Okay, if I can give the artist some credit, they tried to give a variety of body types to the girls. I will admit that even when I was younger ( you know, the audience that's being targeted to here) I found it odd that all of the girls for being teenagers all from different places had the same body type.
HOWEVER, the fact that they changed the clothes is so odd to me. They aren't that bad in the original (hell, when I was still in highschool (the girls are 16) I saw much MUCH worse than that) so I don't know why they went to censor it even more. To add onto that, they gave everyone such derpy faces compared to the original. Which is even more odd considering the second original picture looks more like an in-between frame of animation.
But what I think this also shows these people's inability to realize the difference between "appeal" and reality.
In reality, people tend to wear pretty dull clothing unless they're really into fashion and makeup and all that. This isn't a bad thing and that's because it's easier to put on something that's darker to wear than to spend time looking for bright clothes that'll get dirtied up quicker(plus in some cases it's cheaper). In particular, many teenagers who are lazy are probably not going to wear a bunch of bright clothing everyday. It's not that they'll never will, but it's not as normal as you think. But in an animation or comic, you're allowed to take some liberties with this. So what's my point here?
The point is that in reality, to these young artists, yeah it makes sense to wear normal clothes. And sometimes that really helps to ground a character who's supposed to be normal. But that's also a problem in itself.
It's boring as hell. The reason why so many character designers like to make such complicated designs isn't as much as functionality as much as it is adding life to a character. Because in real life,
no one wears tacky bright clothing all the time. Therefore, when you see a character have this scheme it sticks out more and is memorable to the eye.
This is why so many super hero and magical girl shows use bright, bold color schemes for the characters. It's why you always see the red haired character acting fiery and passionate. It's why you might see a blue character be gloomy and grim. There's a whole psychology to it, but you can basically google, "color theory psychology" and you''ll find out more.
These artists don't seem to understand the nuance of this. AT ALL. For example, Tecna, the pinked haired one, is colored in bright greens and pinks to represent her femininity and interest in technology. Her original design is almost like this gaudy neo-futuristic punk. It's actually quite clever for a show about shilling out toys.
Her newer redesign doesn't stand out as well and tell you much about her personality. She looks bland. That's not fun in a fantasy about transforming into a magic pixie girl. In fact, it destroys the entire point.
Like, I can get wanting to give a character a more "normal" design. I really do. But what's the point of a fantasy, if there is none? A teenager in these shows can wear normal clothes, but they have to be stylized in some way to stand out. When they don't, you get young anime protag brown hair and same facial structure over and over.