If Terra was meant to have blonde hair...

[MJN SEIFER]

Then did Square give her green hair in the game? It can't be technical stuff because Celes was blonde. I'm sure many of us grew accepting green as Terra's official hair color, but every other official product has Terra as a blonde character; it's in the official art work, she's blonde in Disisida, she was going to be blonde in FFVI-2 assuming that was a real Square game (I've seen pictures, but I dunno if Square had anything to do with it).

[champagne supernova]

If Celes is blonde, having 2 blonde characters would make them look similar. Making her hair green made her more identifiable.

[Wolf Kanno]

PreTty much what CP said. I feel Terra was given green hair to distinguish her from Celes, but also due to her origins, its just a visual reminder of her otherworldy self. I'll admit it works, cause watching the CGI sequences in Anthology, it can be difficult to discern which is Terra and which is Celes by going on their faces alone.

In a way, I felt they did it for the same reason why Faris and Leena have pink hair in V, cause if they made them blonde like, Krile, it would be visually jarring for the player.

Personally, I'm more curious as to why Garnet and Eiko are not blondes like their Amano artwork, (besides the fact Amano just has an obsession with that hair color for females) seeing how FFIX easily had the technology to do so and there is no in-story reason to give them alternate hair color.

[champagne supernova]

I don't know, but I don't see Garnet looking good with blonde hair. Her features and outfit seem to suit her hair colour.

Eiko they probably wanted her to be more exotic - being the last of a Summoner Tribe etc.

[Wolf Kanno]

I don't know, it wouldn't have looked so bad if Garnet kept the White Mage Robe as part of her outfit. It just struck me odd, then again, Amarant doesn't have ash colored skin either in the Amano artwork.

[VeloZer0]

In all honestly looking at official artwork often feels like looking at some random fan's interpretation of the character.

I like Terra much better with the green hair, for all the reasons listed. I just can't fathom after having it that way for so many years why they would go back. So what the artwork was one way, the actual game (you know, the thing people actualy see and play) should be the definitive work.

[blackmage_nuke]

Because all the best main characters in Japanese media have whacky hair

[Wolf Kanno]

Cause Blonde is more exotic in Japanese than green hair.

[MJN SEIFER]

In all honestly looking at official artwork often feels like looking at some random fan's interpretation of the character.

I like Terra much better with the green hair, for all the reasons listed. I just can't fathom after having it that way for so many years why they would go back. So what the artwork was one way, the actual game (you know, the thing people actualy see and play) should be the definitive work.

That's pretty much how I feel about it. Some of the official artwork doesn't work for the other characters (Locke wearing cap, Bartz from FFV has white hair in some arts), but I always thought Terra's change was the strongest - since we grew up with a green haired Terra, that's what we should get.

Having said that, I just discovered that Terra's alt costume in Disisida has green hair.

[espritduo]

Terra's hair was green because of palette limitations. Celes uses a different palette that has the yellow color in it, so her hair is blonde. Terra's particular palette, which she shares with several different characters, does not have the yellow color in it, and so the programmers were forced to use the next best available color, which was green. These kinds of space limitations commonly affected how characters were portrayed back in the gold old days of gaming.

And Garnet and Eiko do have blonde hair in their trance modes, so Amano's art wasn't completely disregarded. The thing is, though, Amano likes blondes. Alot. Almost every woman he's ever drawn is blonde. If FF was solely up to Amano, we'd have almost nothing but blonde-haired characters.

[rjamlegend]

Her father, Maduin has green hair. But both Terra, and her father have hair in the color of Teal, not green. And it wouldnt be so hard to distinguish Terra and Celes with blonde hair. Terra has a ponytail, Celes has waist length hair. No difficulty there. And their faces? Umm Terra wears a circlet, Celes wears no facial gear. Terra has pale jade eyes, Celes has either light blue or grey eyes. Terra is also taler than Celes by 2 inches, and Celes has a different body build, whereas she is a little more ripped (gotta look close), Terra is more softer in build. I wouldnt want to be on the recieveing end of Terra's roundhouse kick though. -Ouch- That's a couple of lost teeth.

[VeloZer0]

Terra is also taler than Celes by 2 inches

I feel the game sprites made this quite clear.

[Spooniest]

I think the pallette limitation is the best explanation I've heard so far, but there is the fact that blonde hair is seen as very very unusual in Japan. There seems to be some talk that it can even get you stared and pointed at in public. The MC1R hair color gene is not typically present in the indigenous population (in other words, Japanese usually aren't blonde), so it looks exotic and alien sometimes.

Now, Terra may have been given green hair to help out with the pallette choices, but there might have also been some thinking that they wanted to achieve a similar effect to having blonde hair, in a game they hoped would be played by a Western audience.

Put another way, Terra or Celes having blonde hair is as strange and exotic to them as Terra having green hair is to us, perhaps.

[rjamlegend]

Terra is also taler than Celes by 2 inches

I feel the game sprites made this quite clear.

Look at the art work too. Terra is nearly as tall as I am ( I am 70 inches, Terra is 68 inches). Celes is 66 inches.

I think the pallette limitation is the best explanation I've heard so far, but there is the fact that blonde hair is seen as very very unusual in Japan. There seems to be some talk that it can even get you stared and pointed at in public. The MC1R hair color gene is not typically present in the indigenous population (in other words, Japanese usually aren't blonde), so it looks exotic and alien sometimes.

Now, Terra may have been given green hair to help out with the pallette choices, but there might have also been some thinking that they wanted to achieve a similar effect to having blonde hair, in a game they hoped would be played by a Western audience.

Put another way, Terra or Celes having blonde hair is as strange and exotic to them as Terra having green hair is to us, perhaps.

Imagine Terra having red hair. The SNES version of Final Fantasy III there is a glitch that changes her hair color to red. Only in battle though. I don't know how it works, and I think in the first half of the game only.

But to answer your query...the color gene is inherited through European population. The native Americans weren't blonde either. Actually, most of the Native Americans came from eastern Asia, Japan, and even the Phillippines during the massive freeze aka the Ice Age. Brown hair, was also uncommon as well. That comes from black hair, being sun bleached to brown. It eventually became genetic, and most of the brown haired people came from South America, and Austrailia.

[G13]Please use the edit feature at the bottom of your post. -G13[/G13]

[Chels]

It looks like this has already been pretty thoroughly addressed, but I just wanted to say it really weirded me out when I realized Terra was "supposed" to be blonde after she had been so solidly driven into my head as having green hair. I haven't played Dissidia yet, but I'll be getting her alt green hair asap when I do. Not to get too far off topic, but it feels like a lot of characters in the early FF games ~officially~ have blonde hair (or hair that is light and ambiguously colored)...I like them better with their varied crazy hair. Variety is the spice of life! And the fact that such a high percentage are blonde kind of kills the "blondes are meant to be exotic" argument for me personally, in respect to the FF world. Celes wasn't supposed to be exotic (...right??), but she was given blonde rather than the average brown hair. I'd believe "Amano is a blondophile" over the exotic thing, even if the exotic argument is true of Japan itself...but as for the switch to green, yeah, I think it's to keep her separate from Celes (even if their outfits seemed distinct to me) and because green is more otherworldly than blonde.

Or maybe Terra just went swimming in too much chlorine water, idek. One of those.