Some of the weirder things about the costume design were Disney's idea in the first place. Donald and Goofy were originally planned to just wear the outfits they always do in promotional media, but The Mouse specifically asked for 'more adventurous' costumes. Which is a little ironic, considering the standard uniform for all the OC villains is just a big black raincoat while Donald's wearing a zip-up beret.

On the whole, I think letting Nomura run as wild as he does is what gives the series an identity that isn't just being Disney merchandise. Even if his idea of what's 'cool and hip with the kids these days' is about a decade behind where it should be; zippers and belts were a big trend in Japanese youth fashion for a while, as I understand.

Kingdom Hearts without Nomura wouldn’t be fun or interesting to follow.

For the main story, he does whatever sounds cool most of the time. But when he does actually plan things, it turns out well (the period of BBS through and including DDD has a lot of really obvious foreshadowing in hindsight. Like Terra’s eyes changing color in the BBS opening, or Xugbars appearance changing halfway through BBS, or everything that has to do with Nobodies)

Where the series excels more is characters. They are very consistent, especially the main characters

Originally posted by mdesaleah:

Kingdom Hearts without Nomura wouldn’t be fun or interesting to follow.

For the main story, he does whatever sounds cool most of the time. But when he does actually plan things, it turns out well (the period of BBS through and including DDD has a lot of really obvious foreshadowing in hindsight. Like Terra’s eyes changing color in the BBS opening, or Xugbars appearance changing halfway through BBS, or everything that has to do with Nobodies)

Where the series excels more is characters. They are very consistent, especially the main characters

I mean we may make fun of his zipper designs. But they are fun in interesting ways.
I imagine he will draw more zippers just to spite us haha

Originally posted by Lars:

Originally posted by mdesaleah:

Kingdom Hearts without Nomura wouldn’t be fun or interesting to follow.

For the main story, he does whatever sounds cool most of the time. But when he does actually plan things, it turns out well (the period of BBS through and including DDD has a lot of really obvious foreshadowing in hindsight. Like Terra’s eyes changing color in the BBS opening, or Xugbars appearance changing halfway through BBS, or everything that has to do with Nobodies)

Where the series excels more is characters. They are very consistent, especially the main characters

I mean we may make fun of his zipper designs. But they are fun in interesting ways.
I imagine he will draw more zippers just to spite us haha

He's kind of switched to buttons, and checkerboard designs now with 3.

I'm told the checkers on a lot of the heroic OCs' new outfits are actually borrowed from, uh... "The official Disney plaid worn by guest relations staff at Disney parks". Which sounds pretty much in-line with Sora's characterization, so I can't throw too much shade. Well, not at the costume, anyway; I find myself bristling at the phrase "official Disney plaid".