Visual aid to blog post at http://ghostlightning.wordpress.com

1. Character Designs by Nagano Mamoru

2. The Five Star Stories is
dripping with style, very
evocative of fashion design
sketches during the 1980s.
What makes it shoujo for
me are the impossibly long
limbs and neck, and the
dramatic poses that evoke
pageantry.

5. The Emperor of Light
Amaterasu, and his
disguise Ladios Sopp are
routinely mistaken for
women. More awesomely,
when men discover them to
be male (Ladios) THEY
DON’T CARE.
This is S-class
Trappiliciousness.
Lachesis would be
Amaterasu’s artificial
human wife (fatima), here
she’s just a pretty loli.

6. To me they seem like
concept illustrations for a
fashion show straight out
of the 1980s.
Note the hair, the bangs,
and the humungous
shoulder pads. During the
Japanese economic bubble
in the 1980s, Tokyo
became a major fashion
capital.
I wouldn’t bet against
finding actual collections
that served as inspiration
for these designs.

7. Modeled after young
Caucasian females of
Eastern European descent
(with the exception of the
abnormally long spindly
legs), for no other reason
than the creator's taste in
women. Nagano's mind
hangs out in Estonia a lot.
(From Book Four)

9. The world of The Five Star
Stories is richly detailed. A
lot of things related to the
business of fighting is
thoroughly imagined, such
as the uniforms,
accessories, and even the
underwear of the knights
and their fatimas.