Oh yes of course!!!I meant specifically like her very early concept art (blue haired) and like, one of the first ones where she has short hair (but still with those 2 loose locks at the front)? I hope you know which one I’m talking about lololBUT if you wanna speak your thoughts on like. All of them. I want to hear πβοΈ
( @ellivcca asked what I thought about Maya’s concept art and I replied in priv if they could be more specific)
Let’s talk about Maya’s designs! β¨
I will skip the blue-haired art for now, since I have more to say about her other early designs. They’re in a few Japanese AA Guidebooks, but “ιθ»’θ£ε€2 ηηΈθ§£ζγγγ₯γ’γ«”, or “Gyakuten Saiban 2: Fact-Finding Manual” has the most in one place. There are blurbs that discuss the designs, and I’ll do my best to summarize them. My Japanese isn’t amazing and I had to mostly rely on machine translation + cross referencing dictionaries, so it’s possible I may be inaccurate. Also, I’m a novice at Japanese culture, so if I’m misrepresenting anything please bring this to my attention and I’ll correct things accordingly!
The book acknowledges that Maya was intended to be of high-school age, hence the the sailor suit artwork. They seem to suggest that the loose socks was a hint at Maya’s spunky personality.
When they began to explore her as a spirit medium (1), they wanted her to come from a wealthy, noble family. It looks like a lot of these explorations made it to Franziska’s design, with some of the shapes of the shoulders and the jabot-looking neck wear, which is interesting!
As they kept exploring in the second round of sketches (2), they stressed traditional/folk dress as being an important part of her design. They noted they had her carrying something on her back at the time, which I think hints more to her “folksy” feel.
The beaded necklace she’s wearing in (2) are drawn from Mala bead necklaces, which are prayer beads rooted in Hinduism and Buddhism and are said to help focus the mind during meditation. They seem present in a lot of spiritual figures in Japan.
Later (3), they explicitly comment drawing inspiration from the Matagi, a group of hunting clans in the northern Japanese mountains (be careful looking them up, they do bear hunting and there’s a lot of explicit imagery, even on the wikipedia).
They comment on that this version of her early character might be very athletic. She also seems to be more stoic in these explorations.
Then, for (4), they evolved the design to make it look appear more feminine, giving her long hair, but making a note that her look isn’t typical of modern people.
The large orbs in both (4) and (5) I think are supposed be drawn from “Yuigesa”(η΅θ’θ£), or harnesses decorated with pom-poms worn by ShugendΕ practitioners, hermits who live in the mountains and practice asceticism.
Then in (6), they added the magatama and committed to her having black hair. They note shortening the hem of her costume from design (5).
The magatama addition is pretty significant! Magatama necklaces are used by noro priestesses of the Ryukyu Kingdom from the islands in the very south of Japan.
Their religion broadly speaking, involves ancestor worship and the relationships between the living and dead, gods and spirits. It seems to me like the culture in Kurain Village draws a lot from the Ryukyuan people–and you can even see this with the beads along with the magatamas.
But there seems to be a lot of generic imagery of Spirit Mediums that I’ve been able to find in Japanese media which have shared elements of design in Maya’s final design. The most interesting of these to me is “γ»γγ¨γ«γγ£γ!ιεͺε η”, or “It Really Happened! Spirit Medium Teacher”. The design similarities are striking (and make me wonder if Maya was an inspiration?)
So, to summarize it all up, it seems like the early designers (and there were only two! Kumiko Suekane and Tatsuro Iwamoto) wanted a character who was different, folksy, feminine and spunky that displayed unique spiritual power to aid in the narrative/game mechanics of the games, and they explored the different facets of their own culture–from the northern Matagi clans to the southern Ryukyuan people–Japanese iconography, and tastes into Maya’s final design.
And I think that’s Real Neat. π
Thoughts about other designs (Blue-Haired/SoJ Maya) under the cut cuz oh my gosh this post is already huge.
Discussion ¬