I've said this many times but World Trigger has without a doubt the blandest aesthetic I have ever seen in a manga series. Author Daisuke Ashihara chose to go with a more realistic approach resulting in its massive cast of characters all being distinguished by their fairly uninteresting brown or black hair styles which are of course in a black and white comic. The more characters that get introduced to the ever-growing cast, the harder it is to tell them apart. Luckily, there's one way to tell most of them apart: they all wear different jackets.
The majority of World Trigger characters are broken up into squads, each with their own unique combat outfit. Most of them are just jackets. Some of them are really unique and weird, almost alien. Like half of them are pretty much the same jacket but in different colors. Let's take a look at each of them, squad by squad excluding whichever ones I forget about.
Starting off strong with the A-Rank #1 Tachikawa Squad. These jackets are so fly, perfect for the all-stars on this team. It's such a sleek and neat design with its big straps and flowing tailcoat things. (I don't know any fashion term and there's like 20 more jackets to review uh oh.) These uniforms feel very "monster slayer" to me. If you showed me these designs out of context I'd assume they were from a more generic supernatural series. Fun fact: I tried finding a better image of the two main squamates fighting side by side but all I found were some very inappropriate images of Izzy and Mimi from Digimon. C'mon, guys, they're like 10.
The captain of A-Rank #2's Fuyushima Squad does not actively participate in combat himself so that leaves his sole teammate to be the only one in a jacket. Toma is also a sniper which means his jacket is usually covered by a radar-jamming Bagworm. It's really hard to get a good look at this thing in HD. I do like it though. It's simple but the raised collar is cool and fits Toma's rockstar vibe. I wonder if Fuyushima has a copy of this outfit that he doesn't use anymore?
Next up is A-Rank #3 Kamaza Squad with our first "weird" design. What the hell is this? It feels very PS2 sci fi JPRG, like a mix between Phantasy Star Online and Star Ocean with a bit of Xenosaga thrown in. I like it. The green circles on the suit glow when they activate invisibility. Why? There is no differentiation between squad members since they all fight with the exact same combat style: being sweet.
For A-Rank #4's Kusakabe Squad we've got our first "normal" boring combat/track jacket style. Except here it's mostly black with this hideous baby poop green color over a red t-shirt. No.
A-Rank #5 Arashiyama Squad invented the Generic Border Squad Jacket so there isn't much to say about it here other than it's Sentai Red to make them standout on TV. They all zip it up at different lengths. That's basically it.
A-Rank #6 is Kako Squad, the All Girls Team (Straight) which means you know we're gonna get some cool designs. This squad is rockin a cool black and purple superspy suit like they've just been dispatched to kill James Bond or Batman. I don't like how the barely teenaged Futaba has the more revealing suit though. Gross.
The first squad ever introduced, A-Rank #7 Miwa Squad is sort of a curious case. Due to their earlier introduction they seem to predate a lot of the design sensibilities Ashihara would later employ. Like why do they have padded armor? That doesn't make any sense. The author seems to have realized this because lately we've been seeing them in this new, more-jacket looking jacket which I later realized is actually just their usual suit without the armor. Anyway, even that's just black with a slightly unique collar.
So there's this flashback chapter that shows a mysterious Men In Black group and I genuinely believe Ashihara wrote that chapter with zero plan for these characters because when they eventually get properly introduced as Ninomiya Squad it's like... this is their Border outfit? It's just a suit. Clearly the guys in the flashback weren't supposed to be a squad be be decided to make them one and felt compelled to keep the suit? It sorta fits their vibe I guess, but I don't see Ninomiya himself designing these. He either let someone else do it or - fun theory - they used to be actual Men In Black, covert Border agents who investigated rule breakers and other Neighbor-happenings outside of the restricted zone. I mean that's kinda what they were doing in the flashback but their personal attachment to the rulebreaking muddies that idea. But anyway, it's just a suit.
Whenever a Border uniform isn't the Arashiyama-style Generic Jacket it usually feels like the team captain designed it for their own coolness factor. With Kageura Squad it seems like everyone genuinely contributed, or the designer took everyone's fighting style into consideration. They all look totally comfortable at all times like the suits were made for them specifically. This is extra impressive considering it seems to fit them all so perfectly despite their three very different body types. I like it.
I hate literally everything about Oji Squad. While looking for a good picture of their jackets I kept getting disgusted by like 147 different things related to them. Gross.
Nasu Squad is the All Girls Team (Gay) and they've got one of the more alien-looking suits in the series. I can't even call this a jacket. It's another one with those PS2 cyberpunk JRPG vibes. They look like androids. What's with the belts that go around their waist but over the jacket, not the pants, and don't even go all the way around? It's really freaky. I like it.
Yuba Squad's got a generic jacket but it's solid snow white which contracts really well with the darker colors of the uniform. I like how Yuba pops his collar and adds those fancy lightning yellow glasses that you know he doesn't really need. Just like how the light and dark colors contrast, the coolness of these jackets really contrasts with the dorkiness of the squad.
Suzunari-1 uses a sorta generic jacket but it doesn't go below the ribs nor does it zip up. Instead it's connected by these bands of... material. It's almost like they don't fit properly, but like Kageura Squad it fits each agent perfectly. It also has that PS2 JRPG thing going on which always gets bonus points from me.
Arafune Squad wears the generic jacket in black and white and muddy green. It doesn't matter though cus they're all snipers so you're never gonna see it.
Suwa Squad wears a green Generic Jacket. Weirdly, their undershirts are not only different colors but styles as well. As one of the earlier squads introduced they really do feel like a remnant of an older vision for the series with more military designs. Before World Trigger, Ashihara made two distinct one-shots - one about people fighting robots with guns and one about people fighting weird aliens with weird alien magic - and then he smooshed both ideas into World Trigger. Suwa Squad and a lot of the other Generic Jacket guys really look like that came from the Guns universe compared to squads like Nasu and Katori.
Kakizaki Squad wears Generic Jacket (orange) and headphones with the head strap part on the back over their neck. A lot of agents do this (and I have no idea why) but this is the only squad where everyone does it. And the headphones match the jackets too. Why?
We can almost be certain Shiori designed the Tamakoma-2 jackets knowing well that they were the main characters. At a glance they're Generic Jackets but are just different enough in ways I cannot explain because I don't know anything about fashion. I think it's the zippers. I like how they each have a weird little unique detail all of which are probably annoying as hell to draw. It feels like a cop-out to call these my favorite design. Luckily, I've saved the best for last.
Sometimes I think Channo Squad is my favorite squad the way a Star Wars fan says their favorite character is one of the Jedi in the background of Attack of the Clones that has no lines. Y'know... just to be different/annoying. But I genuinely think this peacoat-looking design is sleek you can't not love it. They also look like they're in a cool PS2 game, but like... as the generic villains you cut down along the way. Like they don't look like cool cyber mechawizards. They look like soldiers of an evil religion that the mechawizards are out to destroy. And one of them has two guns.
World Trigger is a series about cool jackets. Some of them are the same jacket but in different colors. Some of them look like they pilot an airship across Spira. One of them comes with two guns. That one's my favorite. My second favorite is your favorite. Congratulations! You did it.
