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I think it's interesting that most of the male Anime characters have long hair, some having extremely long hair. (By the way, for those who don't know, Anime is Japanese cartoon animation). Is this going to have an effect on young minds who watch these cartoons on Saturday mornings? Perhaps a whole generation of longhairs is about to bloom.
I've seen girls wear their hair "Anime style." Haven't noticed it in the young men. (yet)
Anime has been around for ages, but only a small percent of longhairs is based on that, to be honest.
From what I've seen, homoerotic anime/manga known as yaoi, tends to feature more longhairs, and pretty ones at that, which are called 'bishounen', which pretty much translates to pretty boy.
The artwork on many of them is quite amazing I must say.
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Techinically, a lot of those characters weren't actually written for those purposes. Most started out as just heroes or villains who were then put into yaoi pairings by fans (they even have published manga by fans that you can buy), though there certainly are characters created for yaoi exclusively, as it has become very popular.
What's funny, is with characters like Sephiroth (that was the cosplay in Antonious's link), is that they tend to have really typical 'masculine' personalties. Sephiroth, for instance, is a very distant, dark sort of character. Though they have somewhat feminine faces (to appeal to younger girls, mostly), they are very much male in the way they act. Some of them also tend to have deeper voices. It suggests that long hair isn't exactly something that can only be pegged a 'feminine' trait---it has its very masculine aspects as well.
Getting back to the original post, I think it might influence some people. I know it had a vague influence on my decision to start growing out my own hair, because I thought the characters were very interesting, and long hair, for me at least, added to that.
True, but it's a much different kind of "masculinity" than we're used to seeing in the U.S. It's more a "rock-star" kind of thing--comfortable with the "feminine side", no self-conscious buzzcut-wearing or beer-guzzling or ganging up on the Other going on here. Even the deep voices are likely beautiful instead of rugged. It's kinda like, "Boys can be pretty, too, and they can still be boys"--there's still something about them that separates them from the girls, even if it's much more subtle.
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I could be wrong, but aren't most Emos wearing those types of styles?
One of my original inspirations when I first grew my hair out as a teenager, about 15 years ago.
--Val
I hadn't ever heard of this guy, but my friends always liken me to the character. I went to see Twilight with a bunch of folks who dressed up, and everyone said "oh no, it's the vampire hunter." I now have the hat, hehe.
Very cool, Gylfi... I can see the similarity.
One of my favourites as well, altough it didnt have any impact on me growing out my hair :)
They all have such big watery eyes!
I hope you're right, Marco. I've never gotten into watching Anime cartoons, but I find the long hair characters extremely cool. Happy holidays.
TLH