Short Hair with Tail

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In character design, there is the crucial question:

Short Hair or Long Hair (theatre)? Short implies that the character is practical, independent, and strong. For women, long hair means that she's feminine, beautiful, even princessy, but on men it's just plain awesome. So, with these two opposing hair philosophies, will the creator choose the practicality and ease of a short cut, or the awesomeness of hair that goes fwish for dramatic effect?

You need never choose between the two again. A woman who has Short Hair with Tail has the spunk and practicality of a Short-haired Hottie with all the flowy drama or Rapunzel Hair. A man who has Short Hair with Tail has the stereotypical, short male haircut at the front but gets to be a Badass Long Hair or Long-Haired Pretty Boy at the same time.

Characters with this hairstyle simultaneously rock the short and the long styles -- they're just that awesome. Distinct from Hime Cut in that hime cuts have mid-length side tresses to frame the face, and all long in back, while Short Hair with Tail is quite obviously a short style all around with a noticeable tail.

This is a character design trope, subtrope of Anime Hair. See also Tomboyish Sidetails, Rapunzel Hair and Badass Long Hair. Compare with Anime Hair, for the general likelihood of actually seeing these styles walking around, and Hime Cut, when the short hair is only in front to frame the face.

Examples of Short Hair with Tail include:

Anime & Manga

• Soi-Fon (the captain of Squad 2) in Bleach has two. If Short Hair with Tail is any character indicator, the short cut says she can kick some serious butt with the rest of them, and the long hair is in keeping with the dramatic, showy side of her personality and how girly she gets around Yoruichi.
• Macross Frontier has Ozma Lee, who pulls off a badass haircut that this troper has seen go horribly wrong in real life. Short clipped and tousled all around with a ponytail down his back. This man has no mullet--he has pure awesome growing from his scalp.
• Tenchi Muyo! has Princess Ayeka. You'd hardly know she had the long hair without all that dramatic wind that keeps blowing. But she still has an adorable helmet-hair bob and some serious Rapunzel Hair long twin tails.
  • Also Tenchi himself--cropped cut all around, rat tail in back. And he usually manages some butt kicking.
• From Mahou Sensei Negima! there's Kaede: short part in a straight bob, long part of her hair in a ponytail tied at the nape of her neck.
• The Sailor Starlights have this--all three. Though considering their rather particular situation with varying canon, the male/female character implications of the hairstyle might change. Regardless of canon and gender confusion, they're all very pretty and they all kick butt.
• Makoto from Idaten Jump.
• Asta, at least in the Trinity Blood anime. From the front, it looks like a short cut. From behind, it's about as long as her Badass Longcoat.
• The goddess Peorth from Ah! My Goddess--just another quality to add to her fan-favorite status.
• Micaiah Chevelle from Nanoha Vivid.
• Ray/Rei from the original Beyblade. Observe.
• Possibly inverted with Laharl from Disgaea, since his super-long tails are on top rather than on the underside.
• Mew Lettuce from Tokyo Mew Mew, in twin braids for everyday and in a wrapped tail as a Mew-Mew. You actually see her twin braids down in episode 6, and that was a lot of hair.
• Makimachi Misao from Rurouni Kenshin.
• 25 year old Mukuro from Katekyo Hitman Reborn let his medium-short hair grow, and chose to keep his looong hair in an equally long ponytail. Behold (note: fan coloring). He's also undeniably badass.
  • Uni in the same series also notably has this kind of hairstyle.
• In Saint Beast, Luca's hair looks like a normal short cut from the front but has a very long wrapped ponytail at the back.
• Hikaru in Magic Knight Rayearth has short hair with a long thin braid.
• Musubi from Sekirei has this.
• The new Code Geass project, Boukoku No Akito (or Akito The Exiled) features its titular hero, Akito Hyuuga (pictured at right), with this hairstyle (the tail in question being a braid).
• Komachi/Cure Mint from Yes! Pretty Cure 5, a Shrinking Violet and the Barrier Warrior of her team, subverts this most of the time.

Comic Books

• Hopey and Maggie from Love and Rockets have had rattails and variations thereof at different points in the series.

Film

• The Padawan cut from Star Wars is cropped all around, except for one very long, thin braid.
• This picture of Mulan, which shows her in the outfit and hairstyle she fought Shan Yu in at the end of the film, but for some reason had her hairstyle drawn in a way so it now includes a ponytail.

Live Action TV

• The female cut for the Centauri could be considered this--shaved bald except for the long, long ponytail.

Video Games

• Yuna from Final Fantasy X-2 has relatively short hair, except for a very long braid from the back underside that nearly reaches her feet. How she grew that much hair in two years is an unexplained mystery.
  • ....Extensions?
    • Clip on hair dec?
• Marche from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.
• Grown-up Aile from Mega Man ZX Advent.
• Pretty Boys Yukimura and Nagamasa (and Kanbe) from Sengoku Basara all have this, suposedly so they could keep their long Samurai hair while staying Hot-Blooded and manly.
• Firion and The Onion Knight in Dissidia Final Fantasy
• In Valkyrie Profile Covenant of the Plume, Cheripha has this.
• Zhong Hui from Dynasty Warriors.
• Impa in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has very short hair, but her bangs on her right side make a long tail.
• Etrian Odyssey IV uses this for one of its female Swordsmen. In addition to wearing a bandana over a ponytail, her hair looks shorter in the front, but includes Tomboyish Sidetails. Notably, the other female Swordsman (who doubles as the class rep) just has a Bob Haircut.

Web Comics

• Soli of The Meek has this. She used to have long hair all around, but at some point she cut it.
• Homestuck:
  • The Handmaid: Neck-length hair, except for two bangs framing her face which reach almost to her feet.
  • Later, Meenah is seen with two braid-thin tails that touch the floor behind her.
• In Drowtales, Agneya'mukhi Balvhakara has the bangs and sides of a Hime Cut, but this trope in back. (Seen here.)

Western Animation

• One episode of King of the Hill has Bobby idolizing a garage-band punk rocker with a buzz cut and a rat-tail. His attempts to do the same doesn't take off.
• If baldness can be taken for "short cut", then Prince Zuko had one in the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Real Life

• Attempted with varying degrees of success and failure by mullets. Rarely do they reach Rapunzel Hair length with the long parts, rarely is the long hair badass, and rarely do mulleteers go for the all around short with a single long ponytail--but there are some occurrences.
• Rat Tail and Duck Tail are also Real Life examples of attempts at this style.
• A traditional Chinese hairstyle involves having the head mostly shaved bald except for an area in the back of the head which is grown long and braided into a tail. It's called a "queue" - not to be confused with the thing you stand in to wait for something.