So it turns out there's this show called Angel's Friends, It's from Italy and it took a page from the Winx character designs Options

[MorriganAensland]

So I was reading the "Follow the Leader" page on TV Tropes and it mentioned the show. Now, it turns out this Angel's Friend story originally was a comic book with a bit more gradeschooler-look to the characters, as presented by Exhibit A, seen here. However last year in October, the series (which had then been running for about two years) got a TV deal and, well... see for yourself.

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Now I am not exactly a fan of the Winx Club (inb4 "why are you here then?") and even though I don't like the character designs for it and think that you could snap Bloom's body at the waist if you put your them and index fingers on opposite sides of her body and squeeze, that's really not the point. Winx has a design that's fairly unique and I can spot it right away. This other series's comic had a different style and that's fine too because people shouldn't go into doing character design and try to do something new and amazing when there's no reason not to, unless you're trying to be stylish and cool etc. etc.

I think the thing that bugs me with this is just the idea of trying to ride on one show's popularity when as far as I can tell from this horribly translated page about it on the Italian wikipedia site, they were fairly different stories. Okay, there are some noticeable similarities (like apparently a school and all) but again, from what I've read it at least was something different, most notably the ages of the characters and the exact relationship between two relatively similar magical groups. I almost feel like this is like dumbing down a series and trying to make a few more dollars by riding off of the success of another show rather than setting it up as its own show with own unique merits.

Granted, I'm not against shifting character designs, far from it. Osamu Tezuka's art style was cartoony and reminiscent of the works of Walt Disney, which sometimes clashed with the serious nature of his stories, and when Naomi Urosawa did a remake of the World's Greatest Robot arc in Astro Boy, turning it into Pluto, I freaking loved it. Sure, characters looked different but that was okay. I didn't mind when Urosawa turned Astro from this to this, because the spirit of the character stayed the same and besides, Urosawa would probably be disgracing Tezuka's memory if he tried to emulate Tezuka's style when his own is perfectly solid. Same applies to Saint Seiya's original author, Masami Kurumada, and Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas's author, Shiori Teshirogi. The character designs for Phoenix Ikki from the original series and his 18ths century equivalent, Bennu Kagaho do have some differences, with Shiori's style being much more flowery and shoujo-esque.

I guess the point I'm really trying to make is that art shifts shouldn't be done just for the sake of winning over fans from another fandom. And maybe I'm wrong about Angel's Friends; perhaps they were on a deadline and the only guy they could get was the guy who did the designs for Winx. But I don't feel that's the case.

This post has been edited by MorriganAensland: May 2 2010, 5:49 AM