Could this be any more random?

[katharos]

You know, I still do a double take every time I see Ten-oh in colour. I went through the manga imagining his hair as kind of a soft blue/grey/purplish colour. And then I saw some of the artbook pictures and... He just doesn't seem the type of character for bright red hair.

/random

Comments

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of a stupid thread in a board I mod in which the OP tried to analyse and categorize CLAMP characters through their color scheme. First counterexample I brought was Ten-oh; of course, the fanbrat had clasified red as a color of passion, violence, courage and recklessness.

I never pictured Ten-oh with another hair color because I cheated and had seen artbook images before reading RGV.

[katharos-8.livejournal.com]

I think anime and manga characters in general do tend to have hair and eye colours that function as visual 'tells' - they codify a lot of basic information about the character, such as purple eyes signifying 'magic' beyond that world's norm, (Sanzo, Kamui), and dark green hair a reserved, often refined personality. This then allows the mangaka to move straight into demonstrating more detailed aspects of the characters personality.

This isn't a hard and fast rule of course - it's very easy to come up with contradictions. It's just interesting.