Tis' the Year of the Snake Kigurumi!
(Featured image credit by karioda via X)
I know it is a bit of tradition in this blog to use the Chinese New Year Zodiac animal to discuss kigurumi designs, but here I am once again. For 2025, it is the Year of the Snake, I am about to show you some of the things that make me facepalm hard whenever snake kigurumi onesies are always represented but literally just a green tube with eyeballs.
Nah, just kidding.
Designers are a way more savvy than that, though I do still have a few reservations about their accenting choices.
First and foremost, as simple as snakes visually are in cartoons and caricatured media, snake kigurumi don't have to suck. Yes, you get arms and legs like a normal person, and no, you don't have to slither around on your belly pretending to be a living garden hose. The real challenge? Making it actually look like a snake and not just "generic green reptile #47."
The most important step is not to throw your hands up, slap a white belly and call it a day. Keep it a bit more detailed with that much needed underbelly segmentation. You know what I'm talking about - that distinct snake belly pattern that should give more hints on what the design truly is. But yeah, apparently that's too much work for some artists, and I don’t blame them if the kigurumi onesie itself isn’t even the focus of the artwork.
(Image credit by nao.eg via BlueSky)
The head situation can be quite interesting. The snake head is generally represented as an elongated hood, to give a bit more distinction that it is not a lizard design at all. But even more interesting, is that some designs go one step further and use the sleeves themselves to make it more apparent that it of a more particularly “slithery” design. Funny thing though, is that with a three-headed snake-like “costume” you essentially are making a Hydra kigurumi onesie, and not just a generic snake kigurumi.
As for other types of snakes, sure, they look amazing in anime art - all with different colors and even more distinct features that help them be identified as snake-themed. Heck if it is a particular character associated well with snakes, we can even get very unique color palettes and accents. But try translating that into an actual wearable piece. There is quite a scarcity in the number of available snake motifs, making it seem like most manufacturers just nope out and stick to more “production-friendly” choices.
At least that's what my brain wants to believe.
(Image credit by yukkieeeeeen via X)
And let's talk about scales - or rather, the complete lack of them. No, we simply don't do scales. At all. Ever. It's just solid green, or solid brown, or any solid color, clean as Yoshi's back (I mean, Yoshi not a snake of course, but…). The cartoon-inspired motifs of snake designs make it such an accepted thing that seeing a snake kigurumi with actual scale patterns would probably look more wrong than right at this point.
Despite some of these corners being cut, the basic template snake kigurumi framework actually turned out pretty decent. Most anime art and available products out there still managed to stumble into this sweet spot where the simplification actually works. Beautifully, even.
(Image credit by cyama_land via X)
Will the snake kigurumi trend rise up in 2025? Definitely not. Though please, for the love of all things cozy, if you're designing one, remember that snakes can have arms and legs in kigurumi form. We're not trying to recreate National Geographic here. We're just trying to look cute while being comfortable. And maybe, just maybe, someone will finally figure out how to make a cobra hood that doesn't look like it has almost succesfully swallowed you whole.