The worst character designs that Sega ever made?

Oh boy, here's one that I didn't list in my OP but HAS to be at least mentioned on any list of the worst character designs that Sega has made: are you ready for it? Here it comes, hold on to your butts:

-the majority of the designs of Naoto Ohshima

It had to be said.

I'm honestly surprised nobody mentioned him yet.

I mean, holy shit, talk about a fall from grace. He is a perfect example of an artist who literally NEVER matured within the field. The man who largely created the look & feel of Sonic also contributed to its disastrous downfall by making some of the most controversial character designs ever, like Big the Cat for example.

TBH he was never a very good artist to begin with. His visual work on the original Sonic the Hedgehog felt like a fun, inspired homage to early american cartoons like Felix the Cat, but after that he began churning out some of the most baffling character designs ever seen in Sega games like Vector the Crocodile, Big the Cat, all the human characters from Sonic Adventure (CRINGE), and, eventually, the overhyped flop that was Balan Wonderworld, which once again featured some of the cringeiest looking cartoony humanoids I think I've ever seen in Japanese artwork. Not to mention one of my personal most hated character designs ever in video gaming: the Jester from Nights Into Dreams. Dreams? More like NIGHTMARE. Am I right??

Honestly I'm not surprised that Yuji Naka publicly disowned him for Balan Wonderworld's failure. There were so many better veterans working within the anime industry by that time and Naka definitely should have gotten a better artist to work with on the game.

When it comes to the world of anime and video game design he literally isn't even worth talking about by this point, which is crazy when you consider he designed Sonic the Hedgehog. I know I complained about Akira Toriyama's early character designs for Dragon Ball, but at least that was cute and charming, even if it doesn't work for its respective franchise. Naoto Ohshima's modern stuff by comparison looks like some college student hack took Pixar designs and then regurgitated them onto a canvas. And even most of his work at Sega like the character deigns in Sonic Adventure wasn't ANY better. I personally think the guy Naka got to do design work on Billy Hatcher was leagues better of an artist than Naoto Ohshima is.



That's a painfully average character design, but at least it isn't all absurdly spindly-looking like so many of Naoto Ohshima's are. Maybe Billy Hatcher wasn't such a bad game after all. I think I should get around to playing my copy one of these days.

I know that Balan Wonderworld wasn't a Sega game, but I feel like it's still worth mentioning considering it was made by the creators of Sonic the Hedgehog themselves.

EDIT: I'm noticing now that Ohshima also worked on Sega games from the late 90s that are said to be wildly underrated either in terms of their visual design or their overall design like Burning Rangers, a game which heavily featured his own personal art direction, and also a game I have not played, so maybe you can in fact make arguments in favor of his work from that time. I don't know, I haven't played them. Also, DISLAIMER: I don't personally hate the design of Big the Cat. He's often Regarded as being the jar Jar Binx of Sonic a hedgehog, and even his visual design has supposedly been a point of serious contention for Sonic fanboys over the years, but I never personally took issue with this character. I simply mentioned Big out of respect for the Sonic fandom, which has always had an overwhelming hatred of him as a character since day one of Sonic Adventure's release. Even game critics complained about Big at the time, which is rare since usually only the fandoms or its members go after characters like this.