Rinoa: Seraphic Vision

Now, three years after I initially wrote this, I finally learned some fashion terms. ^_- I rewrote it and now I sound like I might actually know what I'm talking about: no more "overlong sweater" talk for me! ;) I also broke it up a little better for unnecessary organizational purposes.. because I swear I have OCD. Yeah.

Basics
You probably already know this, unless you live under a rock and you haven't played FF8 yet, but let me repeat: the character designs in Final Fantasy VIII are very realistic. The characters are normal sized (maybe a little long-legged, but still fairly normal compared to FF9 or something), and their outfits are not overly extravagant - they almost look like normal people you'd see walking on the street. (Oh, how I dream. XD) So, Rinoa looks fairly typical for someone her age. She's a little on the slender side, and has the ideal body build every female seems to want.. However, she is all in proportion - not that I'm making a reference to any past Final Fantasies and their horribly unproportioned sex symbols or anything like that. *cough* Rinoa represents somewhat of a typical Japanese beauty - she's very pale-skinned and raven-haired, and while she doesn't look as obviously Asian as the characters in FFX, it's probably safe to say she's based on someone who is.

Face & Hair
In game graphics and in most FMV, you'll see Rinoa with warm brown eyes. Maybe it's just the lighting, but there are some FMVs where her eyes almost look greyish or violet. Well, I'm just thinking of the space scene here, but work with me. :P Some of the official art by Nomura also has her with bluish eyes, and the 1/6 scale model has really striking blue eyes as well - but since they're brown ingame, and the scale model isn't even official (it's made by another company anyway), I think it's safe to say her eyes are meant to be brown. (I once had someone email me about this all pissed off.. ¬¬) Also, she has perpetually perfect black eyeliner - or at least that's what it looks like. Since literally everyone in FF8 has black-framed eyes, I'm more inclined to say that's just how the game was animated.

Rinoa's face is fairly round. She has dark and noticable eyebrows - they're almost bushy, and they really stand out. They're not those wussy little one-millimeter-wide plucked eyebrows, I'll tell you that much. :P Her nose is kinda pointy.. and it looks weird from the front. Most often, you'll find Rinoa smiling, however she never bares her teeth at all. It's what I like to call Rinoa's famous Mona Lisa deal. But when you do see her teeth in a wayward FMV for whatever reason, though, they look to be orthidontically straight - dear old Caraway, how good of you to pay for braces. :P Also, Rinoa's eyes scrunch up when she smiles.

As mentioned before, Rinoa's hair is jet black, as well as shiny and very long - it's a few inches past her shoulders. It's layered in the front, with fringe framing her face, but mainly on the left side where it gets especially short.. I suppose those could be bangs but they stay out of her face pretty well. (May I mention, impossibly well, because I tried this hair for a while and it was a bitch, lemme tell ya.) Her part is off-center, being a little off to the right - maybe this is why there are shorter layers on the left? :\ There are also a few highlights of blonde or brownish red near her face, mostly visible on the left side, although there are streaks on both sides.

Outfits
Throughout the game Rinoa wears two outfits. (Think of all the trips to the Balamb Laundromat, neh? :P) One is her everday, common outfit and the other is one she wears when she wants to dress up, or for special occasions. Anyway, the common outfit first.

The most noticable part of her ensemble is a baby blue, ribbed duster which stretches all the way to her feet in the back, and in the front buttons over a black tank top. (This is the non-antialised, ingame Rinoa, in case you were wondering.) The fabric clasp used to fasten it has a couple of buttons, but Rinoa doesn't have it set on the first button. The duster also has a pair of white wings on the back that to me almost look like they were stenciled there with some MJDesign's lame acrylic paint. I always thought they were meant to be angel wings myself, but you can't ignore the whole Forest Owls bit, so it could be owl wings too. (But tell me what's more glamorous, angel wings or owl wings? ... Exactly what I thought. ;)) Anyway, going with the blue & black theme, Rinoa wears a pair of black skintight shorts (that have these totally pointless funkay zipper things on the front of both legs) that stop above the knee, and over them, she wears.. Well, a THING that looks as if it could be shorts, or a skirt, or a skort, or whatever the hell you think it looks like, because I can't tell at all. ^_^;; It has three metal buttons, and it's a darker blue than the duster - it almost looks like tiedye or blue camo, or maybe it's just badly depicted denim. Go figure, I still don't know, and I've been pondering over it for three years now. Anyway, she also has two armwarmers of the same fabric and color of the duster that she wears on both arms. They stretch from her wrist to her elbow. On her left arm, Rinoa has a single black ribbon tied in a bow on the upper half. I'm assuming it's in mourning, but for what or whom, I don't know.

The footwear accompanying this outfit consists of boots - they're black and look like really old, soft, worn-in leather. They're the kind of boots that lace up the front, and they have your regular grommeted (isn't that what those metal rings are called..?) holes and black laces - but Rinoa doesn't lace them up all the way. They each have a metal plate in the front where the shoe's tongue begins; they also don't have much of a platform on the sole. They're more of a Dr. Martin-y type boot than a combat or motorcycle boot too, if you know what I mean. I want a pair, they look comfy. :3

Rinoa's other outfit is much more dressy. She wears it twice, on special occasions - the SeeD Inauguration Ball, where she was looking for Seifer and met Squall instead ^_- and to the Garden Festival/concert at FH, where she took Squall on somewhat of a date. Anyway, it's a cream-colored white dress, although the color of it probably varies depending on your TV's color setting, so don't take my word for it. I don't know fabrics, so I have no idea what the hell it's made out of, but it looks like more of a matte kind of material than shiny, so it looks rough and not smooth like velvet or silk. The dress itself is pretty short, and it's got a gauze-like see-through inch or so on the bottom. It fastens around the neck - again, there's probably some special word for a dress like this, but I'm not really formalwear inclined, so you'll just have to look at it and see for yourself. ^^;; To accompany the dress, she wears a little silver bracelet on her right arm which she doesn't wear normally - you can see it really well here. She also ditches the black ribbon, and obviously the armwarmers, for this outfit. The shoes she wears are the same color as the dress, and they're little high-heeled things with a strap around the ankle.

Accessories
There's only one accessory that Rinoa wears all the time no matter what else she has on - all the others I've covered with their respective outfits. It's the infamous ring and neclace, and it accompanies Rinoa through thick and thin. The chain itself is silver, and it's formed of tons of dainty oval and circle links. There's one plain silver ring that stands alone on the neclace - that is, until Rinoa gets her hands on Squall's Griever ring, which she at first keeps on the chain with the first ring for safe keeping, and then later just because Squall wants her to have it. Anyway, it's been said that the first ring was Julia's wedding ring, and Rinoa wears it in memory of her mother.

It's also worth mentioning that while Laguna, Irvine, and even Squall have ear piercings, none of the main females have any. So no earrings for Rinoa, nope.

As I mentioned above, Rinoa has white wings on the back of her duster - I think this is actually her symbol, just like the Fire Cross is Seifer's and Griever is Squall's. It appears on the package of her action figure, as well as in her offical art. Wings also sprout from her back in the fittingly named Angel Wing limit break, so it's obvious that wings and angels and Rinoa are interrelated. There's also a close affiliation between Rinoa and stars - the dance, and the ending, and the shooting star bit which is also present in her limit break. ;)

Opinion..
The first time I saw the picture of Rinoa on the game box, I thought she was wearing two layers of shirts or something, a blue one over a black one. I thought it looked kinda sporty, and that it was cool. But after I actually saw someone play the game, and realized that her blue shirt was actually an "elongated sweater," I was really confused. O_o;; I thought she looked so dressed up. ^^;; But anyway, after I got used to that blue thing trailing along behind her all the time, I liked it too. I figured her outfit wasn't sporty, as I had originally thought, but was much more elegant and especially fitting since Zone & Watts call her "princess," and the blue thing rather looks like royalty. Sort of. ^_^ Anyway, the outfit suits Rinoa well. The only part of it that I can really say I don't like is that stupid blue thing that looks like a skirt/shorts/blue thing wrapped around her waist. What the hell is that thing?! O_o Is it blue camo? Is it denim?! *twitches insanely and falls over*

Movements
Another thing to mention about Rinoa's appearance are her movements and the poses we often see her in. She runs sorta.. clumsily, almost. ^^; When she sits she often puts her legs straight out in front of her and moves them back and forth; if she's on the floor she bends them at the knee. She also sits with her feet flat on the floor and her legs bent at the knee (she does this fairly often, actually; and at the weirdest times! She'll just be in a conversation and suddenly plop down on the floor like this. I think it's cute though.) As for standing positions, she usually stands with her arms at her sides or with one arm crossed holding on to the other. (Actually, she does this in the "plop" sitting position, too..) When she's irittated, she puts one or both of her hands on her hips and sometimes shakes her head in a disgusted kind of way. She also has a prissy little arms-crossed pose. When she's nervous, sad, or anxious, she grabs hold of the ring on her neclace. When she talks to people, sometimes she puts her hands behind her back and leans closer to them. Like Quistis and Julia, Rinoa also tends to cover her mouth with her right hand when she laughs and put her left hand on her waist. And if she's speaking and trying to clarify something, she tends to wave her hand back and forth. My favorite though is if she's with the rest of the characters and they have to salute to someone, and of course she doesn't go to Garden, so she doesn't know how! She kinda puts her hand up nervously and glances at everyone else every once in a while to see what they're doing. ^^; It's funny to see her do it.
Of course there are LOTS more positions and stuff (Square being the detail obssesees that they are ^_-) but these are the ones she does frequently and the ones that came to my mind first.

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