Ahem...*clears throat*
I hate, hate, hate, hate, hatehatehatehateHATE Tetsuya Nomura.
Which is a shame, really, because I used to love his word. His character designs in Final Fantasy VII were unique to RPG's at the time, especially to Final Fantasy. Nomura's anime-like style was very appealing, at least when compared to Amano's scribbles (of course, those scribbles are very nostalgic for me, so I suppose I can't genuinely dislike them), and remember, this was back when Cloud and Sephiroth actually looked cool. Yes, there was a time when neither of them bore any resemblance to your typical J-Rock stars and actually looked mind-blowingly awesome standing there in the concept art with their massive swords. In fact, I can't honestly say that I particularly disliked any of the character designs in FFVII.
The group of Player Characters was a colorful party of fighters, to say the least, and each of them brought something interesting to the table in terms of aesthetics. Sure, they all represented an anime archetype of some kind, but the JRPG industry hadn't seen characters quite like them yet in 1997. The villains were the same way. Sephiroth had an obvious style about him even in terms of appearance. Yes, he was just the typical "Silver-haired prettyboy with a large katana", but Nomura pulled it off very well. Just looking at him, you could tell that he was going to be an impressive villain. With his perpetual death glare, arrogant smirk, and bloodstained sword, he was easily the most intimidating RPG villain of the time...not that he had much competition, considering how frightfully cliche most other villains were (Evil Wizard OMG!).
FFVIII, though I'm not a very big fan of it, had some nice character designs, on the whole. I found some of them to be a bit...bland, to be honest with you, but overall, FF8 had some nice ones, as well. Squall was just cool, as was his Gunblade, and Rinoa had a nice design. Zell was...colorful...and Quistis was just awesome primarily because of her whip and kinky leather. Irvine and Selphie, though, I've never been a big fan of. Still, the villains more than make up for that in terms of their designs themselves. Edea was amazing, and Adel was erm...scary (which I think was the point, anyway). Even Ultimecia, for as cliche and disappointing as she was, had an awesome design. So yeah, FFVIII's character designs were a-ok in my book. *thumbs-up*
FFX, however, is when I can see that Nomura is starting to run out of ideas. Still, I suppose he was just trying something new here, and besides, the designs were tolerable. Auron was freakin' awesome, and Tidus's outfit was very...JRPGish. Still, that's not neccessarily a bad thing, considering he
is in a JRPG. The rest of the characters were...interesting? I guess? Lulu was absolutely horrible, though.
So yeah, up until FFX, I considered Nomura to be a genuinely good character designer. His designs were, to say the least, colorful and, around the time of FFVII, really brought something new to the table. Advent Children, however...hoooo boy, don't even get me started on Advent Children. Now, I
could sit here and rant about why I hate Tetsuya Nomura beyond FFX...so I think I will. [/Zero Punctuation]
It was around the time Advent Children was announced that Tetsuya Nomura got a raging boner for Gackt and pretty much every other generic J-Rock star on the market. So, still caught in the beginning of his J-Rocker period, Nomura decided that it would be a wonderful idea to
have all of his characters look like them. So, basically, we've got Cloud and Sephiroth running around looking like Gackt, which totally ruined the style that they both had in FFVII. The same can be said for any of his major characters. Genesis, Angeal, Zack, Weiss, even Vincent- all of them look like obnoxious J-Rock stars in one way or another. This only makes them look...well...lame. There's no other way to put it. I'm sorry. There isn't a more complex way I can say it. They look
lame.
FFX-2...yeah. I don't think I need to explain this one, but I think I will, anyway. The problem with FFX-2 is that Nomura tried too hard to make the girls look hot. Okay, now don't get me wrong here, a little fanservice now and again is definitely
nothing to get mad over. However, I think it was blatantly obvious that Nomura set out to design the most degrading, skimpy outfits he could just so that he could market them as "sexy." Unfortunately for Nomura, the end result was
a bunch of godawful character designs that basically just looked like a trio of five-year-old girls were playing dressup and just threw on whatever they had available to them. It doesn't make them look sexy, Nomura. It makes them look like whores.
Oh, and if memory serves, they changed clothes so they "didn't draw attention to themselves". Yeah.
Then there was FFXII. Now, you can forgive a few bad character designs so long as the characters themselves are interesting. However, the characters in FFXII were already bland, uninteresting, and unlikeable to begin with, so they had better have some DAMN good outfits to make up for it. Unfortunately, Nomura is at the helm. So, instead, we get...
Okay, so Vaan looks like a male stripper, Fran looks like a female stripper, Ashe looks like (again) a five-year-old girl playing dressup, and Penelo is...well...
look at her. That leaves Balthier and Basch as the only two decent character designs in the game, but even then, they're just decent. Bland. Run-of-the-mill. Average. Nothing special. In other words, not nearly enough to make up for the epic failure that is the rest of the cast. Vayne is pretty cool, though, I suppose...
So yeah, Nomura used to be an awesome character designer. Now, though...*shudder* Oh, and I don't even want to think about the horrible job he's doing with directing the FFVII Compilation.
Tetsuya Nomura - Your Thoughts? 
; And he's HORRIBLE at designing outfits...he's actually getting worse now, IMO. Like adding half a kilt to Squall in Dissidia, and he's always had an unruly belt fetish. 
