Of those you know I wonder what are your Top 10 or 5 "Dark Magical Girl" designs. I wanna see some cool non standard mahou shoujo characters & thought you'd be best to ask
Ofcourse for me Chariot from BRS is Top 2 ish but I'd like to hear yours
Asking me for a top x whatever is hard because I overthink shit too much. So instead I'll just talk about dark magical girls that stand out to me and briefly talk about what I like about them; and to prevent keeping this ask in the dark for too long, instead of writing the whole thing in one go I'll reblog this ask once a week with a different review until I'm satisfied. Ok? So don't take this as a tierlist of who is "better" and instead try to learn from each of these girls' strengths:
First let's get the obvious out of the way. You'd think after all the times I've talked about the Holy Quintet that I'd have nothing left to say about Homura, and you'd be wrong. I've talked symbolism and shapes and mobility, but today let's focus on how the outfit compliments her bodytype and, by extension, why the changes in her walpurgisnacht outfit bother me so much.
Like I said before, Homura is comparatively lanky against the rest of the girls. She doesn't have much in the way of curves, though they do exist, but the secret knowledge that Homura has uncovered is that, contrary to popular belief you don't need a particular bodytype to be sexy, it's all about working with what you do have. In her case, of course, the answer is long legs. But those are still pretty skinny, so how do you manage this without making them look like a pair of chopsticks? Step 1: encase them completely in black. But this alone will not sufice, in fact, it would risk making the problem worse. Black is great because it helps play with volume by "cheating" the light, it highlights and streamlines the outline of the wearer, so in something as cylindrical as legs it can be used to highlight their volume, but it won't necessesarily add to it. Ergo you go to step 2: put a pattern on the outside of the legs. The color break will widen them out, thus making them look rounder.
BUT THIS IS STILL NOT ENOUGH!!!!! There's still another problem to adress: the hips. Now, it's not that the Ume Aoki girls have no hips, but compared to the snatched waists and round asses of the sailor scouts and the winx, the situation is completely different. That means you have to be especially careful on how you structure the skirts. Aka. step 3: choosing the right skirt shape. Here's where the top enters the picture because obviously both things have to match. Homura is going for a school look, so there will be no puff to help her out, but she can still rely on a high-waisted triangle skirt to do the job. Bottom short and wide enough to keep the legs long, top snatched to the tiniest part of the waist; even if we don't see it because in this case the top covers it, we can still infer it precisely by the fact that it's hidden behind a shirt with high triangular cuts at the bottom.
From this we can finally talk about the shirt itself and its crucial advantage of layering. Again, Homura doesn't have much cleevage, but who needs tits with legs like that? Actually, the shirt makes her look flatter than she actually is, but it all works in her favor because the layers bulk her up properly. It also helps that her undershirt is black, because it creates cohesion with her legs, and thus the looseness of her "dress" gains meaning and feels more comfortable. That's why I hate that walpurgisnacht rising took the undershirt away. Keep in mind that the "button down" still has the looseness and feel of a regular cotton schoolshirt, and the sleeves still have the black underlayer that's no longer connected to anything, but now the shirt is a pointed sweetheart neckline that barely holds on to her chest and it makes the skirt look heavy, because there's not enough weight on top to justify it being so long while also carrying the weight of the shirt itself.
So, what have we learned here? Well, hopefully a few things: the pros and cons of using black and how to optimize it, how crucial it is to understand the body you're working with to achieve the shape and silhouette you want, how every element is a team effort in that pursuit so you shouldn't change shit recklessly, and lastly that, again, weight distribution matters in making an outfit come to life. Lessons continued next week.
