Questions & Mysteries Why is Oda so obsessed with giving characters blue hair now?

#1
So in the Elbaf arc, we had two new characters introduced with blue hair, Gunko and Rocks


It doesn´t seem like there´s any connection between these two characters, so in Oda´s mind, blue hair is just the coolest thing on the block to give to new characters

But like, why...? Obviously blue hair characters have existed in OP in the past, but it´s usually for scrubs and minor villain types:
Buggy was an east blue villain made to be silly
Vivi was meant to be just a scrub Baroque works member before Oda decided to make her a princess
Miss doublefinger, a nami opponent
Franky, a side SH who isn´t meant to be taken too seriously, associated with gags
Ulti, kind of a meme villain

Obviously OP is pretty cartoony and silly, but Oda usually plays it safe when making the top pirates/Marines:
Roger, Garp, Sengoku, WB etc all had pretty standard hair colors, and pre TS villains like Lucci, Croco,Smoker and Enel had pretty serious designs. This trend kind of continued post TS, until we have a top marine like Aramaki with green hair...... and now we have two pretty major characters with blue hair.

It gets even weirder when you look at panels of GV Garp, Roger and Rocks, and it´s pretty obvious Oda is trying to make them look like Ace, Luffy and Teach(In Rogers case, this is just borderline retarded, since GV Roger who is 39 looks more like 20 something Ace then he does the canon 50ish version of him that´s iconic and we have seen for most of the manga, including in Wano when Sengoku was describing GV), but for some reason Oda doesn´t care about making sure Teach and his dad have the same hair color....?
 
#3
It's not like it just hasn't happened, look at Shanks Shiki and Big Mom.
I don't have a problem with top tiers having unconventional hair colors. It's just weird that Oda chose blue specifically for Xebec
Shanks’s hair color has always been treated as unique by Oda, hence why his epithet is “Red Hair.” Shiki is just blonde so idk why you mentioned him lol. In a series where its already been established that unconventional hair colors exist, a character named “Big Mom” having pink hair makes sense
 
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#4
Shanks’s hair color has always been treated as unique by Oda, hence why his epithet is “Red Hair.” Shiki is just blonde so idk why you mentioned him lol. In a series where its already been established that unconventional hair color ms exist, a character named “Big Mom” having pink hair makes sense
Yeah just forget that Shiki thing I don't know what I was doing there lmao
But Shanks and Big Mom still exist.
Plus Zoro, the deuteragonist, has green hair
 
#7
Shanks’s hair color has always been treated as unique by Oda, hence why his epithet is “Red Hair.” Shiki is just blonde so idk why you mentioned him lol. In a series where its already been established that unconventional hair colors exist, a character named “Big Mom” having pink hair makes sense
If you think about it, there´s more blue haired characters in OP then redheads, even though one is actually natural IRL. But now that I think about it, feels like that´s an anime thing in general, I guess.
 
#18
Because his fans (many of whom lack reading comprehension), think that OP is a manga that steers far from politics, so it wasn’t only right to throw in a couple blue haired liberals in the mix.
 

Daniel

Tani
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#19
Xebec’s hair stripes would look better if they were black, as shown in the manga, rather than blue. The contrast between white hair and black stripes is much more striking as the color that contrasts the most with white is black (which isn't even a color in the first place but black stands out more in a white background than blue).

As for Gunko, since Oda originally drew her hair without any colors, I assumed it would be blonde instead of blue. If a character is intended to have darker hair, it’s usually colored that way throughout their appearances in the manga.
 
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