Then and now: Karen

This is a legacy article and was originally published July 5th, 2019.

So, clearly, one thing a lot of people noticed with the announcement of Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town is that a lot of the characters have changed their appearance. While some of these changes are hit and miss, there’s a lot of changes that make sense! So I thought I would do a little series about them. So I present…

Then and now: Karen!

Karen is by far one of the characters with the most drastic revisions, so I thought it would be best to start with her. To begin with, the most obvious change is the loss of Karen’s trademark blonde bangs and, in exchange, she now has her hair get darker the further back it goes. While I hate to see her old look go, I can’t help but feel it makes a lot of sense. Karen’s original design was as the granddaughter of Eve from the original SNES title, seen here:

Cliff’s original design also incorporates that little touch of blonde due to being Karen’s cousin in 64. However, for the Back to Nature/Friends of Mineral Town version, Karen’s grandmother is no longer a significant part of her character and she has a completely different father!

Fittingly, now her hair color is a gradient that starts leaning towards Sasha and ends leaning towards Jeff while never completely matching either.

There’s no accounting for everyone’s drastic change of fashion however, as that seems largely to be an ongoing theme to give Mineral Town a better sense of place, distinct from Flowerbud. Though it’s nice that Jeff has finally turned towards the Purple side to match his wife and daughter and looks a bit less like someone who cooks for a living as his 64 counterpart did! That along with his now-green eyes gives a new sense of cohesiveness to Karen’s family.