Highlights

• Anime girls with blue hair are iconic to Japanese animation studios. Kaname Chidori, Esdeath, and Ayanami Rei are examples of famous blue-haired characters.
• "Bluenette" refers to any character with unnatural hair color, including green and purple. However, this term typically connotes blue hair and is used to describe characters like Shino Asada and Wendy Marvell.
• Blue-haired anime girls come from a variety of genres and can possess unique powers and personalities. They can range from secret agents like Kaname Chidori to magical girls like Sailor Mercury, showcasing the diversity of blue-haired characters in anime.

Anime used to be a word that only referred to cartoons from Japan. Today, it can mean almost any kind of serialized anime regardless of the country of origin, but the iconic image of the anime girl with blue hair still seems to be confined to cartoons from Japanese animation studios.

The term "bluenette" is part of the anime lexicon, and it actually refers to any character with hair that's not a natural color. That means even characters with green or purple hair can be referred to by this term. However, the girls featured here literally do have blue hair and are famous for it.

Updated on February 24, 2024 by Ritwik Mitra: The great thing about anime is that characters aren't bound by regular conventions pertaining to what a person should look like. This is why so many mangaka go completely bonkers when it comes to designing certain characters. The fact that something as uncommon as blue hair makes for one of the tamer hair colors in most anime is a testament to how wild these designs can get. There are many great female characters in anime who rock the bluenette look, and we've added more of them to this list to celebrate this iconic look.

15 Konan

Uses Unique Origami Jutsu To Battle Against Her Opponents

Naruto may have many strengths, but one area where it wholeheartedly fails is in its depiction of women. Most females in Naruto end up playing second fiddle to their male teammates and partners, which is a shame given the sheer influence this series has.

A blue-haired character in Naruto who plays a fairly central role in the grand scheme of things is Konan, a unique ninja who uses jutsu related to origami and paper. Unfortunately, barring one fight against Obito where she shows the full extent of these powers, Konan doesn't really do anything major aside from being a steadfast companion to Yahiko and Nagato.

14 Sayaka Maizono

One Of The First Friends Makoto Naegi Makes In Danganronpa

Danganronpa loves to subvert expectations, with the anime adaptation being a decent, if somewhat rushed, way to enjoy this mind-bending story. The protagonist, Makoto, is one of many high school students caught in a twisted killing game.

Things feel slightly better when he becomes friends with Sayaka, only for this character to be the first person to be killed by a student. What makes things worse is that everyone deduces that she was actually planning to kill Makoto, only for it to be revealed later on that she decided not to go through such a heartless act with the one person she became close friends with in the short time she was alive.

13 Kaname Chidori

The Secret Agent Known As Mithril

A 16-year-old high school student who has equal experience living in both Japan and the United States as the daughter of a UN ambassador, Kaname Chidori is also one of the main characters of both the anime and light-novel versions of Full Metal Panic! Part of the drama of this story is why several different intelligence organizations seem so interested in this blue-haired anime girl.

Sousuke Sagara is an agent for one of these organizations, known as Mithril, one that happens to be tasked with protecting Kaname. He enrolls in the same high school as her, and a complex plot unfolds.

12 Shino Asada

From Gun Shy To Lethal Sniper

This part of the series brings the vast universe of SAO to Story Arc 3 and a new FPS MMO called Gun Gale Online. Shino doesn't star in the arc, but in literary terms, this blue-haired anime girl is the deuteragonist of the story. This means she's as important to the plot as the main protagonist and can even switch places with him.

Shino started playing Gun Gale Online to get over her own fear of guns, and the result is that she becomes one of the most lethal snipers in GGO. This continues in other games featured in the popular isekai franchise including ALfheim Online, in which she plays a Cait Sith archer.

11 Esdeath

The Strong Survive, And The Weak Die

Esdeath is most recognizable in her General's uniform and is one of the Empire's highest-ranking officers. She's known for her cruelty and lust for power, which contradicts her love for Tatsumi. On the other hand, any affection she has for the main character might be just another sadistic obsession.

Her long blue hair is one of her most beautiful features, and her charisma inspires a close to fanatical loyalty in her supporters. However, Esdeath isn't completely without heart or empathy. Despite her love for Tatsumi, she has given her subordinates clear orders to destroy him should he endanger their lives.

10 Nefertari Vivi

A Royal Bounty Hunter

Nefertari Vivi is the Princess of Arabasta, but she's not exactly a stereotypical princess and the kingdom operates more like a crime family than a political entity. She has several aliases that are as interesting as her character and reflect her importance to the overall plot of one of the longest-running shows in anime history.

An antagonist initially, Nefertari is referred to simply as a Bounty Hunter when she is introduced. This blue-haired anime girl appears again under the code name of Miss Wednesday when she aligns with the Straw Hats to undermine a rival gang, the Baroque Works, that is threatening Arabasta. After she retires to her home country to live the life of a royal, she's simply known as Princess Vivi.

9 Sailor Mercury

The Computer Is Mightier Than The Sword

Sailor Mercury, whose real name is Ami Mizuno, sometimes gets overlooked as part of a team of superheroes that have the power to destroy planets and stop time. She's the brains of the operation, quietly doing the research and making the plans, and although she's the quietest, this blue-haired anime girl might be the most important.

Sailor Mercury was the very first soldier to join Sailor Moon. Between Mars and Moon fighting for most of the first season over who got to be the group leader, she was the only reason they didn't get killed before Jupiter showed up.

8 Wendy Marvell

A Vulnerable But Powerful Magic User

Wendy Marvell is one of the Sky Dragon Slayers, and it's obvious from the start that she didn't choose this life for herself. It's a complex selection process, but certain orphans are chosen to be Slayers based more on chance than aptitude.

Wendy's character arc is that she has to become a decent Sky Dragon Slayer even though she's petite, shy, hates fighting, and gets motion sickness, iconic character tropes that appear in many anime girls. Her power comes from her abilities as a magic user, with the ability to manipulate air for a variety of purposes. That includes offensive spells like Dragon's Roar along with some handy healing spells.

7 Umi Ryuuzaki

An Early Incarnation Of The Water Mage

Considered by some to be one of the greatest magical girl anime series of all time, Magic Knight Rayearth made the genre cool years before Cardcaptor Sakura and Sailor Moon appeared. Umi is one of the show's three main characters, and her powers focus on the element of water.

Her attacks have names like Water Dragon and Icicle Blades. Umi Ryuuzaki is often pictured in clothing that mirrors the blue spectrum, especially when in Magical Knight form, so it's not a surprise that her hair is also blue.

6 Stocking Anarchy

The Power Of Swords In Her Stockings

• Creator: Gainax
• Genres: Action, Comedy
• Seasons: 1
• Streaming Services: Crunchyroll

Here's a great example of a parody anime that's not for kids. The characters in this show aren't conventional human beings, but supernatural creatures that are hundreds of years old, which explains why they can take different forms and have so many wacky powers. That's a real anime title and a real anime character name, and when the context is explained, the Panty & Stocking characters make perfect sense.

Stocking Anarchy is the youngest of the Anarchy sisters, which also include Panty and Garterbelt, and like her older sisters, she is named after the article of clothing she uses as a weapon. Her striped stockings actually turn into katanas when she takes them off, just to be clear about how this works.

5 Mabel Rayveil

Winter Is Coming

Mabel's background has a lot to do with the color palette the artists chose for her, including her blue hair. She also has blue eyes and is usually shown wearing a white and blue dress.

As the last surviving member of the Ice Clan, which explains some of her powers, Mabel is also the keeper of a legendary ice sword, and any negative feelings she has cause nearby things and people around her to freeze. On the other hand, when she has positive feelings, which include love, they cause things to melt, which creates some awkward moments when anyone she likes is nearby.

4 Shiro

A Genius That Never Misses

Shiro's hair color includes several colors, but she tends to be blue more than pink or purple. There are two main characters in No Game No Life, Shiro and her step-brother, Sora. She's the calm, calculated of the two but tends to have a lower level of emotional intelligence and needs her brother's help to beat games with that angle.

Shiro's limitations when it comes to emotions are one of her few weaknesses. Other than that, this anime girl is a veritable genius, with an ability to recall virtually any information she's seen previously, and a superhuman level of hand-eye coordination, which probably has something to do with her incredible marksmanship skills.

3 Blue Rose

Only Becomes An Icy "Bluenette" For Superhero Activities

Blue Rose, the superhero, uses a design that consists of a few different shades of green and blue and wears a hairstyle and makeup to match it. Her NEXT power is specifically ice manipulation, so naturally, her look and costume have to match.

When she's not being a superhero, however, she loses the hair color along with the rest of the superhero personae. Her name in civilian life is Karina Lyle and she's a high-school student who lives at home and has a normal job at a bar along with caramel-colored hair.

2 Bulma

She Carries The Series From The Beginning

Bulma makes limited appearances in later chapters of the Dragon Ball saga, so it's easy to forget she was a main character in the original series. She's the most important character in the series along with the hero, Goku, and she's been helping him out since he was a precocious child with a monkey's tail.

Aside from getting the gang to successfully find the Dragon Balls with her mechanic's expertise, knowledge of alien technology, and general stubbornness, this blue-haired anime girl gets her happily-ever-after with former enemy Vegeta. Both of her children are also "bluenettes" but Trunks, her son, has pink hair, while her daughter Bulla has green hair.

1 Ayanami Rei

The Iconic First Child of The Evangelion Franchise

One of the most iconic figures in anime history ever, never mind a famous "bluenette," Ayanami Rei is the pilot of the Evangelion prototype model Unit-00. She's also known as the First Child, which makes sense since she was the first Eva pilot, followed by Asuka and Shinji. Throughout most of the original Evangelion series, Ayanami's origins are a mystery.

Eventually, she enrolls in the same school as Shinji and Asuka but doesn't seem to have any record of even existing beforehand. It turns out that her true identity is tied to the ultimate resolution of the plot, and continues as part of her character arc in the new movies.