Maid Monday, the sub-series where I post and rate maid designs.
Today's Maid, finishing off the Maid of the Dead Maids with Otaha Tsuchiura, with characters designed by Waon Inui.
Otaha should be a slam dunk Maid design for me, but she's missing that X factor that really elevates a Maid in my opinon. But that being said she doesn't do anything bad per say except the impractical heels. We where this close to having practical heals for the whole cast. It's doubly bad for her since her weapon of choice is a mini-gun, which is super heavy and I imagine would be a nightmare to balance in heels.
Although acording to the games lore she's been working as a Maid for over 20 years so she probably has some practice.
Ok, time for the detailed breakdown. Perfect skirt length, with good layers and decent ruffles. The Sleeveless top is a cool divation from standard Maid Uniforms, and everything looks sturdy enough to function as a uniform. Though the underboob window feels a bit out of place. I think she has my favorite headband of the group, especially with the ribbon on it. Also I'm a big fan of this games inclusion of pouches and harnesses, it's what made me interested in Rinka Kaze's design in the first place, which led to here. However much like Leyla, I'm missing the distinctive ties that I think the ribbon is supposed to represent. Also the red highlights and the green broach on her collar were so close to being cool. I still like them, but they're so small that it fails to make an impact. Honestly I would have liked to see the red highlights continue throughout the design, though I'm guessing that was to avoid cluttering up the sprite considering her minigun covers most of it.
Speaking of, while mini-gun isn't a weapon I associate with Maid, it's probably my favorite weapon of the group. I mentioned in my other entries for Maid of the Dead how I wasn't a fan of the brightly colored weapons, though I understand it's probably for sprite readability. However, Otaha's weapon I think works the best due to the breakup. Plus red on black is super classy.
I think what holds her back is the lack of colors. Her uniform is very monotone, and the color breakups that are there are far too little. I think the intention was to show she's the mature traditonal Maid of the group by giving her the most conventional design, but I've talked about designs before that do traditonal uniforms while providing that X factor (NTW-20 comes to mind, since she also has a small sprite version with a big gun for gameplay, and it manages to be readable just fine).
Overall probably a Dress Tier.
