#character teasers are over so i'll move onto bios and interviews next!

[mysticdestiniesarchive]

Day 0: Your Mystic Destiny Begins

there's some things i want to say about this post and all the character teasers if you click read more, but the important note to make is that i'm missing some images for this right now but i still want to publish the post on the right day, so i just won't be including them for now! also possible spoilers for the games in the read more, you've been warned.

And so the final day of our countdown is here! Have you been teased enough? Are you ready?

[missing image]

[missing image]

Huh? What just happened? Looks like we got a glitch…

Well, we’re not sure what happened, this might take a week or two to fix, but since you’ve been so patient, we’ve decided to do a full character reveal!

finally concluding the initial character reveals! for anyone who knows the characters, you'll probably see the resemblance between the final character designs and these ones. and yes, the suspicious ginger man smiling at the top of the post is galinn.

unfortunately, i don't have two images from this original post. there's meant to be one above and one below the image of galinn, assuming the wayback machine was showing me all of the images it couldn't load. i think i may have seen this full post before, but i don't remember where and i hadn't archived then, either because the original tumblr blog was still up or because i saw it back when i was solely interested in information about the game's characters and not so much in development. i only checked the wayback machine for this post, but since i'd collected everything from the other character teasers a long time before i looked for this day 0 post, i couldn't remember how i managed to find them all. if i have some time to kill (probably after the summer this year), i'll try finding the missing images to complete this post.

oh, and if you were wondering, i'm pretty sure the missing images were just glitchy text that hinted at something, like galinn be able to see people interacting with the post. i don't really remember the exacts though, so don't quote me on that.

the other thing is that i tried keeping these posts as close to the original posts as possible, like keeping wording like "we present" instead of changing it to "i present" since there's only one person running this archive.

i did make one pretty major change to the posts, which was basically just deleting all mention of the game's kickstarter. i didn't want a situation where someone manages to stumble across a post mentioning the kickstarter and then get confused when there wasn't one, or think that i was trying to act like this was my game and was in the process of starting a kickstarter campaign for it. this whole countdown was to the kickstarter, and day 0 was posted at the same time as the kickstarter announcement! (i think, i don't actually know since i didn't bother looking at any of the kickstarter posts o-o;;;)

and since this may be the only post where all the guys' original designs are, i might as well talk about them all together here! i'll be mentioning a little bit of trivia from one of serendipity of aeons' art books as well, and i plan on making a full post comparing the different art books (there are two, their content overlaps in some places and differs in others).

shou was the first character drawn and written for in the game's development. he was originally an "oresama" type and managed to do a complete 180 by the time development ended (reminded me a bit of riddle from twst who went from immature brat to serious rule-follower). i think shou's original design definitely gives off untouchable cool guy, it's almost unbelievable that he turns into the absolute sweetheart in the game lol. the original definitely makes shou being a party guy seem more believable (i remember telling my irl friend after we played his route together that shou's the super popular life of the party type of guy and she got so shocked bc his final design looked so innocent)

apparently, tatsu was meant to look younger than his age, which i can definitely see in this design. while it definitely got dropped for his final design, he does look a little younger in his confession cg by the fountain. i think one thing i particular i love about his original design is the way his lips were drawn. i think they're sooooo cute!!! in that confession cg, they're drawn in a similar way to the original design and whenever i see it i squeal. i call them "lizard lips" bc it reminds me of a lizard's smile, and also slightly of toothless and light fury from httyd (like yeji from itzy). i also think kayo and sakuko have similar smiles to original design tatsu and always sob at how adorable they look when they show up in the game (litr the ideal adorable younger sis... also hikki's got similar lips but i don't want him as a younger sister)

i love shinji so much, both old and new <3 his original design was made with basically all his key character traits in mind: a calm, mysterious genius with a rocker vibe and fashion loosely based on japanese visual kei. i have to agree with the note in the art book that his current design portrays him better, but they both have a special place in my heart!! the only other detail that really sticks out about shinji's design is that his original design has the dyed bits looking more red, like described in some trivia on the old blog and in the game, but the final design definitely looks more pink than red, and while i do have a history of being absolute shit at identifying colours in people's hair, i've heard at least three people also say that his hair looks more pink than when it's described as red in game. but either way, pink or red, i love it :)

from the way he's described in the art book, original taku just sounds like final shou. an innocent lil guy who doesn't have a single troublemaking bone in his body. but then they decided to change things up with the childhood friend troupe and ta-dah! the quirky rouge we all know and love was born. it's not mentioned in the art book, but taku actually had a two design changes: one being the change from innocent to troublemaker and the other being quite minor, with just a few changes to his facial features. i think the change is quite noticeable between all three designs that were featured on the blog, and in-between taku did feature in a few of the art/sprite response posts, though i don't know which of the two updated designs were used in the official game art for the main menu and banners (i suspect his final one as the in-between design has slightly bluer eyes)

hikaru was the project's local design problem child lmao. he's just too complex of a character smh (hikki is like my inner monologue's daily punching bag, my teasing is my affection for him and it reflects in my ocs). hikki actually has three designs like taku, but the difference between all three is definitely more noticeable than taku's. the final design for him was decided to be the most accurate to what xel had in mind while creating him, and they were all relieved when the true hikki finally stepped up. the in-between design for hikaru is like his original design in the updated art style, but the final design is definitely the one that most screams "HIKARU" to me, especially considering how the in-between design looks like the youngest of all the love interests when hikki is meant to be the oldest by a few years. while the in-between design isn't used within the game as a sprite, it's actually the design used on the official main menu and banner art, and the sprite is used for the cover of hikaru's "before i met you" story!