If you ask me, the Sewer Squad from KHUX are a really great visual example of Kingdom Hearts' approach to writing and design.
That approach being: it's fine to make design and writing decisions that come across as silly, campy, unbelievable, or "cringey" if those choices are meaningful in context and contribute something significant to the story.
On the whole, the Sewer Squad are a mess of character designs. Minus the Leader who just kinda looks like a normal character tbh, the remaining 3/4ths of the group don't look particularly cohesive or even...aesthetically pleasing? At least for me. If you were to judge these designs purely on a visual and technical level, using commonly accepted character design guidelines, I personally don't think they would score very high.
Function has been thrown out the window with their accessories, with a lot of said accessories looking either bulky, heavy, face/movement obstructing, or just plain uncomfortable, despite them presumably fighting Heartless on the daily.
Color palettes are all over the place, especially with the Gummi Girl who's sporting three different hues of pink all conflicting in one design. Themeing is likewise all over the place—using the Gummi Girl once again as an example, she's pairing futuristic Gummi ship wings with a ninja outfit and a modern-looking frog hat. Which like, normally you can marry vastly different themes/time periods together into one character design just fine if you do it well, but here these elements are just kinda pasted all over the design separately with no blending/discussion between them. (Yes I know this makes perfect sense given the lore; I'm getting there.)
And then characters like Fancy Bowtie Boy are wearing gimmick-y clothing pieces based off of canon characters, such as Ansem SoD and...Halloween Town Goofy, for some reason. Which makes the design look derivative and nonsensical. (There's a way to justify this in canon thanks to the Book of Prophecies and the medals, but it's still kinda weird and offputting to see one of the Big Bad's gloves on a silly side character.)
It also doesn't help that their outfits/hair/facial features weren't designed specifically with them in mind, and instead are comprised of various disparate, pre-existing Player assets slapped together haphazardly. And not being able to give these characters more thoughtful, bespoke design elements means losing the opportuntiy to communicate who these characters are more precisely.
They do have recognizable silhouettes though (along with some much needed diversity), so I'll give them credit for that.
But, everything I just said and criticized above? THAT'S ENTIRELY THE POINT, BABY!!!
They're not supposed to represent a typical character with a typical character design that follows typical character design rules because they're not typical "characters"—rather, they're supposed to represent the average, real-life players playing KHUX. The people who buy random outfits with whatever Jewels they have and then mix and match the pieces together regardless of whether or not they actually look "good" together or logically connect. The people who are just having fun with customization.
And this distinction is meaningful because the whole idea behind these characters is that they belong to the same party that the Player belongs to. They're not like Player's other friends such as Ephemer and Skuld who are main characters in the plot and thus require more visually pleasing and thought-out character designs; they're not "generic" NPCs that Player runs into only once or twice like the "my friends aren't my power" guy who can just wear one of the basic default outfits and it'll serve its purpose just fine; they are, specifically, Player's fellow party members. And if the Player themself is wearing a silly costume too, well, they'll just fit right in with the Sewer Squad, won't they?
Thus, they're meant to mirror the visuals and dynamics of real KHUX parties comprised of real people, hopefully making it easier for the person playing the game to relate to them (if said person belongs to a party themself) and intuitively understand the role these characters play in Player's life. And despite how unrealistic their outfits are (considering most of them are running around fighting in outrageous, cumbersome costumes), I would argue that their closer resemblance to the actual playerbase gives them the potential to feel more real, paradoxically.
This also just demonstrates KHUX's commitment to its story and gameplay integration. It doesn't matter how "silly" a gameplay feature might look or feel in practice, it is going to be properly represented in the story regardless. Lux, Guilt, Power Bangles, Spirits, Shift Pride, player costumes, it doesn't matter, if it's a part of the gameplay, it's going in the story somewhere. The game takes a risk and trades a little bit of immersion/suspension of disbelief for pure gameplay and story synergy. Perhaps it doesn't work for everybody, but in general it works for me, and I respect it.
Other than the main cast of khux and the foretellers, who's your favorite NPC and why?
I’m a big fan of these gals 👇
Their interactions were very genuine, and much like the green and white-haired boy NPCs we meet in earlier quests (I like them too!), there’s actually some character development involved. As the former leader of the party who left a while back, Leandra (my name for glasses girl) acted as a good mentor for current leader Skati (bandana girl). It’s my belief that this particular mini storyline was meant to parallel or at least allude a little bit to the union leaders, so it was really interesting to see this particular type of relationship between Keyblade wielders play out
bonus: They’re both really pretty. And gay in my book
Isn't it interesting how their followers choose to reject the natural state of their king and queen? In the early days they would simply tidy up her hair and she would darken her skin. Now they make them both darker, skin smoother & devein her face. They give Sparry an entire makeover.
Sewer Squad (+ the "Friends are not my power" guy) sprite edits that I did back in 2021 (damn... It's been long haha)
There are some things that I would change as of now: I would keep the "Funky Glasses" kid's Galaxy Hair, completely redo the "Frog Gal" outfit, better the drawing of the "not friends" shirt and some other minor nitpicks. But I was really proud of them at the time
General Observations: 1. The outfits' parts were taken from Roboloid's Assets Gallery; 2. Mog still uses his "Mog Hat" (the sprite of him was just supposed to show how he looks underneath it); 3. The "not friends" clothing was too similar to the one of Mog, so I tried to make it more unique; 4. I tried to keep the sprites kind of close to canon (in most cases at least) to still make the characters recognizable
Underneath the "Read More" is a comparison between the canon sprites and my edits
Drew my Player Character Juniper with the Frog-hat girl (Whom I have called “Rosa” for the sake of clarity) and Mog!! I came in relatively late to the khux craze (late 2018-early 2019), so I didn’t get to do close to any of the missions with them and the rest of the Sewer Squad™. Which makes me sad, because I think they’re really funky and I would like for them to have actual names :(((
Here They’re taking a picture after finishing their missions for the day!! I drew Mog without his stupid hat on because I honestly did not have the patience for that lol. I tried to make his hair look a bit messy because there’s no way you can wear that all day and have perfect hair after taking it off. The date has no real significance other than I thought it was clever,
