Redesigned Sailor Venus

Another entry for ~vbabe1's Sailor Moon Redesign Contest [link] . The fantastically bubbly and cheeky Sailor Venus!

Notes On The Series:

I've always thought that Sailor Moon, particularly the anime, suffered from a bit of schizophrenia. It goes from cringe-inducing Japanese prat humor (at least, it induces cringes in me - I don't get Japanese prat humor) and high school drama to death, suicide, death, murder, and death, with a side order of death. There are two problems with this, in my opinion: first, that's too big a swing, and second, you can't get too serious with those outfits they wear. You just can't. They've got giant bows and sailor collars, for Christ's sake. There are two ways to tackle this - either you take out everything sailor related, amp up the death and destruction, and basically go all Shamanic Princess on the series' ass, or you amp up the funny and high school drama, throw in some more cheek, wit, and couture, and basically go all Clueless on the series' ass. I decided to go with the second route, because it just seems to fit a lot better. So keeping that in mind, and also keeping in mind my love for all things gothic and Victorian, I decided to redesign the senshi to fit what the series might look like with a more Clueless-esque plot and Tim Burton-esque visuals. The actual fukus the senshi wear aren't very stylish, but they do have one extremely good point, which is that because they have a femenine cut but aren't overly frilly, they can be pulled off by someone femenine, like Minako, or by someone butch, like Haruka. When designing my outfits, I attempted to keep that aspect and add some gothy chic. The dress I used as a base is a style that was worn by children in the late Victorian period, from about 1890 - 1905. I threw in a few military embellishments to tone down the cute.

Notes On This Design:

Like Jupiter, the toughest part of this design was the hair. You wouldn't BELIEVE how long it took me to think of doing her hair like this. I was killing myself trying to work out how to make her look different from Pluto, and finally this hit me like a ton of bricks. I had a similar, if less severe, problem with the shoes. I was trying to work out how to make her shoes work for this style, and then I looked at my own shoe collection and was like, "...oh. der." She came out looking like a Victorian doll, and I really like it. I think it suits her. You'll also notice that I changed her colours. I liked the idea of yellow bows better than blue, which I felt justified about running with because her back bow is yellow, and I decided to tweak the orange of her collar and skirt into gold, because Aphrodite is often associated with gold. The last thing I'd like to point out is her weaponry. In the beginning of the manga, she gets herself a sword that turns into a ring. I liked the idea of giving her a ring, and I also wanted to give her the chain or whip she has in the beginning of the mange and later on in the anime (I based mine on the anime design because I thought it would transfer to something gothy more easily, and I liked the hearts), and THEN I thought that it might be fun if the chain extended from the ring itself. So when she's not laying the smack down, she'd just wear the ring.