Kingofwinter

So one very obscure detail from Ranma 1/2's character designs that shows just how much Rumiko knows her stuff, is Principle Kuno's original design from before he moved to Hawai and converted his entire self to the local culture.

He is in most ways the most sterotypical old-school Japanese man imaginable, with a top-knot, with the rose that is his family crest being so stylized to look like the japanese sun that you would be hard pressed to figure out that it even is a rose unless you already knew it, The pink colors of sakura that represent the masculinity of samurai that died in the prime of their life, and a really, really oldchool japanese outer robe over the pink shirt.

All of it screams "Traditional Japan" as much as humanly possible... All except for one, thing.

The big frock on his neck, which stands out like a sore thumb... unless you happen to know one very specific part of japanese history, because this one detail is just as old school japanese as all the rest, just taken from one, specific moment in time.

This kind of frock is european in nature, and was adopted by a number of Japanese noblemen that traded with the portugese for guns and cannons, and also in many cases converted to christianity.

It also became complely went out of fashion after the civil war period when the Shogunate enforced total isolation, and also did it's best to exterminate christianity in japan by any and all means necessary.

So, the fact that Kuno wears this frock is basically him declaring(through a very obscure archaic fashion statement) his religious faith in a society where christianity is a tiny, tiny minority.

This in turn also explains his daughter's school of choice, St. Hebreke's School, a unisex(Girls only in the manga) catholic school.

So it's an interesting detail, which shows that Rumiko was still aware and interested in Japan's relationship with the cross, even after she abandoned One Pound Gospel(Her previous series that she put on hold for decades right before Ranma's run).

And nobody but the most esoteric history buffs would ever notice this tiny detail.

So, one of the more hilarious realizations i've had about Tolkien's elves, is that if Beleg Strongbow's Todor era ispired outfit is an indicator of what the Fashion trend amongst the Elves of the Kingdom of Doriath, then it means that both Luthien and Thingol most certainly followed suit.

Luthien's blue dress is both legendary and iconic, but here's how it's described in text.

"Blue was her raiment as the unclouded heaven, but her eyes were grey as the starlit evening; her mantle was sewn with golden flowers, but her hair was dark as the shadows of twilight."

Now there is nothing that says it cant have been a simple robe of some king with golden leaves imagery... But if we take the idea of Tudor fashion at Doriath's court as fact, then the dress Luthien wore during all of her adventures probably looked something more like this, only probably with a more sleeker lower half.

However, she still has a pretty nice, beautiful dress.

Now let's move on to Thingol.

Everyone knows Thingol, guy who married a Maia, father of Luthien, and the asshole overprotective dad who set Beren on the path that would send both him and Luthien towards Angband, who mellowed out a bit after his grandkid was born, and eventually took in Turin as his foster son.

He might not be the most pleasent guy(unless you're reading The Tale of Turin), but he's a pretty important character within Tolkien's story, who has a lot of iconic moments.

Him and his future wife falling heads over heels at each other, and communicating exclusively through thoughts for years after.

Him taking Turin Turambar as a foster son during the doomed soul's younger years.

Or his famous issue of the challenge for Beren to bring back a Silmarill for his daughter's hand, expecting him to die trying.

Now, every single time you remember those events, or read those passages again, remember that Thingol probably is not wraring the sterotypical Elven Robes you'd expect from an Elven Lord.

No, as King he would be the man responsible more than anyone else for the fashion in his Kingdom and court, and so, he would probably be wearing something like this during all his moments during the Silmarillion.

Basically Henry the 8th's famous outfit, only a bit sleeker, wearing a crown, and hopefully withouth the codpiece XD

Don't know why you feel this strongly about it, but as it happens, you are wrong, we know pletora of ways Tolkien's elves dressed.

Tolkien himself drew a picture of Beleg Strongbow from the first age, and from it we can see that the Elves of Doriath dressed in pointed shoes with what seems to be long white socks, knee length pants, and what looks like a black doublet.

In other words, the male Elves of Doriath dressed in a style clearly inspired by Tudor england, only a bit toned down, and seemingly withouth it's more outlandish/silly features(Codpieces and those frilly necks for example).

We also know that elves seems to have prefered shoes over boots, though some elves(The ones of rivendell at the very least) used boots, though wheter it was the prefered footwear even then is another question.

Many elves also were clearly described as "Robed" in the sense of wearing actual robes, though what sort of robes and how fanciful they might be is not specified.

Famously they are also known to use enchanted cloaks, which we can presume looked pretty similar to the movie version.

Overall though, Tolkien made it clear that all of his various people dressed in a variety of styles, depending on their climate and their ancestral heritage. An elf from Doriath would probably not much resemble an elf from Mirkwood for example.

As for war, there would be a bit more overlap(though some differences as i'll go over below), as all elves dressed the same way for war, given Plate armor is not a thing in the book legendarium.

Namely iron/steel hauberks of interlocked metal rings, aka Mail/Chainmail.

All elves wore these though there is some question wheter they wore a surcoat above it as well.

It is possible that the elves did wear coats of arms above their mail shirts, but there is nothing in text as far as i can tell that auggests this, and all description of family crests and symbols suggests they carried such on their shields, not their armor.

As for their helmets, we dont know the exact style, but from what i can tell, there doesnt seem to have been any mentions of a full helmets amongst them, so there seems to have been a tradition of helmets with open faces, with fully closed off helmets being more of a dwarf thing.

Finally, there is one bit of Armor speciffically noted to be unique to Earendil, so there is a question wheter this was from his elven side, or his Human heritage, so this style would either have been the style of Gondolin, or the house of hador.

That of course being what Bilbo describes as "Panoply of ancient kings".

Now a Panoply has several meanings, as it can be used to describe "a full suit of armor", but this is a later meaning, speciffically refering to a suit of full plate armor. The older meaning, and far and away the more obvious one when you take into consideration thst Earendil's son would found numenor, which was inspired by ancienct Greece and Rome, is the the breast armor worn back during antiquity.

Now, as Tolkien made clear there was never any true plate armor in the legendarium, this rules out the early breastplates from the bronze age and the greek golden age, and instead means that Earendil either wore a greek suit of scale armor around his chest(and some form of band armor over his shoulder, be it scales, or boiled leather), or Linothorax, the kind of paper armor that Alexander the great used to conquer the known world.

While the latter is possible, there is no mention of such kind of armor anywhere in the legendarium, but plenty of references to scale armor, so i find the first much more likely.

Which means that the Elves of Gondolin(or if we're being completely literal, only it's kings) may or may not have had breast armor similar to the kind of scale armor sometimes used by the hoplites of ancienct greece.

So the newest Napoleon movie was shit, but it did highlight one aspect of Napoleon's character that doeant get enough love.

Which was that the man knew how to dress.

In an age where the damn black and white penguin dress is what western men are stuck with as the only acceptable proper kind of clothing(thanks prince of Wales) its sometimes hard to believe there was a time when respected, malr western fashion could be colorful, snazzy and visually appealing.

And Napoleon certainly knew how to dress to inspire his troops, generally withouth going so far into bling that he made it look gaudy, like a lot of his contemporaries.

Which brings us to his biggest fashion disaster. His coeonation outfits.

Like... Why? He usually dressed great, but then for your coronation, arguably the most important symbolic moment of his life, Napoleon threw away absolutely everything he knew about making himself look good, abandoning the French fashion, he himself had played a huge role in making, in favor of trying to dress like europe's kings had dressed a century or two before.

Like, imagine you're napoleon, and in an ultimate power statement, during your own coronation, rather than be crowned by the pope, you took it from his hands and crowned yourself... And you did it, dressed like this.

No wonder even his own troops, who loved him thought he looked absolutely ridiculous and out of touch.

Oh, and speaking of his crown, look at this thing! It looks spindly, and overly detailed, yet withouth anything that makes it look regal.

THIS was the crown Napoleon envisioned to represent the French Empire, the masters of europe. This dinky little thing.

It honestly looks like a budget crown, where he needed a crown asap with a limited budget and material, and so this thing was slapped together for his coronation.

Just compare it to the british crown of the time, which yes, has it's own problems(that arc could easily have been trimmed down so it looked much better) but it has an identity, regalness, and looks like it belongs on the head of a mighty, and prestigious monarch, as opposed to Napoleon's crown.

So, since we’re about to get what is probably Sasha’s final design change, i just thought now was a decent time to go over every design was considered before they settled on the current one.

You can tell this is EARLY amphibia, since this is a pony tail from the early pitch pilot, so sometime between pitch and actual design.

From what we see of this design, it looks okay, but MAN the bad shading just ruins this one.

The first concept that would use the actual style the show settled on, but you can tell it’s near as old as the previous one, and Sasha here has pure platinum blonde, and the placement of the beauty mark isn’t settled yet, here beying between her nose and eye.

The design itself though is pretty cool, but the actual coloring is just... all over the place. that said, i could defnitly see the design working with a bit of recoloring to make it more coherent(foreshadowing).

The final of Sasha’s earliest beta designs, and you see the beauty mark still isnt placed in the final spot, this one sets a theme that we’re gonna see going forward, in that the show was originally going to be way more blatant about the zelda references, with many of these designs looking incredibly similar to Ganondorf.

That is not a complaint though, as this design is GREAT. like, im gonna be honest, i like a lot of these designs WAY more than the one the show went with, and this is definitly one of them. It’s really cool. Also, i think i like this ponytail the best out of all of Sasha’s beta hairstyles.

also, i REALLY wish Sasha had kept the Flamberge. not only is it a really cool weapon that’s rarely seen, but it’s also german in origin, which would have been a nice way to tie in the fact that Sasha has german ancestry.

And here’s the first example of the second batch of Sasha’s designs.

And im a bit mixed. in some ways it’s my least favorite of these designs(I get what they were going for, trying to tie her more to the Toads of which she’s a part of), but it’s too out there to work as Sasha’s singular main design. That said, if they had been allowed to keep the blood and gore stains as a main feature, i definitly think this would have been an upgrade, just by how that little detail adds so much character to what Sasha’s become.

Also, while not as muhc as the flamberge, i like this claymore more than her single swords.

And here we have what seems to be the fan favorite out of the beta designs.

And i fully get why. Also, this is a design where Sasha basically went, “im gonna go all out and dress like Wind waker Ganondorf if he was still a bandit king.”. It’s awsome, cool, and really memorable. 

Sasha as a bandit queen looks fantastic, and if i had to choose one, singular design for Sasha before season 3B, it would be this one.

It’s also the best argument for Sasha’s original ponytail design, as this look actually makes the design rock.

Meh is the word to describe this one. The bird skull is a nice bit, but other than that... It’s a really boring design. Really glad they didn’t go with this one.

Probably the second most popular beta design, and the best way to describe it, is that it’s her regular attire, but way cooler. Dig that massive braid. Also it manages to take the idea of a small bird skull, and actually use it in a good way.

Definitly would have prefered this one to the actual armor.

Now im going a bit out of order with this one(the last of the second batch of designs), as this is from the third and final batch of designs, but i wanted to highlight it before the next one, in that if i was writing this story, this would absolutely be the look Sasha had for season 1.

It’s cool, sleek, and spiffy, and it works really, really well as a first set of duds, a beginners set of armor so to say, before her wardrobe change in season 2, where i would change her simply getting a recolor, to instead change into...

This is easily my favorite design of sasha’s beta looks, and again, if i had been writing this story, this is what she would have changed into in season 2.

Its regal, powerfull, and cool, while also serving as a good, and strong mirror image to Anne’s design change.

It’s Sasha taking cues from ganondorf, but just dropping the sorceror bit, and going full in on the tanky brawler part. And it’s awsome. Also, i could easily see this design being used really well with it taking damage, say Anne chopping off one or two of the spikes during their duel.

It’s also the final one of the second batch of beta designs, and all the following are from the final list, where they seem to have just thrown out designs to see if one stuck.

So for those who do not know, this kind of breastplate was a real thing.... and if it was not paired with a lower half to compliment the hartman hips look, it looks just as silly and stupid as it does here.

Probably the worst design, looking absolutely silly and being impossible to take seriously.

An okay, not particularily impressive, but not bad design. Not sure what the eye amulet is supposed to have been. maybe a plot macguffin that was dropped?

It would have servied, but it wouldn’t have been a particular good design.

And finally, they went back to what was probably the first design, cleaned up it’s colors, and all in all made it much, much better to look at. 

It’s also easy to see that this design was what was chosen as the basis for the final design they went with for season 1 and 2.

And it works, it’s a cool design... but at the same time i think the red version of the finalized armor is simply a better version of this one.

Again, i would have preffered if they went with one of the other designs, make the change a real development, and not just a pallete swap, but of all the designs to have used as a base for the final product, this one works pretty well.