I am watching a mediocre winter 2025 anime series called I’m Getting Married to a Girl I Hate in My Class (it fulfills my Anime Network on Demand nostalgia from the early 2010s). Third-year (12th grade) high school students Saito Hōjō (guy) and Akane Sakuramori (girl) fight all the time at school – usually because the high-strung Akane starts something with the lackadasical Saito. They are also the two top-scoring students on tests, with the more naturally talented Saito always coming in first. Unbeknownst to these “natural enemies,” their grandparents have a thing going and decide that their grandchildren should get married. While one would think said grandchildren could easily say no – it is not so simple. Saito’s wealthy businessman grandfather makes the marriage a condition of Saito inheriting his successful companies. Akane’s grandmother similarly makes the marriage a condition for something, although the show does not immediately reveal the details. Thus, Saito and Akane begin their life as a secretly married couple with everything through five episodes going along the lines of what someone decently familiar with anime and genre tropes would predict from the initial set-up. But my purpose today is not to analyze I’m Getting Married to a Girl I Hate in My Class, but instead to talk about a subject near and dear to my heart – anime hair color. The star of this article is neither the I’m or the Girl in the show’s title, but instead a certain blonde classmate of the pair, Himari Ishikura.
(See my full collection of posts on hair color in Japanese anime, manga, novels, and games.)
I have written many articles about hair color in Japanese anime, games and light novels/manga. In my first article in the series covering the brown hair of Oregairu’s Iroha Isshiki, I underscored the importance of understanding the world a particular piece of media is set in before looking into why certain characters have unusual or unnatural hair colors. Despite its contrived set-up, I’m Getting Married to a Girl I Hate in My Class is set in modern Japan and the main characters go to an ordinary Japanese high school. There are no magical or supernatural elements lest one ascribes such to plot contrivances. The show has not through five episodes suggested that any of the characters are not Japanese.
With the above noted, let us introduce the subject of our article.
You can see Akane (left) and Himari (right) in the above screenshot. Akane is the “wife” of the main couple duo and one of the show’s two principal main characters. Her hair appears to be a sort of chestnut brown, perhaps with a hint of red. For anime purposes, we can classify Akane as having a borderline hair color in that it may well be natural but it stands out just enough that we should be open to the possibility of an alternative explanation. Himari has bright blonde hair. Assuming arguendo she is Japanese – which the show never gives us reason to doubt – blonde is certainly not an expected natural hair color. Himari is presented as a gyaru with her vibrant hair color and fashion sense and multi-colored nail polish (see parts one, two, and three of a history series on gyaru fashion at Néojaponisme).
(Note: I know some readings of “Akane” as corresponding to red and “Himari” to the sunlight or sunflower, so I suspect their names correspond to their hair color and/or personalities – Akane is a hot-head and Himari is bubbly and friendly – but I do not have the requisite knowledge to break down the characters in their names. I would welcome analysis from any readers who are fluent in Japanese.)
Now let us look at the other two significant characters: Saito (the husband in the title) and his odd cousin Shisei Houjou.
Saito has black hair, which we can classify as an expected natural hair color for a healthy Japanese 18-year old. Moreover, hair dye would run contrary to his lack of interest in appearances. Shisei, who is the same age as the other three despite looking younger, has silver hair. Silver hair is certainly not a natural hair color for Japanese people (or any people, really) outside of using it to depict rare cases of albinism, one of which I covered in my hair color study of the Red Shift visual novel. We have seen one silver hair dye case in A Sign of Affection. I have written about two additional silver hair cases, one in the Raven of the Inner Palace anime and another in the True Remembrance visual novel where silver hair was used with definite intent, but I will venture that in the majority of anime cases silver hair is used for aesthetic reasons.
Those four characters are the principal leads, but we have a few more to cover. First, while no one else in the high school has received meaningful development through five episodes, we do see other students in the background.
All the students in the above screenshot have some shade of brown or black hair. This establishes that the school is not full of students with unusual hair colors. We see two possibilities to explain Himari and Shisei (we can classify Akane as a borderline natural hair color case): (1) Their hair colors are meant to distinguish them from background characters (see e.g., hair color in The Apothecary Diaries); (2) They actually have blonde and silver hair; or (3) Hair dye. I will submit that my initial thought (I had an initial thought because I am a 2D person hair color scholar) was that the main characters with the exception of Saito were given specific hair colors and accessories to distinguish them from background characters.
Before returning to the kids, let us take a look at Saito’s grandfather and Akane’s grandmother.
They both have gray hair – although I will note there is a slight hint of color in Akane’s grandmother’s hair. We also know that Saito’s grandfather is 60 (he says so) and Akane’s grandmother should be close to the same age. How do we know that Akane’s grandmother is also close to 60? We are treated to a flashback of the grandparents as high school students:
Akane’s grandmother had brown hair and Saito’s grandfather had black hair. While Akane’s hair does seem to be to have a slight hint of red or chestnut, it is close enough to her grandmother’s hair that we can write off Akane’s hair as being just a bit brighter than hair of the background characters.
Nothing of note happens on the hair color front until episode 5. Early in the fifth episode, we see a flashback featuring a younger Himari and Akane.
Himari and Akane had the same blond and hint of red hair color a few years earlier, and Himari even had the same hair style. At this point I suspected that Himari’s blonde-ness would be left unexplained. Note that I used the past-tense there. Let us skip ahead later in episode 5. Himari is having a conversation with Saito wherein she is talking about her past. She noted that Akane defended her when kids made fun of her because she looked different. Saito, being intuitive, inferred what Himari was referring to. I present the next screenshot with Crunchyroll’s subtitles:
“Many people have fake blonde hair that doesn’t even suit them.” Saito then complemented Himari, telling her that her blonde hair looked good on her. This is a big hair color moment. Saito first tells us that “fake blonde hair” is recognized as such in the world of I’m Getting Married to a Girl I Hate in My Class. Next, he applies this general principle to Himari, acknowledging that she dyes her hair but stating it works on her. Himari happily thanks Saito for the compliment, establishing clearly and beyond doubt that she is not in fact a natural blonde. This also teaches us something about their high school. There is no indication that Himari receives scrutiny from her teachers for her flashy hair and taking liberties with the school uniform, so we can infer that the school does not have a strict dress code, unlike the schools I examined in articles on hair color in the Ippon! Again anime and A Dream of Summer visual novel or some real-world Japanese schools.
The hair dye acknowledgment came as a mild surprise to me. As I noted, I suspected that Himari was made blonde to make her stand out – but the show acknowledged and dealt with her hair color. I will submit based on the evidence in record in the first five episodes that I think Akane’s hair chestnut-brown color is intended to be accepted as he natural hair color. As for the silver-haired Shisei – I suspect her hair color will be left unaddressed. Her behavior and mannerisms are so abnormal (the rest of the characters are within a range of normal, granting their tropes) that I would be open to believing she was a space alien but for the fact that the show makes clear she is Saito’s cousin. We may just have to accept her as having unexplained silver hair, but I will post an update if we learn something to the contrary.
