Tetsuya Nomura - Your Thoughts?

[Nikkolas]

Genius, hack, or somewhere in-between?
If you think he sucks, is there any character designs you do like?

I think he's about 80% Fail and 20% Awesome. Auron and Seifer have good-looking outfits that are also fitting to their personalities.

But the rest of it....Lulu embodies why Nomura is a terrible designer.

 

[The_Oathkeeper]

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.

 

[Tethar]

I too hate him for what he has become.


Originally his work was good but he is living proof that too much of a good thing is very very bad. Everything after FFVII has just been the same thing copied again and again.

It's sickening especially when you can look at Amano's work and see that every single character he has ever done is completly original.

 

[Rockman X]

Oh, and if memory serves, they changed clothes so they "didn't draw attention to themselves". Yeah.

Yeah, according to that little half hour movie that took place between X and X-2, it was Rikku's idea to dress Yuna as a skank so people wouldn't recognize her and bug her about summonly duties. Then what's Yuna do? Become a pop star

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...

Actually Akihiko Yoshida made the character designs in XII.....which is VERY disappointing. He used to have an original style when he did Tactics and Vagrant Story and his designs were great, but I think he tried to be too much like Nomura in XII and failed hard. XII's designs are horrid though, so I guess it still fits into SE's current trend of producing shitty looking characters.

Anyway, Nomura has about as much creativity as Akira Toriyama, and that's pretty bad. His character designs are generic anime stuff, like in that new game The World Ends with You, most of the characters are clones of Kingdom Hearts characters, except with different (but just as bad) clothes and slightly different hair. Lighting from XIII = female Cloud, he said it himself even ; 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.

Plus he's just SE's skank now. They rely on him too much and he seems to be perfectly fine with letting his characters (like Sephi) being whored out. And need I remind anyone of his utterly fantastic directing skillz0rz in Advent Children? Nothing but CGI anime to make little girls pee themselves.

tl;dr Nomura is a horrible, untalented, shameless excuse for an artist who's become just another money whore at SE.

 

[Crazee Dayzee]

Some of Nomura's designs were smex, but I think he's out lived himself really. He's too repetitive, constantly mimicking his past designs. We need someone fresh and new with original ideas.

I'm hating how he'd always been too big for his britches and tried to squeeze himself into the Compilation to take it over. Advent Children phailed; he proved himself to be a n00b at directing and put a shit stain on a great game.

 

[Rydia]

I'm rather indifferent towards Nomura. Though I wish he could be little more creative with his designs. Tifa, Rinoa, and Garnet almost look identical. And Yuna and Ashe look pretty simular. And the emo look needs to be done away with.

 

[Ruud Love]

Personally I found the character design in for XII pretty good, Balthier is the standout character and probably should have had the leading role over Vaan's but Final Fantasy tradition needed the loner orphan and his friends over a smarmy and smart sky pirate.

I'm more concerned over the loss of Nobuo Uematsu than I am over Nomura losing his marbles.

 

[Nikkolas]

@Posh: Nomura didn't design the characters in FFIX. Which is why they look interesting.

 

[Ruud Love]

Yeah, I was going to mention FFIX. I (to quote oathkeeper) "hate hate hated" the art direction of FFIX, sure it was charming in its own way but meh, it didn't do it for me. Too "cartoony".

 

[Rockman X]

And the emo look needs to be done away with.

Agreed...but oh wait...

Personally I found the character design in for XII pretty good, Balthier is the standout character and probably should have had the leading role over Vaan's but Final Fantasy tradition needed the loner orphan and his friends over a smarmy and smart sky pirate.

Emo + late for a costume party + severely out of style + no fashion sense = Balthier

I forgot to mention no socks. Now he'll just get sand in those gayass elf sandal things. And the massive amounts of leather are simply impractical given Ivalice's hot climate. Most everyone else in the game tries to be as scantily clad as possible, but Balthier? Hell no. He's got the balls to trek through deserts in leather. Or the lack of brains.

SE needs to find some NEW artists. Nomura is overused and Yoshida is obviously trying to become the next Nomura.

 

[Amizon]

Even though Nomura may seem a little off nowadays, I really did appreciate the work he did for Kingdom Hearts.

 

[der Astronom]

I'm losing touch with his artwork because it no longer interests me, and I'm more interested in realism, and don't have access to the later games.

Having seen some of the character designs of the later games, I can't say I'm particularly fond of them. They don't look so much original so much as they look bizarre, and not with the same coolness that was in the earlier FF's.

 

[Platinum_Lies]

FFXII was repetitive in terms of character design (but then the whole game really didn't accomplish anything, so...) but FFVII, VIII and X were not all that similar. There were some elements that were there in all three, but the styles of dress were different and the characters looked unique.

IMO, FFX was the best design followed by VII. Both designs fit their respective worlds perfectly nad helped make those games so memorable.

 

[Dreamer]

I really do not see what the fuss is about. I like his style, all i know is that i hated everyone from FFXII except the guy from rozarria whom i think was called cid something something... o and ashe's late husband.

 

[Star Beast]

I don't see why everyone hates Nomura, his designs seem fine with me. each to his own I suppose.

 

[Tethar]

Oh his original designs were perfectly fine, amazing and ground breaking in fact.

It's those same designs being used again and again in multiple games ever since VII that we don't like.

 

[Star Beast]

Nomura didn't ruin FFVII, that's one of the best FF games ever made. and FF versus XIII looks extremely promising...Kingdom hearts was good aswell. people dislike Nomura because it's "the cool thing to do" when what he has done is created great characters and been involved in awesome games.

 

[Grand Lethal]

VR/Carnage, I need to make you a medal saying "GOD" on it.

I pretty much hate most of Nomura's designs ... and I hate his re-designs even more. He gives Amano's characters the kiss of death. (R.I.P, Setzer and non-generic animeboy spiky hair of doom Zidane)

@ Rydia:
Amano actually designed Garnet with white hair, but Murase re-designed her as a brunette, not so much Nomura's fault. Rinoa's and Tifa's similarity are though

The only design of Nomura's that I can truly say I liked is X's Yuna. Everything else? Nope.

What I hate most about his designs is that they're taking over. Amano's designs were all original and mostly awesome (Epic designs: Faris, Terra, Celes, Locke). Nomura's work just relies on Anime, fanboys, the 'baddass' factor and pop culture. They're mainly about raking in the fanboys for teh monehs.

I'd love to see another FF with Amano making the designs and such, since we actually have the technology now to incorporate his extravagant designs. Why don't SE jump on that fact?!

 

[L]

people dislike Nomura because it's "the cool thing to do" when what he has done is created great characters and been involved in awesome games.

No, we dislike him because he sucks at designing characters with originality in mind.

http://www.theworldendswithyou.eu.com/UK/images/fond_UK.jpg

The picture on the right is EXACTLY how Genesis is portrayed in Dirge of Cerberus' secret ending.

Here we've got...

Axel = Reno - They're also voiced by the exact same guy.
Zack = Terra
Cloud = Lightning - Estrogen pills much?
Roxas = Ven - Har, har, har. They look exactly the same.
Tifa = Anonymous chick from FFXII.
Scatboy(Beside lightning) = Gippal.

See where I'm going with this? He sucks because he's run out of ideas. His characters no longer look hardly any different than the other and all retain an identical trait to previously created characters.

 

[Moogles]

Even though Nomura may seem a little off nowadays, I really did appreciate the work he did for Kingdom Hearts.

As do I.

I like the dude solely for his contributions to the creation of Kingdom Hearts.