#karasuma reiji | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

steady-star · 2 years ago

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argopro has my FUCKING number i'll tell you what. i was nervous about them getting new outfits but i am always a fool for not trusting them to do epsi right and more. this is my insanity post so i don't get rate limited on twitter

starting with this bastard. i cannot BELIEVE they went this route. the more i look at it the more there is. he's only got one leg out which is a shame, but i think the covered leg is a nice compromise to convey his slightly matured vibe without taking away the original appeal of shu's character design (leg).

the cropped tank top is insane to me, like i don't think it was ever confirmed that shu's og black shirt was a tank top (ppl started drawing it that way because yuki's live outfit was a tank top, though that's a fairly practical choice considering how sweaty the performers get) but now they've just gone all in and shrank the hell out of it and made sure we know from the get-go that he's got little slivers of shoulder there and a big enough opening in the jacket to expose them entirely if it were to be pulled aside. god bless. and the midriff?????? i just checked and i'm fairly certain the ONLY navel we have ever seen before this was futa's dbes initial 4 star where his shirt is just barely floating up enough to see it. and now it's a permanent fixture in this creature's outfit. insane. insane. i'm not even going to talk about the fucking harness and its positioning

the jacket is immensely perfect; it keeps the key appeal of his old jacket (big chunky sleeves) while trimming up all the unnecessary parts and adding a lot of stylish flair. the holo parts being slightly transparent is super cool!!! and, i'm sure, serves to highlight shu's figure even more 😭 it's crazy how he went from such a loose, bulky, covered top half design to this insane array of bare skin and contours. he's gained confidence!!! and it's hard to tell but i wonder if this jacket still has a hood on it... and my favorite aspect of his old jacket was the "CHECK" text on the sleeves, since i liked to change the word for narrative art purposes, so i wonder if this new jacket's sleeves will still have any words or if it's just the epsi logo that you can see part of on his left sleeve.

his top half is really so perfectly tailored to the way i've liked to exploit/alter shu's original outfit in my art that it's almost suspicious lol. argopro staff secretly follows me!?!? i'm glad they have the same taste at any rate

misc items:

i'm a big fan of the new choker; the dangling epsi logo charm is super cute and cool, i hope they make official merch out of it

i also LOVE those gloves. don't know how to explain how it fits the energy of the new epsi and shu specifically so perfectly

i'll miss his old boots but i won't miss how hard they were to draw LOL, these new shoes look fun!!

thank you for keeping the garters. it's part of his dna. the "reverse" white garter on his right thigh is extremely funny

all the details around and on his shorts are needlessly complex. see the pink lines on his shorts that lead up to the white belt and wrap around it? it becomes black on one side. for whatever reason. just the number of things overlapping the white belt infuriates me lol. the striped belt has the only yellow in his outfit on its inner side and i wish he had more elsewhere. the holo belt... structure(?) with the epsi logo plastered all over is going to be hell and a half to draw. i am probably going to simplify this whole area when i draw it myself lol

the way his shorts are blue-black while the rest are neutral-black kinda bothers me 😭 maybe if they were more of a dark blue (a lighter shade than his other blacks) it might be better.... they're really going for the jrpg chara style of blacks-on-blacks and a million belts huh

THAT WAS A LOT OF COMPLAINTS BUT it all balances out

overall: very cute, very cool, surprisingly handsome, kind of slutty. i support him

skipping to reiji because i have priorities and he is the second member of epsi to ME. and to the dbes file data.

i was initially very surprised with this long coat thing with the segmented coattails(? if they should be called that), as i'm too used to seeing him in his trimmed and slender suit or school uniform... but he does wear long coats/other draping things in his dbes oufits (in the rain and yume no ato come to mind), so it's not out of character! the bright yellow on the inside and the squared sections seemed really familiar to me, and when i asked my brother he was like "isn't it like zhongli?" AND HE'S RIGHT... and it just so happens that zhongli is my favorite genshin character design, largely because of his cool coat, so argopro really did reach into my brain and made something nice for me. it also makes me think of penguins somehow.

most insane piece of this design is easily the chest harness made to look like a tie. whose fucking idea was that. it's so clever and ridiculous at the same time. most importantly it's still just as if not more yankable than his original tie, so shu will have an easier time than ever pulling reiji down to his eye level 🥰 i also like to pretend reiji has nice tits and this harness will help accentuate that if i shorten it up a little.

love the whore gloves. i used to hate these when they started showing up in a million character designs in other franchises but i understand their appeal now and i wholly approve of inflicting them upon reiji. black gloves in general really suit him, they're very cool and have an air of danger. i've also just read a tweet wondering if reiji's got black nail polish under his gloves like tadaomi and i'm super fine & normal with that thought. notably, shu and reiji are the only ones with gloves in this new set!

this is the most insane thing to be insane about but we have once again been denied the skin of reiji's left elbow. listen. we've never seen it. his sakura 3 star trained has his right elbow out. "the 3d outfit," you say. THE SLEEVES GOT ROLLED DOWN IN THE 3D OUTFIT! one time in puchi he rolled up his sleeve past the elbow.... only on the right arm. there's been a number of reiji chibi merch with tshirts but that elbow is always angled away. again and again his left elbow has never been seen in its full extent and this new outfit is the most hilarious iteration of hiding it because his right sleeve has the semi-translucent holo material, giving us screened access to his right elbow, BUT NOT HIS LEFT! regular dark opaque imprisoning fabric there. when i first noticed this phenomenon i joked he might have a scar or something that he prefers not to expose and the evidence only grows that he's hiding something there. just know that if we ever see that stupid elbow in full (and it's surely just a normal elbow) i'm going to get a little crazy on twitter for a bit

misc items:

his eyebrows have a steeper slant than they used to, especially for a fairly neutral expression! it makes him look a bit more like his support drummer, kitamura-san.

i like the coat lapels to preserve some of his suit aesthetic, and the white borders call to mind his handsome uniform blazer. so glad they're standard lapels and not notched or something, i'm not a huge fan of those

he's still got his stupid white dress shirt. good for him. it's going to get ruined but good for him

i am perplexed and very interested by the torn knee. this might be the first time we've even seen reiji's knee (do you like how i keep track of which swaths of reiji's skin we have been privy to) but i'm mostly surprised he'd wear something like that, considering he usually keeps such a refined image. guess he's loosening up a bit and embracing his cooler/rougher side!? thanks to shu i assume... :)

i'll miss his formal shoes but i think the style of these boots are a fairly good compromise in preserving his vibe while also fitting the new epsi aesthetic. they feel fantasy-like somehow. i am in fact dabbling with a medieval fantasy au so i'm glad some of the work's been done for me LOL

the holo-material bracelet on his raised hand is floating of its own accord. it must be minecraft enchanted.... the color even matches

one again reiji's terrible color palette bites him again because he looks incredibly clunky next to his more cohesively colored bandmates. it's the fact that he's got his very dark hair (compared to the rest of epsi) in a unique hue, then his cherry red eyes, then the purpleish holo material and epsi-pink accents, THEN the brightass yellow of his coattails. it's a lot of colors in one design relative to his bandmates. still questioning why he has the worst image color in argopro

there's a lot of miscellaneous detailing on his outfit that i don't really care for and were probably added just to make sure his design had the same density as the others, which is a shame since the others' designs more effortlessly include detail as part of the structure of their outfits (e.g. shu's shirt, harness, and jacket layering together) whereas reiji just has a bunch of accessories tacked on. i wonder if i can fix him

only shu and reiji have matching purplish holo material. what's up with that huh!!!!

overall: good enough! his harness, gloves, and coattails are the highlights for me. the potential of those alone make the drawbacks more negligible

ok back to band order

jacket is Cool As Fuck. great collar and overall silhouette, especially with his pose. i could do without the holo sleeve though, i wish it at least had a wide cuff. would be a nice callback to his og jacket

i want to know everything about his black top. there are clearly cuts at the shoulders but he still has sleeves. are they shoulder cutouts. are the sleeves arm warmers. are they attached to the inside of the jacket. all i can conclude is that the cuts combined with the high fitted collar and his visible collarbones is incredibly sexy. bonus points for that X-shaped thing and the belt, just to accentuate that area even more

he accessorizes yellow much better than the previous two, and the white gradients are a curious touch. gives the yellow less of the "⚠ caution" feeling of his old outfit and leans more towards it just being an eye-catching secondary color

his bottom half feels like a different design LOL. the shoes are kind of an eyesore with how much patterning and detail they have

his guitar is still so hideous and its proportions look even worse somehow. AND IT DOESN'T EVEN MATCH HIS OUTFIT

overall: ok! i think i am looking almost exclusively at his collar area down to his pick hand

CUTE. CUTE CUTE CUTE. this might be the strongest design of the bunch. everything actually matches.

bigass collar: GOOD. his jacket's sleeve situation is a mirror image of haruka's: GOOD. the green perfectly matches his bass's pickguard: GOOD. very successful jacket. again don't like the holo sleeve but i think with both him and haruka i'd like it more if they were a) the same purple holo as shu and reiji or b) just rendered differently. maybe i'll like it better in card art or something

love the wide-necked shirt, that was always his thing. i think the stripes on the lower half are odd somehow, i feel like they should be diagonal instead of horizontal... maybe it's because of it being right next to his spotted bass

his pants are an absolute success in matching his outfit and calling back to his original design

very good yellow accessorizing and i think he pulls it off best because of his pants + his green matching it very well

unfortunate shoe situation again but it's slightly less bad here. also both haruka and kanata have their instrument role + their names printed on the shoes which is funny

overall: chef's kiss. an excellent composition of his old aesthetic with new epsi

somehow manages to fit within the aesthetic perfectly fine while also looking out of place. as expected of tadaomi

all around very solid jacket! i like the holo sleeve windows; you can see where his shirt's sleeves end on his biceps. kinda cute + hot. curiously he's got more sleeve on his left arm so there's another haruka situation here

HIS PAINTED NAILS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! his og design's rings and this design's nails do a good show of highlighting his pianist hands, especially in the absence of his instrument in the visual

the holo strip thing coming off his collar is kinda like a tie lol? so he gets that little splash of formality, or perhaps something vaguely reminiscent of his "prince" image....

i'm curious about those white belts forming a V.... where do they go.... they look nice tho

i wish his shirt was slim fitting like haruka and shu 😔😔😔

his pants and shoes are very pleasing in their detail distribution. nijos take notes

i really like the diagonal striped pattern on the cuffs of his boots; this pattern also appears on other epsi members and brings back that sort of "⚠ caution" feeling i mentioned earlier, since it's like yellow warning tape/signs/etc

it's a shame the beautiful french grey of his hair sticks out so much with epsi's unnatural color palette

very notably, tadaomi doesn't have an ounce of yellow in his outfit. which should mean something or other. probably

i'm really trying to find something to elaborate on and i think that in itself makes a point about how oddly inconspicuous his outfit is

overall: enigmatic but attractive. exactly as he should be

so that's everything for now!! i didn't say everything i could have said but i have said Enough. in the end i'm pretty pleased with these designs even though the original ones will always hold an immutable place in my heart. i hope we get to see more angles of them for drawing reference soon

#from argonavis #kimisute #ujigawa shu #karasuma reiji #nijo haruka #nijo kanata #kurama tadaomi #ss text

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