Ninja gear that looks like ninja gear

[TheRogueX]

excluding the colorful sash, maybe they were aiming for FF6's shadow's look?

They even said as much when they first announced Ninja and showed off the look.

[myahele]

Not much better, but atleast it's on a regular-sized character.


from the benchmark preview btw

[Edellis]

Well...technically...if you're trying to look like a traditional ninja, the last thing you want to be is distinguishable. Tsubame's plain clothing, or her in a bathing suit, that was her real ninja attire. Basically, the whole point of a ninja is to be able to get close and kill your target without ever being suspected of being an assassin. Wearing anything that would distinguish you as an assassin is failing at ninja.

Everything else is just combat gear, which can honestly be whatever they want as long as it isn't heavy armor. I wouldn't want everything i wear to look like a stage ninja.

[silentwindfr]

ninja black clothes was for be harder to be notice while the night, it's the only.... noticable attire, all the other, like said by Edellis was mainly natural clothes. but here we are into a game, we don't really care....

it don't change the fact that more ninja-like clothing and weapon are needed. i know that most of the most ninja-look like armor will be from doman... but we can maybe get gears specially crafted from them. why can't we get some attired from the refugies... i doubt no one had the skill for make this sort of gears.

[Firepower]

Traditional ninja's NEVER wore black, kabuki theatre stage hands wore black, not ninjas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPFAhmwlrBQ

[Gillionaire]

You realize ninjas usually didn't dress like how the movies typically portray them?

[Niwashi]

Traditional ninja's NEVER wore black,

Well, that's quite a stretch. They'd wear whatever color was suitable to the job they were doing. When trying to blend in, that could be pretty much anything depending on where they were and whom they were trying to blend in with. In situations where hiding would be more effective, they'd mostly favor either black or a dark navy blue as those were basically that era's equivalent of today's camouflage patterns. (Such colors only work effectively as camouflage at night, but missions requiring stealth would most often be done at night.) Dark colors were also favored in cases where they might need to alternate between blending in and hiding.

In FFXIV game terms, Soot Black Dye is probably more appropriate than Jet Black Dye if you're going for realism. The sort of really deep black that the later gives would have been difficult to achieve (and so quite expensive) before more modern dying techniques, so I doubt it would have been used, but Soot Black would have been available enough. Either Soot Black or Ink Blue Dye would be suitable coloring for a ninja stealth outfit. But first we'd need a plain cloth outfit without any secondary/tertiary undyable sections that are stuck being lighter colors, and a cloth hood and face scarf combination.

(While the hood/scarf would really just be suitable for NIN, a fully dyable basic cloth outfit could be appreciated for a lot of classes. I keep hearing of people who get an outfit almost as they like but are stymied by one accent color in the undyable sections that just doesn't fit with the look they're trying for.)

kabuki theatre stage hands wore black

Yes, of course. I even said as much in the opening post. I'm not quite sure why, when the whole thread was explicitly pointed out as being about the theater stage hand uniform, several people have tried to correct it by pointing out that it was used by theater stage hands. Stage hands cover themselves in black because it allows them to go onstage to move scenery and props without their presence being noticed by the audience, who can focus on the actors instead. This got likened to the way that ninja could pass unnoticed, and that's one of the sources of how the traditional image of ninja looking like stage hands got started. (Well, that combined with some earlier depictions that also used black to indicate they could go unseen, and some crossover with the masks bandits often wore.)

Regardless of how/why the traditional image got started, it is the most widespread image of what they look like, and I'd like to have at least one outfit that matches that image.

[Firepower]

Back during the feudal japan period 1185-1600s they didn't have access to black dye's as modern dying processes hadn't been discovered nor did the local fauna produce any forms of making the dye hence why it was all indigo blue.

Producing fast black in the Middle Ages was a complicated process involving multiple dyeings with woad or indigo followed by mordanting, but at the dawn of Early Modern period, a new and superior method of dyeing black dye reached Europe via Spanish conquests in the New World. The new method used logwood (Haematoxylum campechianum), a dyewood native to Mexico and Central America. Although logwood was poorly received at first, producing a blue inferior to that of woad and indigo, it was discovered to produce a fast black in combination with a ferrous sulfate(copperas) mordant. Despite changing fashions in color, logwood was the most widely used dye by the 19th century, providing the sober blacks of formal and mourning clothes

Furthermore Japan maintained isolation from external influence for a very long period of time so definitely would not have traded with the Spanish to acquire any of the required items to make Black during that time period, not to mention the civil war and poverty I hardly doubt they would of wasted so many resources to turn their standard indigo blue colour into a black just because it looks cool.

Perhaps the WESTERN world think ninja's wore black but this game isn't being made by a western developer and I'm definitely sure if Square slipped up on something as simple as basic Japan history when making the game in japan they would get torn apart in their own home market.

[Niwashi]

Back during the feudal japan period 1185-1600s they didn't have access to black dye's as modern dying processes hadn't been discovered nor did the local fauna produce any forms of making the dye hence why it was all indigo blue.

Those modern dying processes you're referring to made black fabric easier to dye than it had formerly been; it's not what first made it possible. There are lots of natural sources for black dye (including the same indigo that's used for blue). It did take an extra step in the dying process to make black fabric, and as a result it was more expensive, but that didn't stop it from being widely available. And both black and dark blue were considered good nighttime camouflage colors. Of the two, dark blue was likely used more often, but to extend that to thinking black wouldn't have been used at all is a bit preposterous.

Perhaps the WESTERN world think ninja's wore black but this game isn't being made by a western developer and I'm definitely sure if Square slipped up on something as simple as basic Japan history when making the game in japan they would get torn apart in their own home market.

No, the association of ninja with the color black is a Japanese image of them, one firmly established there long before most of the western world had ever even heard of ninja.

There are multiple reasons why black is the main image of them (despite probably not being the most common color in reality). One, as already mentioned, is the kabuki stage hand image. Another is that, just as modern media might represent an "invisible" character as an outline through which we see the colors of whatever is behind them, old Japanese paintings would instead represent an "invisible" figure by showing them in black, as black could be used in artwork to indicate invisibility.

[Satani]

This thread makes me wonder if the other side of the planet is having a debate on the historical accuracy of the costumes used in Cowboys and Aliens.