Kyoutani Maruko

I'll be honest with y'all, I have a soft spot for gyaru. They look cool, they seem to be fun and gyaru as a subculture is about self-expression, which is awesome actually. Actually my first two sims (after my avatar, which I won't share) were gyaru and gyaruo, but since they were only used for learning how to play TS3, I deleted the saves (well, too bad, I could've remade them).

One day, I decided to practice, again, this time with a face of some Japanese girl (while looking today, I realised the attempt wasn't good). She looked too normal, so I turned her into a gyaru and pretty much abandoned her, until I started remaking my sims.

I've found Tokyosou V2 world, which is a custom Japanese world for The Sims 3, so I put her in there.

After finding some references on Pinterest and various articles about gyaru, I made some changes:
• Current formalwear was inspired by the agejo gyaru style. However, at first, I wanted to make her a business woman look, but then I remembered how strict the dress code is in Japanese schools and offices, so I abandoned the idea. I couldn't come up with anything else for a while, so I just made yet another pink skirt with zebra print coat (on the pic above), until I found several covers of different gyaru magazines;
• Sportswear had different pink top and black leggings;

• Swimwear, which was a skimpy leopard-print bikini as if from some hentai/ecchi, was turned into a pink striped one at some point, but then I changed it to a cutesy swimsuit with a floral print and a short skirt, because I think she would like it more;
• Outerwear had a dress with a scarf at some point, but I changed it into something simpler (but kept the zebra print), then removed a beanie.

Unfortunately, I discovered chogongal's awesome website when it was already too late, because I already made the screenshots. Overall its a really useful resource for everything related to gyaru, such as magazines and information about lesser-known gyaru subgenres. While creating Maruko-chan, I listened to various city-pop artists. Tbh, at the time I didn't know any gyaru-adjacent artist, but I imagined city-pop was something her parents listened to, and she picked it up too (as well as other artists who were more popular at the time), and the poster of Mariya Takeuchi in her bedroom is kind of a proof of that (it was completely unintentional though, Tokyosou included various posters, including the one with Mariya on it).

Maruko-chan's website was inspired by FOOLLOVERS (it even uses some of its assets). Although the webmaster shared his website template, I decided not to use it and wrote everything myself instead. I prefer code that I can read.

The text on the website was updated over time, but nothing was removed except for the caption to one of the photos, as I changed the location of the photo (from the pool to the beach). The other two screenshots (casual and formal) were rushed, so I replaced them with ones that I've put more effort into..

As much as I would like to remake Maruko to give her more accurate face, I can't. I have already taken screenshots and I'll have to reinstall Tokyosou and recreate each screenshot.