Actual appearances of characters. Is saber muscular or not?
A question that I have had in my head for a number of months now is "Just how muscular is saber?" She insists that she is and is unfeminine but taking one look at saber contradicts what she says.
This means that there are three possibilities. The first is that she is a liar, the second is that Shirou is delusional, and third is that Takeuchi is a liar for drawing saber this way.
While the first two possibilities do have merit since saber is self conscious and was also trying (and failing) to keep a distance between herself and Shirou, and Shirou is the perspective character who we see the world through the eyes of, I want to focus discussion on the third case, that the art itself is showing us something false.
I really began to think about this after playing Mahoyo this summer and being baffled by the fact that Aoko never seemed to notice the obvious bandages on Soujyurou's neck.
It occurred to me that what was likely happening was that the design incorporated this to place a mystery in the reader's mind while in reality the bandages were well hidden beneath Soujyurou's shirt. Granted this is not Takeuchi's artwork but I think it is an example of art contradicting the words on screen.
Perhaps an example of a more blatent contradiction comes from the series Full Metal Panic! and its two primary heroines Kaname and Tessa.
In the anime and illustrations Kaname is shown with blue hair and Tessa is shown with Gray/White hair. Yet in the novels they are described as "dark haired" and platinum blonde respectively. It's likely the designs we are shown are merely cartoon representations of what would otherwise be people without "exotic" hair.
I don't think this idea is at all hard to believe, what matters most for a cartoon character is standing out and being memorable rather than looking like a real person. A perfect example of deliberately playing with appearances despite known information can be seen in this panel from JoJo's bizarre adventure.
With the numbers we are given this doesn't make sense but it does well to contrast the characters from each other.
Going back and applying some of these ideas to fate I think about if saber is muscular or not, do exotic hair colors (excluding ones like Aoko who we can safely say for certain) actually exist or is it just a style thing? If it is just a style thing then what would the actual hair colors be? What about eye colors?
I'd like to hear all your thoughts about this.