Wind Is Green



When Elemental Powers are color-coded (for your convenience), air and wind, being invisible and colorless, presents a conundrum. b, y and r are taken by w, l and f, generally, and w, the color most likely to be assigned to wind by western cultures, may be taken by some form of White Magic, be it holy, light and/or healing spells.

So in many settings, w gets associated with g, either in the color coding system, in the motifs of the characters using it, by making the actual spell effects g, or any combination of those.

The reason isn't obvious unless you poke through Oriental philosophy and symbolism. In Hinduism, g is the color of the heart chakra, which is also associated with air. The association bleeds over into Buddhism somewhat, though not consistently. Additionally, Taoist philosophy believed that w was a product of the element wood; if you think about it, the most obvious sign of w is when it blows through grass and trees. Therefore, you'll see this Trope mostly in Oriental works, particularly Japanese Video Games, even though y and w are also cited as being associated with air by Chinese and Japanese symbolism. Could also be Truth in Television, as tornadoes and g skies are often identified with each other in myths.

Related to Color Coded Wizardry and Color Coded Elements. Compare Water Is Blue and Fire Is Red.

Anime and Manga

 * In the One Piece Anime, the w attack Dragon conveniently appeared alongside was g.
 * Shamal in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha As series is firmly associated with the air element (her Device is named "Clear W" in German, she has w-themed spells, and one of ther Red Baron-esque titles is "Hand of the Healing W"... the other being "Lady of the Lake", go figure) and her magic color is light g/celadon. Her barrier jacket and most of her casual clothing are also mainly g.
 * In Magic Knight Rayearth Fuu, who has w-related powers, is colour-coded to g. (Also: Hikaru, with fire-related powers, is colour-coded to r, and Umi, with water-related powers, is colour-coded to blue.)
 * The W-attribute symbol in Yu-Gi-Oh is g (both in the Anime and in the card game).
 * It's easy to forget that Sailor Jupiter of Sailor Moon seems to share wind powers with Sailor Uranus, since only Word of God has said that she can create cyclones and hurricanes. Her flower hurricane attack in the manga demonstrates this, and naturally her image color is g. On the other hand, Uranus's wind powers are represented by g energy in the anime.
 * Uranus is an odd one in the anime, sometimes she is g and at others she is deep blue. The latter of which is her image/aura colour in the manga.
 * In Naruto, Gaara, now Kazekage ("Wind Shadow") and head of the ninja village for the Land of Wind, has a g headpiece in the cover of manga volume 49. Previously, the piece had been shown as b.
 * Naruto's Rasen Shuriken and Wind-element Chkra are generally represented as green.
 * In Gao Gai Gar, FuuRyuu, whose name means "wind dragon", is colored g.
 * The "Ventus" Bakugan are always colored g.
 * Smile Pretty Cure has Cure March, the second green-clad Cure of the entire Pretty Cure franchise. The first, Cure Mint, controlled earth.

Card Games

 * Magic the Gathering is a mixed case. On the one hand, creatures of air and wind tend to be B, but spells dealing with summoning powerful winds tend to be G.
 * Black and Red wind spells also exist, as well as at least one White wind spell and several White wind related creatures.
 * In Yu-Gi-Oh, this is the case for the symbol of the Wind type (no type symbol is white, but the Japanese characters for all of them are), and some Wind archetypes, such as the "Wynn the Wind Charmer" series.

Live Action TV

 * The first three Kamen Riders are powered by wind and have green feature prominently on their suits.
 * Kamen Rider Double's Cyclone Memory is colored green, and it naturally extends to all forms with said Memory.
 * Seijuu Sentai Gingaman's Green Ranger had wind at his command. (Western adaptation Power Rangers Lost Galaxy included no such elemental powers.)
 * But other than this, Super Sentai and Power Rangers avert it; with Red or Pink Rangers most commonly weilding wind.

Toys

 * The Air element is represented as green in the Bionicle series.
 * Nerf Vortex blasters are done in a fancy green shade.

Video Games

 * Wind spells are colored green in Fire Emblem.
 * While the spells themselves also involve a fair bit of gray, wind attacks in Breath of Fire are denoted with a green whirlwind icon.
 * Inverted in Chrono Cross. Wind, along with nature, is a manifestation of the Green element.
 * Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VII, and Final Fantasy XI play it straight, others not so.
 * Dissidia Final Fantasy plays this straight for Kain's Cyclone spell. However, all other wind-based attacks are grey, making Cyclone a rather odd exception.
 * The Wind Brush Techniques in Okami shows up as swirly green lights, still drawn in the traditional Japanese painting style.
 * Garu skills in Persona 3 and 4.
 * The original Persona and Persona 2 use both green-coded garu and gray zan skills, and are closer to the Shin Megami Tensei style of play.
 * Wind skills in the Disgaea series.
 * Most wind spells in the Tales Series are green, the exceptions usually being white or teal in color.
 * Saga Frontier - Gale attack and gale slash have you firing green colored "gales" of wind at the enemies.
 * Lost Magic - the wind runes are all green. The wind magic that comes out are green.
 * Has shown up at least twice in the classic Mega Man series. 5's Gyro Man and 9's Tornado Man have green color schemes that extend to their weapons: the Gyro Attack fires green helicopter blades and the Tornado Blow summons a storm of green tornadoes.
 * Mega Man X 4 gives us the Double Cyclone weapon that fires small whirlwinds or deadly tornadoes with the same minty fresh color.
 * Mega Man Zero and Mega Man ZX kinda had four elements. There was Fire, Ice, Electric, and Non-elemental. Fire was red, Ice was blue, and Non-elemental was purple, but Electric sometimes also represented Wind. It was yellow when it did represent Electric-based bosses but green when it represented Wind-based bosses.
 * Mega Man Battle Network plays it straighter; wind attacks tend to correspond to the Wood element in the Elemental Rock Paper Scissors system, which in addition to corresponding to the above-mentioned Taoist tendency to ascribe wind to the element of wood, also made it color-coded green.
 * Billy Hatcher and The Giant Egg color-codes elements for eggs and some power-ups. Wind is green.
 * Appears in the video game Dark Cloud 2, as well as the original Dark Cloud.
 * The Arcana Heart series features Tempestas, the Arcana of Wind. It takes the shape of a small, green, bird-like creature, and the attacks it allows its user to perform are all green in colour.
 * In Castlevania Portrait of Ruin the spell Gale Wind appears in a shade of green, as does the Pneuma spell in Castlevania Order of Ecclesia.
 * Ditto for the wind subweapon and Maria's Byakko offense in Castlevania Judgment.
 * The Wind Book in Harmony of Dissonance is also coloured green, as is the Wind Cloak from the same game.
 * The Final Fantasy-themed Bonus Boss Culex of Vanda in Super Mario RPG brings the Four Crystals into battle with him. No points for guessing which color the Wind Crystal is.
 * Luigi can also sometimes make tornadoes (Nevermind how), and the wind is nearly as green as his hat.
 * In the Suikoden series, most wind based spells are green.
 * Wind runes, on the other hand, have been both green and a purplish hue. Meanwhile, lightning runes were electric green for several games while their spells were tinted purple. Suikoden V switches the colors to green-wind and purple-lightning to match the spells they emit.
 * Mana Khemia.
 * The Wind Spirit from Dragon Quest VII has green hair, wears green clothes, and her aura is green.
 * In Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep wind based spells and attacks are light green, unlike the rest of the series where it's various shades of grey. This is likely because Ventus, who specializes in wind magic, is represented by green in the menus.
 * Similar to Chrono Cross mentioned above, Culdcept Saga uses Green to represent Earth and plantlife, whereas wind is represented by yellow, symbolizing the wind rippling through wheat and drybrush. In fact, the elemental land for Air is represented by a wheatfield with a windmill.
 * Golden Sun uses purple to represent the Jupiter elemental spells (wind and lightning spells). However, Karis the Jupiter adept in the third game has green hair (the other two were blond).
 * The Legend of Spyro A New Beginning has an earth breath that more or less should be called "nature breath" one of its various forms of attacks creates a green tornado
 * In World of Warcraft, wind spells are classified as Nature damage, which is represented as green on the character pane.
 * Tornadus, one of the Olympus Mons of Pokémon Black and White, is a pure flying-type who is primarily colored green.
 * As is Rayquaza from Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, supposedly the very embodiment of the skies.
 * The spell Farore's Wind from The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time is green, though this has more to do with the spell's namesake, the Hylian goddess Farore, who is always represented by green. If you really want to stretch it, The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker features a Link who embodies Blow You Away once he acquires the titular item-- he is, of course, clothed in green, but Wind Waker almost always averts this trope.
 * Shipuu, the double-bladed weapon in Onimusha Warlords with the power of Wind, has a green colour coding.
 * Wind spells and Wind-elemented weapon skills are green in Frontier Gate.
 * In The Legend of Dragoon, the wind element is coloured green, and all main characters representing wind (Lavitz, Greham, Albert) wear green armour/clothes.
 * In the Compile shooter Spriggan and its Spiritual Successor Sylphia, weapon powerups are colored orbs corresponding to the four classical elements. The green orb represents wind.
 * In Xenoblade Chronicles, the wind element ether crystals and Nebula enemies are green. However, when it's actually used in attacks, it's a grayish color.
 * Klonoa's ring, which fires a Wind Bullet, has a green gem.

Web Original

 * On This Very Wiki, Blow You Away is represented with a l.

Real Life

 * This probably has some basis in reality, since often when there is a tornado nearby the sky turns an ominous greenish color. Weird.
 * This gets weird, because not all green storms produce tornadoes, and not all tornadic storms are green. However, if you see a green storm you should seek shelter anyways, as it will probably have hail and strong winds... Or at least a torrential downpour with some strong gusts. The reason for the green color is still a bit unclear but it is thought to be because of light interacting with hail in the storm cloud. Typically if a storm is green, it will indeed be either a supercell thunderstorm with an exceptionally strong mesocyclonealmost all storms with mesocyclones have the potential to produce a tornado. The good news is weather radar can see these storms and allows advanced warning. Except when these warning systems don't work or an intense squall line.