PUBLISHING THIS FOR GOOD MEASURE. And additional public debate because I’d love to hear what people think about this.
Long story short, it largely has to do with the way she’s drawn in the manga (which is my bible, I’m not particularly fond of the anime) and my personal preference.
In the manga, her eyes are not coloured by a darker shade of grey, while in the anime, she’s given dark grey eyes. Hashirama, who shares her general eye design and has dark eyes, has coloured eyes in the manga. There are also characters like Kankuro and Kakashi, but since both of their irises often appear to be smaller than average, I’m leaving them out of the equation here. Mito’s shade of grey (hee hee) in anime seems to me dark enough to be based on coloured-in pupils in the manga. However, they aren’t, hence my belief that her eyes are at the very least lighter in colour than pictured in the anime.
At first, I ended up with a steel blue headcanoned colour for her, but now I’m thinking green-blue (like the sea, oh the parallels) may also be suitable. I also took into account the obvious traits she might’ve passed on to Tsunade and Nawaki, but seeing those two both have a different shade of brown as eyecolour (nor share any other distinctive genetic traits with her as far as I can see), I’m going to guess that came from the Senju side/from the parent unrelated to Mito.
A minor thing that led me to doubt the anime’s colouring also has to do with the eyecolour of my other waifu, Konan. In the manga she’s shown with grey eyes, in the anime they’re amber. She is ofc still perfect in every way, but it gave me enough additional reasons to reconsider, haha.
Yes, yes, I see. I used to think her eyes were really light too because of the manga. But then again, I think that the manga and the anime are not that constant sometimes because it’s not easy to portray black and white and grey into colors. For example, Karin is an Uzumaki as well and her hair in the manga was black, so where her eyes, when we all know they are not black, they are like a red/hot pink so normally, it should be the grey-ish tone too but no;
Then we have Kushina herself. Her hair is red, her eyes are a dark grey-blue with even hints of purple but in the manga, they are not even grey-ish.
So yeah, there is a lot of inconsistency when it comes to the shades in the manga and how they are in the anime. But then again, it allows people to use their headcanons and such. So it’s like being able to choose between which you like most; the manga’s portrait or the anime’s.