Top 15 Anime Characters With Curly Hair Rocking Glorious Volume and Texture

Curly hair is the hardest thing to draw in a medium built on clean, swooping lines, which is exactly why it means something when a character actually gets it. Straight and spiky hair is the anime default. Real curls, coils, and ringlets take extra work, so when a designer commits to them, the curl becomes part of who the character is. The best anime characters with curly hair wear their texture like a signature.

The curly hair anime club is smaller than you would think, and it splits into a few clear styles. There are the drill ringlets of the elegant ojou-sama, the natural coils and afros that the medium rarely animates but nails when it tries, and the wild manes that match a character's whole temperament. We pulled the best of each across fifteen shows, boys and girls alike.

A quick note on our bar: waves and “natural perms” did not make the cut, so a couple of famous almost-curlies are waiting in the honorable mentions. Everyone on the main list has the real thing. Here are the anime characters with curly hair who wear it best.

The 15 best anime characters with curly hair, ranked

Ranked on how boldly the curl defines them, crossing every texture from tight coils to corkscrew ringlets. These are the anime characters with curly hair who prove the trait was worth the animator's extra effort.

1. Brook

Anime: One Piece

Death could not even take Brook's afro. The Straw Hats' skeleton musician came back from the grave with his signature dome fully intact, which becomes a genuine plot point when it is the one feature an old friend could still recognize him by. Beneath the bones and the endless skull jokes, Brook is a soulful artist who spent fifty years alone at sea and never stopped playing, and the whole crew's best lines live in our One Piece Quotes collection. He is the most recognizable curly anime character in the world, and possibly the only one who is technically all skull.

2. Mami Tomoe

Anime: Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Mami made drill curls iconic. The senior magical girl carries herself with total poise, mentoring newcomers with tea, muskets, and the calm of someone who has survived what they could not. Her golden ringlets frame a veteran who fights alone because letting people close has never gone well for her. There is a reason her name still makes longtime fans wince, and it has nothing to do with the hair and everything to do with how much she was carrying.

3. Usopp

Anime: One Piece

The Straw Hats' sniper started as a coward who cried wolf and grew into the crew's bravest liar. Usopp's black coils sit under a long nose and an even longer list of tall tales, most of which he eventually makes true through sheer stubbornness. His whole arc is the underdog learning that courage is a choice you make while terrified. Few characters earn their heroics as honestly as the guy who spends half his fights shaking.

4. Tatsumaki

Anime: One Punch Man

Do not let the size fool you. Tatsumaki, the Tornado of Terror, is the second-ranked S-Class hero and one of the strongest espers alive, capable of throwing skyscrapers with a flick of her mind. Her green coils bounce with every furious gesture, and she has a lot of furious gestures. She is prickly, blunt, and completely uninterested in your feelings, which makes the rare moments she softens land twice as hard. If the bald hero's world pulled you in, our One Punch Man Filler List keeps your binge clean.

5. Celestia Ludenberg

Anime: Danganronpa

Everything about Celestia is a performance, right down to the name. The self-styled Ultimate Gambler built a gothic-lolita persona from scratch, black drill curls and lace and all, to sell a version of herself the world would take seriously. She bluffs with total composure and plays every room like a card table. Watching that composure crack is one of the best slow-burns in the series, and her curls stay flawless the entire time.

6. Elizabeth Midford

Anime: Black Butler

Under the frills and the long blonde ringlets is a swordswoman most enemies never see coming. Elizabeth spends her early appearances playing the doting, bubbly fiancée, then draws twin blades and cuts through a horde without dropping her resolve to protect Ciel. She is one of the standout anime characters with long curly hair precisely because the softness is a choice, not a limit. The reveal that she trained in secret to be strong enough for the people she loves reframes every scene before it.

7. Carole Stanley

Anime: Carole & Tuesday

Carole chases a music career on Mars while working three jobs and sleeping in a tiny apartment, and her natural coils are animated with a care the medium rarely spends on the texture. She busks with a saxophone, dreams loud, and refuses to let a rough start decide her ceiling. Her whole story is about the grind between talent and a real shot at using it. She is proof that a quieter, grounded lead can carry a show on pure heart.

8. Yasuhiro Hagakure

Anime: Danganronpa

Hagakure's shaggy brown coils have a personality of their own, bouncing along behind the least reliable fortune-teller in fiction. The self-proclaimed Ultimate Clairvoyant is right about thirty percent of the time, which he treats as a flawless record. He is the comic relief who somehow keeps surviving, equal parts lovable and exhausting. The volume on that hair matches the volume of nonsense he confidently delivers.

9. Muhammad Avdol

Anime: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

Avdol carries himself with the calm of a man who has already seen how the fight ends. The Egyptian fortune-teller joins the Stardust Crusaders with tight black coils and Magician's Red, a Stand that turns the desert air into a curtain of flame. He is the group's steady hand, the one who explains the stakes and takes the hits so younger fighters can learn. If the Crusaders' road trip hooked you, our JoJo Filler List sorts the whole saga out.

10. Canary

Anime: Hunter x Hunter

Long before the story leaves the Zoldyck estate, Canary holds the family's front gate alone and beats back a crowd of intruders without breaking stride. The apprentice butler wears her hair in tight natural coils and carries a loyalty to young Killua that runs deeper than her job description. She is fierce, principled, and criminally underused, the kind of side character fans still wish had gotten a full arc. One staff strike from her says more than most characters manage in an episode.

11. Cecilia Alcott

Anime: Infinite Stratos

Cecilia struts in as the resident blue-blooded rival, all corkscrew ringlets and wounded pride, then slowly thaws into an actual friend. The British pilot fights at range with a sharpshooter's precision, and her early arrogance hides someone lonelier than she lets on. She is a textbook drill-curl tsundere done with enough charm to stick. Watching her decide the group is worth trusting is the best thing her show does with her.

12. Nui Harime

Anime: Kill la Kill

Nui smiles the entire time she is ruining your life. The Grand Couturier wears her blonde hair in bouncing curly pigtails and treats mass destruction like a fun afternoon of arts and crafts. She is one of anime's most unsettling villains precisely because the cheer is real, not a mask, which makes her genuinely hard to predict. Cute presentation, monstrous intent, and not an ounce of remorse anywhere in the mix.

13. Mr. Satan

Anime: Dragon Ball Z

The World Champion who never won a real fight against anyone that mattered somehow became one of the most important people on Earth. Mr. Satan's boxy black afro and bushy mustache sell the showman act, and the joke is that he takes credit for saving the world while the actual heroes stay hidden. Then the writing does something sneaky and gives him real courage, the day he befriends Buu and talks a monster off the ledge. He is the coward who turns out to matter.

14. Mereoleona Vermillion

Anime: Black Clover

Mereoleona hits like a wildfire with a temper to match. The strongest of the Vermillion siblings leads by dragging everyone around her into a fight they did not know they could survive, her red mane whipping around like the flames she throws. She only shows up when the situation is dire, which is exactly how she likes it. Reluctant to lead, impossible to ignore, and more powerful than half the captains she outranks on paper.

15. Emporio Ivankov

Anime: One Piece

The queen of the Newkama tops a towering purple afro that is somehow the least dramatic thing going on. A commander in the Revolutionary Army with the power to rewrite a body's hormones, Ivankov turned a prison breakout into a legend and later pulled Luffy back from the edge of death by force of will and chemistry. Loud, theatrical, and fiercely protective of the outcasts who found a home in Kamabakka. You can spot that afro coming from a mile off.

Honorable mentions

A few near-misses earned a shout, starting with the two everyone assumes are curly. Izuku Midoriya's green mop is really a natural perm that only springs into full puffs as a gag when Bakugo fries him, so he lands here instead of the list (his best lines live in our Deku Quotes collection). Gintoki insists his silver mess is a natural perm too, and it reads wavy more than curled, which our Gintama Filler List fans can argue about all day. Ryuko Matoi gets by on a single rebellious curl, Dazai's brown waves never quite coil, and Serena's honey hair sits closer to soft waves than true curls.

Every coil drawn on purpose

Line them up and the pattern holds: nobody gets curly hair in anime by accident. Brook's afro survives death, Mami's ringlets sell her grace, Tatsumaki's coils bounce with every tantrum, and Carole's are drawn with a tenderness the medium is finally learning to spend. These anime characters with curly hair earned their texture because a designer decided the extra effort was worth it, and the result is a cast you can pick out of any crowd.

If you want more rankings, honest takes, and weekly anime debates, come hang out with us at Kaminari, where our newsletter picks apart the season's best characters and fights before your feed gets there. Curls are rare in this medium. These fifteen make the case that they should not be.

FAQs

Why is curly hair so rare in anime?

Curls are difficult and time-consuming to animate consistently, since every strand has to hold its shape across thousands of frames. Straight and spiky styles are simply faster to draw, so anime characters that have curly hair tend to be deliberate design choices rather than defaults, which is part of why they stand out so much.

Who are the best curly-haired female anime characters?

The top curly hair anime characters female fans rank highest are Mami Tomoe, Tatsumaki, Celestia Ludenberg, and Elizabeth Midford, with Carole Stanley climbing fast for her beautifully animated natural coils. Each one headlines her series on personality and skill, not just the ringlets.

What are drill curls in anime?

Drill curls are the tight, corkscrew ringlets that hang like spirals, most often drawn on the elegant, high-status ojou-sama archetype. Mami Tomoe, Celestia Ludenberg, and Elizabeth Midford are the go-to examples, and the style signals refinement and old money at a glance.

Which anime has the most curly-haired characters?

One Piece is the runaway leader, since Oda loves wildly varied designs and packs in curly picks like Brook, Usopp, and Emporio Ivankov. Any long-running curly hair anime with a huge cast tends to rack them up, but few match the sheer texture variety of the Straw Hats' world.

Are there anime characters with natural afro-textured hair?

Yes, and more than you might expect. Brook, Mr. Satan, and Emporio Ivankov rock full afros, while Carole Stanley and Canary wear their natural coils with real care in the animation. The medium does not reach for the texture often, but it does it justice when it commits.