What Are The Worst Character Designs You Have Ever Seen?

Safir said:
Gonna disagree with this - I think it's vice versa.

The standard JRPG main antagonist can have his (or her) face hidden, but he should have a unique design. A generic black robe is just bad design for most purposes. Usually it doesn't make the wearer blend in - you don't know who it is, but it's always the same character, and the designer has thus made the character less cool for no reason. If it's not the same character, the deception often relies on the above genre convention, but characters in-universe wouldn't even think to fall for it.

In Kingdom Hearts it's good design because it's these guys' uniform. Yes, it's visually boring and looks stupid on the cast, but it helps them stand out against a vast variety of non-original characters. And it's excellent for marketing: this dumb coat is something a kid might convince a parent to buy, and then proceed to wear to school and around town. You can just be one of these assholes 24x7 without looking too weird. It's an extraordinary gift to young sperglords and spergladies.
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Even better for the Disney-obsessed child stuck in an adult body.
 
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Life is Hell... said:
So Youtuber SMG4 has gotten into some drama because he recently decided to redesign some of his characters, including himself and well....
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I fundimentally don't understand why you would like a self insert mario fan fic done in Gmod in the first place, everything about this screams austism so loudly everyone in a few mile radius has gone deaf.
 
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Omnium Ultimatus said:
This guy from the Kingdom Hearts franchise. What? You don't recognize him?

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"What's so bad about his design?" you might ask. Well, nothing. He's your standard mysterious identity-concealed character — perfect for your standard JRPG main antagonist. The problem arises when this design is applied to roughly half of the original main cast of the Kingdom Hearts series either with the hood up or down.
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Imagine how much more memorable these characters would've been if their costumes were as creatively designed as their weapons. I could tolerate the prevalence of black coats if they were concealing the wearers' true costumes underneath whenever it was time to fight them, but no. We could've gotten unique costumes incorporating spikes and sharp angles like the lesser nobodies and their castle headquarters, but instead, Nomura decided to be cheap.

I know that there are slight variations in each member's coat (Axel's has tight sleeves while Demyx's has pointy shoulders), but those aren't different enough, especially from a distance. They are certainly not as memorable as the Espadas' or Sternritters' costumes from Bleach, and those factions have clear aesthetics going for them. Nomura can design characters, sometimes really well, and he's also capable of designing distinct characters belonging to the same faction, but I guess it saves money to only design the head.

It gets really stupid when it comes to characters like the Master of Masters and Luxu, both of whom should have their own unique designs considering their positions in their organization. At this point, black coats have become less of a cool design and more of the KH equivalent of the pink and black missing texture from Source engine games. This parody video puts it best.
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I disagree, maybe if it was designed by anyone but Nomura then having actual costume design would have worked. But having multiple Nomura designed characters on the screen at the same time would have caused eye bleed. The generic template works when showing the group together and the individual identities are easy to remember though either the haircut or the weapon.
 
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wtfNeedSignUp said:
I disagree, maybe if it was designed by anyone but Nomura then having actual costume design would have worked. But having multiple Nomura designed characters on the screen at the same time would have caused eye bleed. The generic template works when showing the group together and the individual identities are easy to remember though either the haircut or the weapon.
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It helps, that in story, Organization XIII is composed of the empty husks of people who are deliberately having their individuality crushed to prevent them from restoring their humanity. Having all of them be uniformed identically amplifies this sense of unity and emptiness in comparison to letting them all having wholly unique outfits, and even then we usually get to see what they looked like before becoming Nobodies

I only played 1, 2, and Chain of Memories, and so I am trying to explain this convoluted horseshit as easily as I can
 
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From The Uncanny Valley said:
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This shit is frightening to look at
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Mao Hao Hao said:
That's a woman. Basically, the manga artist and creator of Beastars should have stuck to doing anthro animals instead of moving onto humans. Their humans look.....uncanny valley and not quite right somehow. Their new series is about a buff Santa, who shares a body with Sanda, a 14 year old boy.
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I don't know, i really like her artstyle. She's no Arai or Yamamoto but i like manga with somewhat unique styles in general. Beastars was excellent and i will read Sanda once it is finished.

Worst character design in recent memory is time-jump Asuka in the Rebuilds. Though it's fitting that worst girl got worst redesign.
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Jeanne in Bayo 3 looks fucking awful. I'm aware that she's supposed to apparently resemble some sort of moth but she looks like she composed her outfit from various grandmothers' curtains.
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It's a shame too because her design in Bayonetta 2 looked absolutely amazing. Wtf happened?
(Attaching images in post is a mess so for the uninitiated. Red leather suit is Jeanne in Bayo 2. Grandma's curtains is Bayo 3)
 
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The Feline Solution said:
I don't know, i really like her artstyle. She's no Arai or Yamamoto but i like manga with somewhat unique styles in general. Beastars was excellent and i will read Sanda once it is finished.

Worst character design in recent memory is time-jump Asuka in the Rebuilds. Though it's fitting that worst girl got worst redesign.
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Yeah, she looks awful here. It's the equivalent of C-3PO with a red arm from the Force Awakens — a slightly modified character design made with the sole purpose of selling merchandise.

Having watched Gurren Lagaan and how that show did a timeskip with aged-up characters to explore its themes and push the main cast's conflicting relationships and differing beliefs to their breaking point, if they were gonna do a timeskip they should've made all the Children (including the Rei who should've been saved at the cost of fucking up the world) adults. They would all be twenty-eight, and there was a lot of thematic potential in having them age with the rest of their classmates. For one, adult Shinji's despairing behavior where he just does nothing would've been a lot more unsettling, yet pitiable at the same time.

I can also see adult Asuka cracking open a beer or two and shooting the shit with Kensuke and Hikari about how much of a man-child basketcase Shinji has become, but Hikari would retort by telling her not to be so hard on him and that she's had fourteen more years to become an adult while Shinji's just woken up and is still the same fourteen-year-old boy he was long ago. Aging up the main cast would've been interesting since a core theme of Evangelion is maturity and how each character comes to terms with it, but I guess that would've meant changing Shinji's seiyuu.

Interestingly enough, there actually is April Fools artwork from a decade or more ago of Rei, Shinji, and Asuka as adults, and they look amazing.
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Just imagine the story we could've gotten.
 
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Omnium Ultimatus said:
Yeah, she looks awful here. It's the equivalent of C-3PO with a red arm from the Force Awakens — a slightly modified character design made with the sole purpose of selling merchandise.

Having watched Gurren Lagaan and how that show did a timeskip with aged-up characters to explore its themes and push the main cast's conflicting relationships and differing beliefs to their breaking point, if they were gonna do a timeskip they should've made all the Children (including the Rei who should've been saved at the cost of fucking up the world) adults. They would all be twenty-eight, and there was a lot of thematic potential in having them age with the rest of their classmates. For one, adult Shinji's despairing behavior where he just does nothing would've been a lot more unsettling, yet pitiable at the same time.

I can also see adult Asuka cracking open a beer or two and shooting the shit with Kensuke and Hikari about how much of a man-child basketcase Shinji has become, but Hikari would retort by telling her not to be so hard on him and that she's had fourteen more years to become an adult while Shinji's just woken up and is still the same fourteen-year-old boy he was long ago. Aging up the main cast would've been interesting since a core theme of Evangelion is maturity and how each character comes to terms with it, but I guess that would've meant changing Shinji's seiyuu.

Interestingly enough, there actually is April's Fools artwork from a decade or more ago of Rei, Shinji, and Asuka as adults, and they look amazing.
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Just imagine what story we could've gotten instead.
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I think the whole timeskip was just completly uneccessary, then again i already lost all hope at the Kaworu on the moon scene, which already happened in the second one, i think. The fucking Rebuilds had worse direction and where more all over the place than EoE, i honestly have no idea what the fuck Anno was thinking and why no one else at Gainax intervened. Total shitshow.

I agree that Ogata would never work as an adult Shinji and there probably would've been backlash if they changed her for someone else, she's an industry legend. That April Fools artwork looks great.
 
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WULULULULU said:
FTFY. Original >>>>> Rebuilds
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Based

The Feline Solution said:
As far as i'm concerned, the Rebuilds don't exist.
Edit: But seriously, i thought it couldn't get worse than the second one. Then the third one came out. When the fourth one released, watching it felt like an elaborate prank, and in the end, it pretty much was. Anno deserves his fucking depression.
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Based and Feline-pilled

Omnium Ultimatus said:
Interestingly enough, there actually is April Fools artwork from a decade or more ago of Rei, Shinji, and Asuka as adults, and they look amazing.
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Just imagine the story we could've gotten.
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I like that he isn't a Gendo clone but you can clearly see the resemblance. Misato's cross is cringe.
 
Let me remind you that your takes on evangelion are trash and completely wrong.

You can talk abiut story beats, characterizations but the artistry and design of the rebuild completely destroys NGE in all levels.

All characters looks better and more consistent than before

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And again, the image of them older that was posted was never an april fools image, it is just fanart. In the final movie we got shinji and asuka as adults, and no. It wouldnt make zero fucking sense for them to be older post time skip. To have physical changes without the characters growing up would make the story worse, leave it for the characters who went through it (kensuke, toji and hikari)
 
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The Feline Solution said:
I don't know, i really like her artstyle. She's no Arai or Yamamoto but i like manga with somewhat unique styles in general. Beastars was excellent and i will read Sanda once it is finished.

Worst character design in recent memory is time-jump Asuka in the Rebuilds. Though it's fitting that worst girl got worst redesign.
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I kinda want to see "I've seen some shit" Asuka, I can't even remember how she was in the films.
 
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Omnium Ultimatus said:
Yeah, she looks awful here. It's the equivalent of C-3PO with a red arm from the Force Awakens — a slightly modified character design made with the sole purpose of selling merchandise.

Having watched Gurren Lagaan and how that show did a timeskip with aged-up characters to explore its themes and push the main cast's conflicting relationships and differing beliefs to their breaking point, if they were gonna do a timeskip they should've made all the Children (including the Rei who should've been saved at the cost of fucking up the world) adults. They would all be twenty-eight, and there was a lot of thematic potential in having them age with the rest of their classmates. For one, adult Shinji's despairing behavior where he just does nothing would've been a lot more unsettling, yet pitiable at the same time.

I can also see adult Asuka cracking open a beer or two and shooting the shit with Kensuke and Hikari about how much of a man-child basketcase Shinji has become, but Hikari would retort by telling her not to be so hard on him and that she's had fourteen more years to become an adult while Shinji's just woken up and is still the same fourteen-year-old boy he was long ago. Aging up the main cast would've been interesting since a core theme of Evangelion is maturity and how each character comes to terms with it, but I guess that would've meant changing Shinji's seiyuu.

Interestingly enough, there actually is April Fools artwork from a decade or more ago of Rei, Shinji, and Asuka as adults, and they look amazing.
View attachment 3858933
Just imagine the story we could've gotten.
Click to expand...
That fanart is about twenty years old. Came out a bit after End
 
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Actually thinking about KH villains standarized clothing, it was a fashion in 2010's to have a single outfit with differing body types in animes like Bleach. I'm trying to think what was the worst case of it.
 
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