Now, truly, the band's all here. OTM Girls NEO is complete and showing off a bit more spice than usually would be seen with idol girls. But it's all in service to band brand integrity. There are contrasts to behold based on how they present themselves in band lore.
On each end the cousins present as magical in distinctly different, highly otaku ways. Nishi, representing herself as half-baku and thus a youkai, leans into her demony aura, by playing up her seductive dream demoness qualities. Azuma, by contrast, emphasizes the idea that in band lore her father is actually a western-style wizard, and thus she, too, is a witch with all the anime trappings.
In the center, the co-leads, now both finally shown, and with the subtleties of their personality differences reflected in costuming. Minami, Manaka's girl, is always presented as a deeply sexy dork who never realizes how nerd hot she is, and who really plays into her dorkness. She rocks the oh so stereotypical school swim team one-piece swimsuit, getting color and style perfectly spot on, and evoking the same wink-nod schoolgirl aura her mother got out of an implicit school uniform. And at last, the fourth cardinal direction. Kita, daughter of sometimes collaborator Retsuko and her hyena hubby Haida. The odd one out who isn't playing the trope "the ugly guy and hot wife's hot daughter", she still does her best to mix in with the band's dynamic by being a contrast to Minami. She is that innocently sexy person who just shows up in frilly bikinis and cutoffs because the gacha merch needs something to tease small percentages with.
OTM Girls NEO! Now full and complete, and in the alt costumes they do for promos and will happily sell you Polaroid pictures, stickers, and stat cards of. If you have the ¥, you have their pictures.
I decided that I wanted a full set. It was cool with the girls being a legacy but Retsuko was a part of it, a big part. She was a turnaround point. Her kid should be a core part of the next generation. And while I appreciate the legacy outfit, I wanted to really trope it up. If you know idol media like games and manga and anime, you know there are usually staples that will appear.
Firstly, there's a spooky girl who will claim to be some kind of demon. Nishi is literally half tapir and works that in, in a weirdly committed was like only the daughter of a weirdo genius space cadet could. She's also a bonus reference, wearing a cut down version of the outfit of the succubus Carerra from the Viper hentai game series.
By contrast, some other girl will claim to be more witchy magical or have some less demonic mysticism like fortune telling, possibly being deeply into JRPGs. So Azuma has a sexed-up version of a Little Witch Academia style western witch type outfit.
Minami is just the serious, fairly normal and grounded girl who lives in the eye of the wacky shenanigans. And still manages to make a plain and boring swimsuit fetishy, on the level of cotton panties and white bras.
Kita, meanwhile, is the fairly normal girl who also inexplicably gets all the sexy bikini art during beach days and pool trips, frilly excess and sexy poses and all.
They are openly a loving parody of things like Love Live and Bandori/Garupa. And I love them.
OTM Girls as a concept (c) Sanrio OTM Girls NEO and the girls are mine Art by
