Ranking Naruto The Last/ Late Shippuden Character Designs: Female Edition
My feelings for this outfit and design range from unimpressed to disappointed. Despite my personal bias towards Temari, the one thing I will admit is that she is quite fashionable. If you go to any Naruto cosplay event, you are most likely to find Naruto fangirls cosplaying as Temari. They will cosplay in both the Part I and Part II outfits along with their giant homemade fans. Several times, I have walked into the anime section of Barnes and Noble only to be greeted by Temari Funko Pops. Even I can admit that they were quite pretty.
Now that I got that off my chest, let's get on to the critique.
I'm probably going to piss a lot of people off for this, but f*ck it. Temari's Last outfit is just a worse version of her Sasuke retrieval arc one. If you don't believe me, I'll include a picture comparison below.
I don't know if it's just the art style, but why does Temari's design look so washed out and flat? Is this when the Naruto art quality started going down? I can tell by the lack of shading and detail in Temari's hair compared to her older designs. The hair almost looks like it has a gray tint in this scene.
The lack of color contrast is also a problem. In the original outfit, Temari wore a red sash that contrasted with her lavender and gray top. I don't think the maroon replacement does a good job giving this outfit a pop of color. The lipstick does look good though.
What's going on with the gray part? The Naruto wiki says that the gray part is a top, but it looks more like a breast plate to me. The shading in Part I makes the plate looked curved while this one just lays flat on her chest.
Speaking of flat chest plates, why is her younger design so much more..."sexy" than this one.
Before you pick up your pitchforks, I want you to compare the two pictures. In Part I, she is wearing a mid-calf dark blue skirt, fishnets, and cleavage showing. Meanwhile, the Last has no cleavage, a knee-length skirt, and no fishnets.
Don't get mad at me. Get mad at the artists who decided to give a 16-year-old a sexier design than a 22-year-old woman.
Temari's various outfits are iconic. I don't know why the artists decided to recycle a worse version of an older outfit rather than give her a brand new outfit like Hinata or Tenten which many fans loved. Oh well.
Examples of Temari's iconic and objectively better outfits.
Ino's design is conflicting for me. Like Temari, she is wearing a slightly altered version of an older outfit. In this case, it's her Shippuden purple crop top and skirt. While her skirt is longer now, the skirt exposes some of her pubic bone making it more revealing. She also wears her hair down for the first time as a regular look. Ino is also wearing lipstick and long-heeled boots. The boot fact will become a recurring theme later in this post.
It's hard for me to say whether I don't like the outfit or if I just don't like Ino with her hair down. The outfit on its face is not bad and isn't washed out looking like Temari's. Maybe I'm just sick of seeing the same recycled outfit over and over again.
Here's a link to a fan drawn Ino design that I liked much better. If the link doesn't work, I'll just tell you that she has her hair in a ponytail, same Shippuden top and skirt, fishnet stockings, long-heeled boots, black gloves, and a black T&I jacket like her father's.
Another problem I have with Ino's design is the aura she gives off. When I see her face, especially close up, she reminds me of a sensual Russian model.
What's the problem, you ask? While it's in character for Ino to be vain about her appearance and showing off skin later in Shippuden, she is much more complicated underneath the surface.
In Part I, she felt like a middle school girl stuffing her bra so that she could impress the boy that she liked. Similarly, Part II Ino acted all flirty and soft-spoken when talking to cute boys. On the surface, this is Ino acting performative. The real Ino is temperamental, whiny, outspoken, confident, loyal, and troublesome to say the least.
Ino may wear revealing clothes to act mature, but she will still scream in embarrassment and pout to her friends and family.
Ino is the type to scream at the top of her lungs and perform kicks in a crowded arena to cheer on her teammate and friend.
I know what you must be thinking, Ino's not a kid anymore. Shouldn't she be allowed to grow up?
Growing up does not mean you become a completely different person. You are still you. You just get older and have more experiences.
Boruto Ino goes back to dressing and acting the way she did in Part I and II, so the writers would say no.
Ino is a "troublesome" beauty.
I don't have a lot to say about Sakura's outfit and design. I think that it's okay and I like it. Just like Temari and Ino, she has a recycled version of her older outfits. Just like in Part I, Sakura is wearing a red qipao dress except it's only long enough to cover her shorts. Joining the other contenders lower in this list, she's wearing a black obi.
This outfit is really similar to her Part II attire except she's doesn't have a short gray skirt to give the outfit some contrast. The outfit is similar enough to her older designs that she is okay with me. However, I do admit that the outfit is plain and could benefit from some other colors to break it up. I will say though that she is different from the other Naruto girls by wearing black sandals and her forehead protector.
I like that she has flatter hair and the Strength of a Hundred Seal diamond on her forehead so that she doesn't have a big forehead anymore.
When I was deciding my ranking, I had a hard time deciding whether to place Hinata at Number 1 or 2.
When Kishimoto or the Naruto studio decided to make Naruto The Last to develop NaruHina, they had to break Hinata out of her oversized jackets and pants and into something more form fitting for Naruto-Kun.
Like many other people, I think that Hinata's new mature look was welcomed. Like other shinobi girls, she is wearing stockings, long black boots, and a dark purple obi. She also has on a lavender colored kimono-style blouse with vertical lines.
I like how this outfit gives Hinata an entirely new look while still keeping her purple color scheme. I do think that the outfit suffers from some of the same problems as Temari in terms of color contrast and gray effect.
Looking at her older designs, Hinata has a lot more color contrast and more vibrant saturated colors. Fixing this problem shouldn't be too hard for the artists. They could just make her obi and shorts a brighter, but still dark purple.
I actually really like that she wears lavender purple, but I would just like some more contrast to her outfits.
Out of all the Naruto characters in this time frame, I would rank Hanabi as placing in the top five for having the biggest glow up.
There are so many contrasts in this outfit that work well together. These contrasts include a combination of dark and light colors along with neutral and chromatic hues. Both of these contrasts can be seen in her white obi and bow along with her black boots, light and dark neutral colors respectively, against her tan kimono shirt and skirt.
While it is easy to see flames as tacky, I think that are integrated well into this piece. 1) The outfit is mainly consisted of neutral colors such as black, white, and tan. Therefore, a pop of saturated colors make the flames stand out in an otherwise tame outfit. 2) Red, orange, and yellow are analogous colors to each other on the color wheel which means that they sit right next to each other. These three colors are also one of the many colors of fire. For this reason, Hanabi's tannish-yellow kimono shirt and skirt works well with the orange-red flame designs on her sleeves.
In Naruto classic, she wore a dark v-neck shirt and pants. This is the same outfit we see Hinata and Neji wear when they practiced sparring together on the Hyuga complex. Most likely, this outfit is chosen by Hyuga elders for them to wear.
Later, we see her wearing a yellow kimono for formal outings. These were outfits that she wore when she was a young child and others controlled what she wore.
In Naruto The Last, Hanabi is thirteen years old and her outfit reflects this transition from childhood to adolescence. One example of this is seen in her choice to wear longer boots and sleeves, things that illustrate her developing her own style and trying to keep up with the latest Konoha fashion.
Hanabi is no longer a child, but a beautiful, spunky young Hyuga lady. This is probably my favorite Hanabi outfit and design in the series.
Out of all the Naruto girls, Tenten was the one of the ones in desperate need of a makeover. Well ladies and gentlemen, she finally got one.
No longer wearing a qipao (Chinses style) shirt and pants, Tenten's new design has her wearing a white qipao dress with fishnet leggings underneath. The choice to include fishnets is not lost on me as more fashionable shinobi such as Temari and Ino have included fishnet meshing into their attire.
Flames and long boots must be in season during this time because Tenten, like Hanabi, has a a pink flame design on her dress and long heeled boots as well. The interesting thing about this color combination is that it takes colors from Tenten's past outfits and combines them into this one.
In Classic, Tenten wears a pink sleeveless qipao shirt with red trimmings and dark green pants.
In Shippuden, she had on a white long-sleeved qipao shirt with maroon edges and hakama-styled pants.
Side note: Do you guys also see the purple eyeshadow in the picture below? So pretty.
I want you to look at this dress. What do you see? Tenten has pink, white, and red together in one dress. The thing I especially like about this concept is that while Tenten changed from pink to white in her old outfits, red was her constant color. The Last design is a visual illustration of combining the old with the new.
Admittedly, the only thing I don't like about Tenten's design is how her one long braid is the combination of the braids from her buns. I wish they would have made it a separate braid from her buns. Don't get me wrong, I love that they gave Tenten's buns texture, but the back of her head looks strange.
Overall, I love Tenten's design and I think it's her best ever. Unfortunately, the hairstyle that came after is too horrific for words.
RIP Tenten's beautiful design ☠️
I will never forgive the Boruto artists and Kishimoto for giving Tenten these awful bangs.
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Originally, I was going to make a combined male and female post, but Tumblr only allows thirty pictures per post. Who knew? T_T
Anyways, I hope you all enjoyed this post, whether or not you agree with my design ranking. Feel free to agree or disagree respectfully in the comments. 🌸
Side note: I didn't include this in the review, I don't like how the art style made the girls' eyes so far apart. The girls with long bangs are able to avoid this problem. Hence, the only ones that this face would had hurt were Sakura, Hinata, and Tenten.
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