A lot of people have pretty definite preferences as to which version of the Lovely Angels they like best. What I find most interesting about the characters is the number of variations on them that there have been from the print novels onward. This gallery presents artists' conceptions other than the ones most familiar to fans of any of the published versions.

Much of what anyone has to go on for a physical description of the Angels comes from the first story back in 1979, where Kei, as the narrator, tells us that they're both 19 years old and that

"... I'm 171 centimeters tall and weigh just 54 kilograms... My hair's red and just a bit frizzy. But since I wear it in a stylish wolf cut, it's really quite becoming. My eyes are brown and my skin's a creamy gold. Maybe I shouldn't say so myself, but I happen to be a cute, maybe just a smidgin boyish, beauty... Yuri, on the other hand, is 168 centimeters tall and weighs 51 kilograms... She's built a tad lighter than I am, but she's a beautiful girl with that lacquer black hair of hers hanging straight down to her shoulders. For a bonus, her skin is a contrasting lily-white. She's just like a little Japanese doll...

"Then there are, you know, our clothes? They may have collars, but these skin-tight tops leave our midriffs bare. Add in our V-cut shorts and calf-hugging boots and we glitter in silver from head to toe..."

-- from David Lewis' translation, Great Adventures of the Dirty Pair

Note: their weights are given as 58 (Kei) and 54 (Yuri) kilos in the first anime episode

 

All right, so we have two young women, about 5' 7-1/2" and 5' 6" tall, medium build, dressed like a futuristic tag team... You get the picture? [click below]

 

Classic-inspired

[4 pages]

 Flash-inspired

 Warren-inspired

[2 pages]

 

"Work that endures is always capable of an infinite and plastic ambiguity; it is all things to all men...; it is a mirror that reflects the reader's own traits and it is also a map of the world."

Jorge Luis Borges, Inquisitions

 

"I've changed my hairstyle / so many times now / I don't know what I look like."

David Byrne (Talking Heads), "Life During Wartime"