Belts - Square Enix's Addiction

SO what's with the characters, especially the M Cs, having belts like there won't be anymore tomorrow. EVERY MC in the Ivalice Alliance games are belt-ridden. Does anybody noticed that?

Not sure this needed a thread.

Might just be me, but the number of belts seems to have noticeably gone down in recent designs of Nomura's. They're a lot more practical now rather than just slapping belts everywhere because it looks vaguely cool.

Lulu's belt-skirt -shudder-

It's just...impossibly cool fasion. Games need good looking characters, and one of the qualities of a good looking character is a good sense of fasion...also, makes for easy cosplaying if you're into that stuff.

Anyways, it's less SE being addicted to belts and more a single artist who does the designs for quite a few SE games that's really into belts.

If I were to make any changes to his designs...rather than removing belts, I'd give everyone a cool scarf that trails behind them whenever they run...

edited 31st Jul '11 8:55:10 PM by Signed

What about DiZ from Kingdom Hearts? He has belts for a face!

Well, if you lived in a Square-Enix game, and you needed to improvise a mask, while floating around in a very sparse environment, wouldn't you use the most abundant resource in the multiverse to do it? DiZ worked with what he had.

I'd use a mask of President Nixon's face.

Belts are cooler than Nixon though. Actually I was counting the number of belts SE has used over the years and started this thread to ask for help because...

It's already a year, and I'm not done yet...

If he wanted to be cool, he would wear a Calvin Coolidge mask.

edited 1st Aug '11 1:26:47 AM by deuxhero

I really need another belt. I wish I lived in a SE game D:

cookie, belts are like Pringles: Once you pop, you just don't stop. Soon, you'll make Lulu's attire seem reasonable by comparison.

Wait... You guys are saying wearing forty belts isn't normal? Well... Now I just feel awkward...

Nomura admitted Lulu's skirt was a ploy to torment the animators into trying harder. They responded by rarely showing her in cutscenes from the waist down.

Beyond that...yea, this has a trope page, what gives? I guess if it really bugs you, blame Michael Jackson and steampunk for making this so popular.

So Lulu's belts number to 40? or is that only the visible parts?

It's probably a bit more than forty.

I thought Nomura did that to troll the rendering team.

He wanted to "challenge" them if I remember the quote correctly. They responded by using camera angles that didn't show Lulu's lower half.

Didn't Socks Make People Sexy have an article about this, using KOF as an example?

EDIT: Here it is. Picture in question.◊

edited 1st Aug '11 10:00:45 PM by Schitzo

so what's the belt count at anyways? That should be like a new Trope project. Record and tally every single belt on a playable character and primary enemy/npc in Squeenix history...have fun!

I fail to see what you're getting at with The King of Fighters. K' is the only one who qualifies for Too Many Belts (nine if I counted correctly; three on each arm, two on one of his pants legs, and a regular belt worn regularly). The only other "out there" one is Ash, who exemplifies another one of Nomura's design fetishes.

edited 2nd Aug '11 7:36:08 PM by X2X

I stopped last time on 44, yet there are some people missing: Some characters from Crisis Core(never played it) and Dirge of Ceberus(this too). I stopped in Final Fantasy Tactics A2(currently playing).

edited 2nd Aug '11 7:50:58 PM by djmaca

I think the point of that article was needlessy elaborate character designs. So um... nevermind.