REM Racers, what does the Tohaa pilot spoil?

Including a Tohaa pilot signifies that CB wants to do something with them other than having them in the background or as Sygmaas.

The pilot is male and his design is interesting. The chibi design emphasises the head of the character and his head is fascinating from a design perspective.

1. He seems to be a lot more emotive in his face than the HS Tohaa description would allow for. The concept of primarily a pheromone-based language is interesting and also falls apart if you think about it for more than a second. Pheromones are carried by air and the speed of air is significantly slower than the speed of sound. In addition, having a conversation using pheromones and the other person is downwind would effectively render them mute. Wearing a helm would also be the same as muffling your voice, especially a closed helm.

2. The angle of his "hair." In the original Tohaa design the male "hair" is angled upwards. This is what gave them this artichoke look while the female "hair" is a flat angle, this gave them a more spikey look, similar to a hedgehog. Gaseel's "hair" is a flat angle and he's obviously male. IMO this makes his design interesting instead of laughable.

I think that the pheromone language while being present in the lore, is going to be downplayed a lot since it places a lot of limitations on the design of Tohaa since they have to be in a certain way. I think Sygmaa units are a good indicator of this, While the "hair" is still present it's less emphasised and incorporated into their helm designs. So, while the design of Gaseel is new, it's at the same time familiar, which is a good place to start with. Something similar can be seen in the Shasvasti models. They're still recognisable as Shasvasti as they have the same general design features as the original Shasvastic it's more...plus, if that makes any sense.

 

That's impossible. The early releases of Tohaa have the male sculpts with a higher angle of "hair" and the females a lower, and in the latter releases, just before the line was scrapped, all models have the same angle of "hair." The Rasail Boarding Team was released in a box that featured both a male and a female Tohaa and they had them at the same, or close to, angle. The male model has none of the artichoke-look as the Kamael had.

As I see it the Tohaa line has the same issue as the old A. S. S. line had. There's no common design philosophy in any of them. As an example of that look at the Kotail Mobile Unit and the Kerail Preceptor. From the waist down they have the same rules, both have Transmutation (W), Super Jump, and movement 6-4 (and look like they skip all the leg days). And yet the design is different enough to notice even though they functionally have the same kind of armour. The only difference on the legs is that the Kotail has Arm 2 and the Kerail Arm 1. And the legs of the Kotail look as stick-like as those of the Kerail.

A. S. S. was also thought to be gone forever and now they have an Operation: X box. My thoughts are that Tohaa will either get that or an Action Pack. I'm leaning towards Operation since they're a mainline faction.

 

I hold that down to the art style. Chibi designs always exaggerate the features of the character.

Only the colour of the armour changes depending on how it was grown. The physical features of the wearer stays the same

 

I do like that all of the other pilots are posing for the camera and only Gaseel shows some character in his promo shot. Even McQueen has the usual Ariadna "F the man!" And his pose is a common insult in chibis. That makes Gaseel interesting. I wonder if that's intentional to hype people up?

 

It can be a great portent of what's to come if my reflections of the design pan out because all joking and the chibiness aside this facial design, IMOI, looks great. It has that good Uncanny Valley feel of something that looks almost human while at the same time looking alien. As opposed to the old design that just looked goofy

And the nickname >.< urgh. It instantly robbed Tohaa of all the edge they had and made them a literal joke. CB tried to add some edge back into them with the whole "organised crime actually runs their government," and it just came off as a teenager being an edge lord.

Tohaa being obsessed with the number 3 as it's the lowest prime number in the universe made out of a whole number - a great concept, give me more.

Tohaa just seeing humanity as a speed bump for the CA and tricking the CA their way - inject that sh*t right into my veins!

Tohaa society actually being controlled by organised crime - a bit weird and I can roll with it if I never delve too hard into it.

Tohaa's nickname is artichoke because of their head shape - yep, whatever cool the species had from the above is instantly gone.

 

The interesting part of that concept drawing is that it shows the characteristic artichoke head design while Gaseel has a "flat" head. Normally a chibi design would accentuate that characteristic and in his, it's completely absent.