as an average guy whose position becomes greatly elevated by his newfound powers. If it weren’t for his powers, he’d be someone you would overlook completely.
Nanami from Kamisama Kiss
You can’t have a series where a girl is suddenly surrounded by supernatural big shots without that crucial normal girl. You see a lot of brown-haired normal beauties like Nanami in shoujo romance series because every normal girl that watches them kind of wants to be able to slip into the main heroine’s shoes.
Issei from High School DxD
While many harem kings can run a harem by being extraordinary, most character designers want the male leads of their ecchi/ harem series to be very, very average looking. Part of the popularity of these series is that the men watching can feel like they too can have a bunch of angels and demons obsessed with them too.
Hiyori from Noragami
Hiyori needed to be the normal link to the supernatural world in Noragami. Furthermore, it is Hiyori’s normalcy and the various strengths of her character that keep Yato grounded. She is his stable rock, and after a time, the literal tie that he has to the world.
Oreki from Hyouka
At a glance, Oreki seems like the laziest anime character to ever be conceived. However, his laziness is simply to preserve energy and maintain his low-key existance. However, despite exterior laziness, he is actually quite intelligent and spends much of his time observing. Alongside that, he is actually quite good at solving a mystery.
Naru from Love Hina
Love Hina uses its brown hair characters to create a bit of a mystery. Keitaro is looking for love in the form of his brown-haired childhood friend that moved away. They promised to reunite at Tokyo University. Enter Naru, a brown haired girl he ends up living with who also wants to go to Tokyo U. However, there is also Mutsumi, a ditsy brown-haired girl with similar Tokyo U dreams. One of them is his fabled childhood friend, and it is that standard brown hair that creates some mystery as to who.
Kurono from Gantz
Gantz is all about your standard normal scumbag main character doing magnificent things. Throughout the series, you watch Kurono go from normal high schooler to badass alien fighter. The whole idea is that he starts off about as far from magnificent as humanly possible, and having an average hair color is the herald of his character.
Uraraka from My Hero Academia
Uraraka’s powers make her better than your normal school girl, but that doesn’t change the fact that she is a normal girl surrounded by abnormal characters. She’s not a spaz like Deku, a high-strung rule enforcer like Iida, and she doesn’t have a quirk that manifests in odd physical ways like Mina or Tsuyu. She is very much a standard high school girl, but one that has a quirk useful enough to make her a hero.
Kotetsu from Tiger and Bunny
Kotetsu may be a hot-head, but he is the normal alternative to the overachieving Bunny. He is meant to be the more down to earth one of the pair, and that’s why his storyline has a lot of down to earth problems for him to overcome. As a fun bonus, that goatee is pretty spectacular.
Nanami from Pet Girl of Sakura Hall
Like Sorata is made out to be the normal male of Sakura Hall with a few specific quirks that land him there, Nanami is meant to be the normalest of normal girls in that dorm full of oddballs. In fact, she is the only one that was put there for financial reasons rather than behavioral reasons. She doesn’t have any quirks about her personality, and often she is used as the normal person looking on at all the weird shenanigans for comic relief.
Oga from Beelzebub
Although Oga is a thug, he is a relatively normal guy as his hair color suggests. Like many shounen protagonists, his normalcy disappears when something miraculous happens. This thug finds the son of the devil and now finds himself shouldered with raising it.
Ritsu from The Kawai Complex Guide to Manors and Hostel Behavior
Ritsu is quiet, reserved, and often the only voice of reason in the youth hostel. Of all those that live there, she is the most normal aside from Usa, but he always gets pulled into all sorts of odd situations. Ritsu is very much an observer and even when pulled out of her shell she maintains a stable sort of normal girl character.
Do you have any more good normal anime character with brown hair? Then let us know in the comment section below.
