Design
Yuffie's ninja heritage was clearly brought forward through her design by character designer Tetsuya Nomura. Though you might not notice it at the first glance, her accessories down to her armor can be traced back to her Shinobi lineage.

Yuffie's right side is her flexible side: it's where she carries her shuriken and moves around the most with. In-battle, Yuffie usually steps forward with her right leg and strikes her shuriken, keeping her left side in place all the time. The left part of her body carries more heavy accessories that are there to protect her, such as her protecting 'sleeve', which is actually based on a Japanese samurai's igote, originally an oversized archery bracer or arm guard. Yuffie also wears a samurai's leather gloves (yugake).

However, Yuffie's design is not just all ninja. For example, her very short shorts were added to bring the rebellious side of her character forward as well, aside from her proud stance towards her heritage. FF7 Dismantling confirmed that her loose socks were brought in because Yuffie and her father Godo don't get along and she lived by her own sense and policy. Loose socks were in fashion back then for girls who liked to break school uniform rules.

The fact that Final Fantasy VII was 3D opened a lot of doors for Nomura, which was also mainly why all the asymmetrical accessories were added to Yuffie's character later on. Originally, Yuffie's design was a plain outfit with a red top, but was scrapped later because of how plain it looked in the polygon models. By adding elements such as her lone sleeve and thigh protector, not only was Yuffie's credibility as a ninja rising, the advantages of 3D games were more to be seen. Her outfit also turned green along the way. Nomura's thing for asymmetrical outfits started with Yuffie and continued on in further FF games.

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