Fire Emblem Gals Part 1
We are assured that Fire Emblem is great game franchise with engaging characters. We have to take the readers’ word for that, because we always find a distinct dissonance between how FE female characters look and what their bios tell us about their stories and personalities. This week, my take on Nowi, the loli dragon.
Nowi
Nowi of Fire Emblem Awakening embodies the “beloved” trope of a centuries-old being taking on the appearance of an underage girl… Who is open as a romance option to the player character. Never forget that Awkward Zombie comic which makes fun of it!
“She chose to wear that!” is a bullshit excuse for a grown woman character running around a battlefield in a bikini, let alone for a thousand year old magical creature who also chooses to have the body and face of a child.
Since she’s really a dragon and probably needs no armor, the goal of redesign was to give her clothes that would look appropriate (rather than protective) for someone who takes form of roughly a 12-year old.
I actually found the color scheme and many shapes in Nowi’s costume very good, just wasted because the focus was on showing skin and adding too many decorations.
I decided that her teeny tiny scaly bra would make a good vest, if put on top of a crop t-shirt with the same lace finish as those white gloves… which she wears under the black gloves?
Then, since I liked the scale pattern a lot, I recreated it also on her belly. Is that a matching undershirt or her real dragon skin? Who knows! It looks cool.
The area between her belly and knees was made of pure visual noise. It was sexualized and overdesigned at the same time.
The only ridiculous thing I decided to leave in were the crossing belts, because they look cool enough and aren’t implausible… Provided that I added belt loops to her pants. Speaking of which, fetishy short shorts connected to stockings with garter belts had to go, for obvious reasons.
Since her shoes had such a strange shape, I decided to turn them from thigh-highs with inexplicable ankle boots bottom into tights and ankle boots. All it took was to reverse and change the hem of the boots into that of short pants.
Ribbons weren’t a bad idea on their own, but they just completely didn’t belong as decoration on her sides, so I got rid of them and just transplanted the long tails onto her chest ribbon, making it both cuter and a more prominent splash of pink on her upper half.
All in all, it’s one of my favorite, while most subtle, redesigns. Probably also my best simulation of the original’s coloring style. I really hope it managed to turn creepyness of a sexualized childlike character into cuteness.
~Ozzie