#outfit was also inspired a bit by gyaru and visual kei

[clottedscream]

oh boy a dress up game! surely this will not contain any questionable content that will traumatize impressionable children

[gentlehousenicole]

New Eridan, Nicole and the Harajuku Girls

Nicole getting a spotlight feature in a fashion supplement actually gives us another big clue about her true character.

New Eridan is clearly based on magazines like Fruits that cover street style by taking pictures, Snaps, of young people on the streets of the Harajuku district of Tokyo, along with a brief interview with the model.

If you're unfamiliar with Harajuku fashion, you should know that it is entirely grassroots and entirely driven by teenagers and young adults, most of whom are still school age. Harajuku is full of pop-up storefronts featuring the work of small independent solo designers as well as slightly larger firms that have a trendy, underground appeal.

You may have noticed the ubiquity of "lolita" or "loli" fashion in Japanese media, and may even have heard terms like "Visual Kei". Both those styles, along with many, many others, were born in Harajuku by young people trying to express their own individual identities for the first time, only later inspiring *manga*, *anime*, video games and the like.

Japanese culture is strongly defined by the idea of "not rocking the boat", if that makes sense. It would be a gross generalization to say Japan is all about conformity, but its centering of concepts like natural harmony (from its ancestral Shintō worldview) means it has historically struggled with both societal change and localized counterculture.

School is one of the places where this manifests the most, with its obsessive standardized testing system and the prevalence of things like mandatory school uniforms. Getting involved in Harajuku fashion is a major moment in the lives of many people, as it is often the first opportunity they get to express themselves outside the group by creating something utterly unique and entirely their own.

In fact, there's this whole paradoxical system where kids taking the metro to school will stop at Harajuku to get photographed, and then change into their school uniform in considerately placed changing booths before getting back on the metro! Many kids who spend their adolescences this way will eventually grow up to be independent fashion designers, artists and beauticians themselves.

It's telling, and very savvy on MiHoYo's part, to spotlight Nicole, Ellen and Astra in this issue because, between the three of them, they cover the full spectrum of the kinds of people you'd be likely to meet in Harajuku:

Nicole is based on a "Gyaru girl", the archetype of a young woman who adopts the *gyaru* fashion style. Named after the transliteration of the English loanword "gal", *gyaru* originated as an attempt to emulate the happy, cheerful, friendly demeanour and bright, warm-coloured clothing Japanese girls associated with Western girls in the 1980s. *Gyaru* girls would even get spray tans and dye their hair to look more American and European. And, just like Nicole, their loud, bold style and outgoing personalities would often saddle them an unfair reputation for promiscuity from the more conservative, judgmental elements of society.

And fittingly, Nicole's interview has her playing the Harajuku Girl bit to a T: She talks about finding her pieces secondhand, or selecting key designer pieces to bring her whole outfit together. Ever the businesswoman, you know Nicole could make a killing as a fashion designer for a side gig. Her outfit is also incredibly 80s, which is actually unusual for a *Gyaru* character in pop culture, as most depictions are based on the way the style looked during the peak of its popularity in the late-90s and early-2000s.

(Nicole even has one of the most straightforward, Western-sounding names in the game so far: "Nicole Demara".)

Ellen is of course actually a high school girl, and her interview is actually a kind of parody in that what she's showing of...is a literal high school uniform! XD All of her pieces are either part of the uniform, stuff she already had or stuff she got simply because it "looked cool" and has no deeper meaning. Int he 90s some *gyaru* used to incorporate their looks into their school uniforms in a style called *kogal*: That's likely how you're most likely to see a *Gyaru* girl depicted in games or *anime*, but that's not what Ellen's doing.

She's *literally* just wearing her school uniform because she probably doesn't put that much thought into her clothes XD

Astra is the pop idol who was probably at least influenced by Harajuku culture, but is a style icon and trendsetter herself. She likely has a staff of people to pick her outfits for her, with Astra herself getting the final say. That said, her outfit has a ton of little personal and meaningful touches, like the clasp she and Evelyn bought, and the bow she made out of gifts from her fans.

Of the three, it's Nicole who best embodies both the look and the spirit of Harajuku culture: She dares to be independent, free-thinking and individualistic, is cheerful and friendly and her look is about as 80s as it gets, with some appropriate Y2K touches in specific places. But, Nicole is also poor, and her coordinates all have to be scrounged together from whatever odd bits and pieces she can find. She certainly can't afford what Astra can, instead reusing and repurposing thrift finds or stuff she already had.

She's making a statement about taking ownership of her style and identity. She wears what she does for her and her alone: No-one can deny that look is quintessentially Nicole. And when you see her rocking this look starting in v.1.5, I hope that's what you see in it.