Not that their designs aren’t cute, they just don’t seem to match their themes very well. Click for design notes and rambling.
Cure Precious->Cure Sakura
I wanted to push the Japanese theming a lot more. Color palette is inspired by Hanami Dango. Her hair is now white to represent rice. I’m amazed we haven’t had a Cure Sakura yet.
Cure Spicy-> Cure Wheat
Replaced the pink accents with gold and brown to represent wheat and bread. As a bonus she now matches her energy fairy.
Cure Yum-Yum->Cure Spicy
A lot of Chinese foods are spicy, why wasn’t she named Cure Spicy??? Yum-Yum was so close to being my favorite design, but a couple details really bugged me. She’s the entire reason why I wanted to do the redesigns. Replaced the dumb bowl hat with naruto fish cake hair clips. I also gave her an apron that actually matches her color palette. Also thought she’d look cute with hair loops.
Someday I really want someone to make a series about a team of magical girls, expect they’re all adults now and thought their days of saving the world with the power of friendship and glitter was behind them. But now some new evil has emerged, and they’re all suddenly finding their powers coming back after being dormant for years, and after a couple days of desperately hoping a new team of fifteen year olds would appear to take care of this, they eventually realize that it’s all up to them.
So that means digging through old boxes of keepsakes to figure out where they stuck their Rainbow Twinkle Wand after they finished saving the world the first time around, and hoping the outfit still fits (it’s a magical transformation, so yes, it adapts to their adult bodies and fits perfectly, even though it’s a lot more frills and sparkles than they’ve worn in a very long time.) Also gotta get used to yelling their attack names, because the magic doesn’t work otherwise. One lady shouts ‘Strawberry Lipbalm Ray!’ and blasts a monster into oblivion, and then stares off into the middle distance because she’s 30 years old and has a mortgage.
I love this concept. I also think that the time off - the time to become adults and live in the real world and not in the compressed and heightened world of high school fighting monsters and saving the world would be really important. They’d have settled into different team dynamics - if they’re even still friends. They’d have different priorities, even if the first priority was still ‘make everyone be safe.’
Like, have the monsters changed? Is it a supervillain who finished their 10 year sentence for … whatever finally sent them away? Tax evasion. Can’t imprison someone in a real-world prison for summoning extradimensional demons, but tax evasion is still a thing. And now they’re out and up to the same shit. And the magical girls eventually just start shouting at them about what they were even thinking, fighting kids. Or is it the kind of thing were it’s teenagers accidentally transforming into monsters? If so, do they fight with themselves about pulling their punches?
Does one of them have the kind of job where she’s accountable for every second, and has to try to have a Normal Work Conversation while her magic pager vibrates in her pocket, trying to keep a smile on her face and work out a plan to sneak away as the time until her friends are hurt ticks away in bursts against her hip?
Do they keep their identities secret, still? Do they have more to lose - maybe young children or aging parents, even more at stake than when they were in high school? Or do they say ‘fuck it’ and reveal their faces, because that’s the only way they’ll get time off and a cut of merchandise sale? Do they have arguments within the group about which way to go?
After their first battle back in uniform, do they go to their favorite bar and very quietly go through two bottles of white wine before someone just says their attack name in a soft, shell-shocked voice, and then all they just go off cackling wildly because Glitter Heart Boomerang, and then they all just … say their attack names, one by one, as deadpan as they can manage through the snickers, and laugh until they cry, grown women sitting at a bar with their grown-up lives and grown-up loves and fully adult senses of dignity and they had to defeat a villain today by shouting Pirouette Prism Charge?
At least one of them has a boss who isn’tcompletely stupid and secretly knows and just accepts the worst fucking excuses without question. Ruby Princess Vermillia (aka Becky, from accounts) is beginning to suspect her head of department, Glen, is either onto her, or monumentally naive, after the fourth time he fully accepts the same lame excuse.
I kinda like the idea as well that one of the princesses has since transitioned and how that would play out. Either 1: his ridiculous Magical Girl Uniform is now more typically men’s clothing, but it’s still absolutely the same ridiculous frilly fru-fru fashion horrorshow, with sparkles and ribbons and bows. It’s just the skirt is now shorts and the crop top now has a different neckline and sleeves. Or 2: his uniform was always the boy version, which was always a point of confusion at the time but yeah guess that makes sense now. Either way, everyone is at least a bit jealous that Scott, aka Sapphire Prince Azuro gets to wear shorts while the rest of them are still stuck in tutus.
Classical pianist by day, DJ and race car driver by night, Im proud to FINALLY present the concept art for Copik, now formally renamed Staccato!
Staccato has been the trickiest of the bunch to redesign so far, she’d been thought out as a big offensive player for the Muses of Creation since the first draft of the comic, but she never really looked how her personality felt until now!
The oldest Muse, Staccato prides herself for innovation within her music, which is why she refuses to accept tradition and strives for new, better and more intriguing rhythm than ever! She has a VERY active lifestyle in spite of her powers, and thus she’s the most athletic by far in the group, her magic packs quite a punch, as such she is best suited for offensive and close contact magic use.
“Okay so it’s 50% hot glue, we couldn’t afford a wig, and I was too nervous to walk out of the house without shorts on, but it came out okay for a first try right?”
a little werewolf who’s new in town tries to impress the cool anime club girls and succeeds. just some magical girls dressed as magical girls for Halloween.
the mermaid is dressed as Kiki, the werewolf is Sailor Moon, the demon is Minky Momo, and the vampire is Charlotte. the characters that everyone chose are pretty indicative of their taste in anime. also, don’t worry about the mermaid. she’s a seal/manatee mermaid so as long as she keeps her water bottle on her for spritzing she’s good to go.
inspired by Bee Thomas asking for candy bats and Sabrina Gross asking for trick-or-treating monsters over on patreon.
i watched a lot of anime while i was sick so have this villain coded queer space cat who’s probably the magic version of a wrestling heel, and a disabled former magical girl who got stuck mid-transformation as a teen and is now in her 30’s dealing with all that.
they don’t have names yet but they were on the same team at one point because Cat did the whole ‘enemies to lovers’ thing with the head of the group Magical Girl was in and they became kinda friends. now they’re hanging out again because they reunited at the funeral for Magical Girl’s companion creature who lived a long simple life as a service critter after she left the team. Cat was the only one from the old days who showed up, and that was partially because they had just gone through a divorce from their magical teenage sweetheart and now they are trying to connect with any friends who will still talk to them. because whatever went wrong must have been their fault! once a villain yadda yadda.
