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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 that have 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 May 14, 2022 by Kristy Ambrose: The wide variety of anime that already exists, plus the ever-expanding catalog of anime and related media and merchandise, means a few more unique characters with that special shade of hair. The additions are a mix of the new and the vintage and can be found in vastly different genres, just to show that the blue-haired anime girl isn’t going out of style.
11 Kaname Chidori, Full Metal Panic!
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.
10 Shino Asada, Sword Art Online II
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.
9 Nefertari Vivi, One Piece
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 a number of 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.
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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 in an effort to undermine a rival gang, the Baroque Works, that are threatening Arabasta. After she retires to her home country to live the life of a royal, she’s simply known as Princess Vivi.
8 Sailor Mercury, Sailor Moon
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 joinSailor 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.
7 Wendy Marvell, Fairy Tail
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.
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Wendy’s 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.
6 Umi Ryuuzaki, Magic Knight Rayearth
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 three main characters of the show, 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.
5 Stocking Anarchy, Panty And Stocking with Garterbelt
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.
4 Shiro, No Game No Life
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.
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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, Tiger & Bunny
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, Dragon Ball
Bulma makes limited appearances in later chapters of the Dragonball 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 Dragonballs with her mechanics 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, Neon Genesis Evangelion
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 only Eva pilot to precede 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.
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