Basic Trope: In non-human creatures, males tend to be darker-colored while females tend to be lighter-colored.
- Straight: Two Cat Folk show up in the work; Hiroshi has dark fur, and his wife Kyo has light fur.
- Exaggerated:
- Hiroshi has jet-black fur while Kyo is pure white.
- The rule of male creatures having darker colors than female creatures is applied to all of the fictional beings.
- Downplayed: Hiroshi and Kyo are both brown cats. However, Hiroshi is more of a moderate brown while Kyo is tan-colored.
- Justified:
- Truth in Television for some animals, such as several species of birds.
- Male Cat Folk tend to live in darker areas more commonly, while females tend to live in lighter areas. Their fur color reflects this as an evolutionary advantage.
- Inverted: Kyo is the one with darker fur, while her husband Hiroshi has light fur.
- Subverted: Most of the Beast Men seem to fit this trope. However, a light-colored Pig Man shows up.
- Double Subverted: The Pig Man turned out to be a masculine-looking woman.
- Parodied: The trope is applied to female black bears, also known in the media’s universe as "Moderately Dark Gray Bears".
- Zig-Zagged: While Hiroshi and Kyo play the trope straight, several of the other Beast Men have varying colors regardless of gender.
- Averted:
- Whether the creatures have lighter or darker colors has nothing to do with their gender.
- All of the creatures of a certain species are the same color.
- Enforced: The creators want the audience to know what the genders of the non-human creatures are supposed to be, but they find tactics such as Humanoid Female Animal and most versions of Tertiary Sexual Characteristics ridiculous or unnecessary. As a result, they make the males darker and the females lighter.
- Lampshaded: Most of the background characters exhibit light and dark tones based on gender, meanwhile the main cast averts this character design.
- Invoked: "I can't tell which ones are male and which ones are female! Here, apply some hair dye so I can see which is which."
- Exploited: A creature needs to disguise as the opposite gender, so they paint themselves lighter/darker.
- Defied: Kyo dyes her fur color dark (or Hiroshi dyes his fur color light).
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "I wonder why female animals are almost always lighter-colored than the males in cartoons."
Back to Pale Females, Dark Males
