Pilot of WinBee. She is a gentle, outgoing young girl who normally spends her time maintaining peace in Donburi Island as a member of the TwinBee Team.
Pastel (パステル,Pasuteru?) is a character and one of the main protagonists in the TwinBee series of shoot 'em up games by Konami, where she takes the role of the pilot of the pink, bumblebee-shaped android WinBee, and is commonly assigned to the second player. She is a gentle, outgoing young girl and one of the three pilot members of the TwinBee Team –alongside her cousin Light and her little brother Mint– whose main task is to maintain peace in Donburi Island. She is the granddaughter of Dr. Cinnamon, the creator of the "bee" android ships and head of the team.
Along with Light and Mint, Pastel is also the protagonist of the TwinBee PARADISE franchise, conformed by a radio drama theater, an anime miniseries and a manga.
A second-generation WinBee pilot and Mint's older sister. She is basically a kind, honest, and energetic pudding-loving girl, but she has a stubborn side that will do whatever it takes to get her way. When she is out of control, she is especially sensitive to Light's word "daikon". Sometimes she unintentionally demonstrates her favorite fighting game technique. Pastel's dream is to become a Donburi idol. Her charm points are her healthy legs and her cute wavy hair in a ripples cut. She is so popular that she even has her own group of guardians within Dessert Junior High School, but sadly, she is unaware of it. As for her relationship with Light, she is a "cousin" on the Donburi Island family register, but... well, what do you think?
Pastel is a young 13 years old girl with short red (or pink) hair and blue eyes. Normally, she wears her WinBee pilot's outfit, which consists of a white overcoat with a pink chest piece and a large "W" letter. Even so, she's also often seen with other garments, such as her blue school uniform and her pink bikini that she dresses in the intermediate scenes of video games as a fan service. She lives in Donburi Island, where she enjoys great popularity.
Pastel is depicted as a sweet, intelligent and extroverted girl who spends most of her time keeping peace in Donburi Island as a member of the "TwinBee Team". She's the granddaughter of Dr. Cinnamon, inventor of the WinBee ship, and the daughter of Donnamon, the former pilot of WinBee who occupied her role in the older video games. Her cousin is Light, the pilot of TwinBee, whom Pastel refers to as her older brother. She also shares a great friendship with Madoka, a schoolmate and neighbor, and with Mint, the baby pilot of GwinBee. She's usually accompanied by WinBee, which has the ability to reduce herself and accompany her as if she was her pet when she's not fighting.
Pastel is the product of a renovation made by Konami of its classic TwinBee series of shoot 'em up video games, where the anime artist SHUZILOW.HA was hired to give a new image to the series. This, in addition to redesigning the old ships as intelligent robots, created a new series of characters that appeared for the first time in the game Detana!! TwinBee in 1991. Here, Pastel is presented as a beautiful girl who comes out in the middle cutscenes as a reward for passing a level. At first, she was simply called "WinBee", as her ship, although starting from the radio theater series she was properly given the name of Pastel. Konami made this new project a multimedia franchise with different products that were released during the 1990s, along with new video games under the title of TwinBee PARADISE, including an anime miniseries, several manga, an extensive radio drama series, and numerous musical CDs where Pastel appears as a singer. The voice of Pastel in her numerous appearances in video games and other media was in charge of actress Hekiru Shiina.
Appearance
Pastel has fair skin, blue eyes and pink hair. When piloting WinBee, she wears a pink jumpsuit with a blue "W" (for WinBee) letter in the middle, white sleeves and white gloves.
Abilities
Pastel is a skilled aeronaut who exclusively pilots the WinBee ship. This machine has an aircraft mode where it behaves similar to an airplane, and a terrestrial mode where it acquires a humanoid form and behaves like a mecha. As with most mechas, Pastel is synchronized with the ship so that she replicates her movements; in fact, WinBee's special ability to attack with a very sharp Olympic ribbon comes from Pastel's own gymnastic skills, who practices this discipline at school.
Detana!! TwinBee (1991 - arcade, PCE, PS, Saturn): First appearance of Pastel in the series, along with her cousin Light and the all new redesigned bumblebee androids. She is WinBee's pilot and embellishes the many cutscenes that take place between levels.
Pop'n TwinBee (1993 - SNES): Similar to the previous game, Pastel is WinBee's pilot and appears in the intermediate cutscenes.
TwinBee PARADISE in Donburi Shima (1998 - PC): Interactive multimedia CD-ROM for Windows 95 featuring several minigames and software utilities, and hosted by the characters of the TwinBee series.
TwinBee RPG (1998 - PS): Pastel appears as WinBee's pilot. She joins the player's team at the end of the first episode. The game also includes a kind of dating simulator where the protagonist can conquer her.
TwinBee Dungeon (2004 - mobile): A roguelike role-playing game for mobile devices. Pastel is one of the game's characters.
TwinBee (2007 - pachislot): Pachislot game based on the TwinBee universe. Pastel appears in the various cutscenes of the game. Her voice was performed by Hekiru Shiina.
Battle Tryst (1998 - arcade): Fighting game where Pastel is a hidden character. In her fighter version, she fights with big boxing gloves.
Konami Krazy Racers (2001 - GBA): A kart racing game that brings together several Konami characters. Pastel is one of the selectable runners, with WinBee acting as her assistant.
THE ★ BishiBashi (2009 - arcade): In this party game, using an e-AMUSEMENT Pass, Pastel and Light can be used as selectable characters.
WinBee appears as a boss in Otomedius X, while Pastel desperately tries to stop her.
Otomedius Excellent (2011 - X360): The Donburi Island level can be unlocked as downloadable content, where the end boss is WinBee piloted by Pastel. WinBee hits herself on the head against a metal tower for flying carelessly and this causes her to malfunction and turn evil, much to Pastel's horror.
NEW LovePlus (2012 - 3DS): Pastel appears as one of the rivals in the Motto Moero! Taisen Puzzle-Dama minigame.
Tokimeki Memorial (1994 - PC Engine CD, PS): Pastel makes a cameo appearance as a plush doll along with some other characters.
Snatcher (1996 - Sega CD, PS): Pastel and Light appear as attendants at the Outer Heaven club show, only in the Sega CD and PlayStation versions of the game. Also, a picture of Pastel will be shown with a message "out of service" if the player dials a wrong phone number using the "Metal Gear" device.
Tokimeki Memorial 2 (1999 - PS): Homura can be disguised as Pastel in this game, wearing her complete outfit. In addition, Pastel is alluded in the game when the protagonist answer that he is playing a 3D fighting game, Miho mentions a girl with boxing gloves as a secret character; the 3D fighting game in question is Battle Tryst, while the secret character is Pastel.
TwinBee PARADISE was an ambitious project by Konami to expand the TwinBee series to several other popular media, such as manga and anime. The PARADISE series stands out for giving prominence to Pastel and Light, leaving the ships in a secondary role. Even several music albums were promoted with the aim of turning Pastel into a famous virtual idol.
Following the publication of Pop'n TwinBee for the Super Famicom, a serial radio drama version with the title TwinBee PARADISE was produced, which began its broadcast on the radio station NCB on October 10, 1993. The series lasted three seasons, with the third and final season ending on March 30, 1997, and comprising a total of 96 episodes, which would then be published in CD drama collections.
The series was characterized by turning the spotlight on the pilots and expanding the universe of the series with numerous secondary characters which don't appear or that are portrayed differently than they do in the video games. Hekiru Shiina provided Pastel's voice, who would remain working on other TwinBee products and games.
Ganbare Goemon: Jigen Jō no Akumu (1991 - OVA of 1 episode): This anime is based on the Ganbare Goemon series, although it pays tribute to other Konami games. In one scene, Goemon enters the world of TwinBee and becomes a pilot very similar to Light; there he meets Pastel (still called "WinBee" at this time) and both go out to fight using their respective ships. In the end, the characters go to rest in a public bathroom where you can see a scene in which Pastel appears totally naked. These fleeting fanservice scenes by Pastel would reappear in most other TwinBee anime releases, where the pilot is the victim of many situations in which she ends up naked or with little clothes.
TwinBee: WinBee's ⅛ Panic (1994 - OVA of 1 episode): This episode tells how Pastel accidentally eats a cookie that reduces her size, leaving her in a miniaturized state. The rest of the characters must find a way to return her to normal so that Pastel can participate in a talent contest.
Tulip Beach Stories (1998 - short): Short episode where the characters take a rest day at the beach. Pastel loses her favorite suntan lotion and when trying to recover it, great disasters ensue.
TwinBee PARADISE (vol.1): Venus's Smile (1999 - OVA 1 of 3 episodes): This anime series maintains the same art style as the 1994 anime. The episodes focus on the characters Light and Pastel. In this story, the pilots meet a baby that comes from Venus and they travel to that planet to return him to his parents, although he ends up becoming very fond of Pastel.
TwinBee PARADISE (vol.3): Evil Revival! (1999 - OVA 3 of 3 episodes): Episode that tells the story of how Pastel exchanges her body with a little stray cat. The other characters, without knowing it, are confused to see Pastel gone crazy behaving like a feline.
In the anime series Otogi-Juushi Akazukin from 2005, you can see a character doing a cosplay of Pastel in episode 5.
Manga
Four Gamest supplements from 1993 (volumes 85, 89, 93 and 97) contained manga of Detana!! TwinBee drawn and written by Mine Yoshizaki. Between 1994 and 1996, an official manga, also by Yoshizaki, was published in three volumes in the collection Gamest Comics (numbers 11, 39 and 76).
Music albums
Konami published numerous musical albums based on TwinBee PARADISE, some of them dedicated to launching Pastel (played by Hekiru Shiina) as a virtual idol.
The character Erul Tron, from the Otomedius series, is heavily inspired by Pastel, and features a similar hairstyle and color scheme.
Both characters were designed by Mine Yoshizaki, who has worked on games for both franchises.
The word "pastel" refers to any of several subdued tints of colors, usually associated with pink, peach, yellow, green, blue and lavender, which may be the reason behind Pastel's overall design and color-scheme.
In many Latin American countries (as well as others around the world whose languages also derive from Latin), the word "pastel" is also used to refer to a variety of dishes, which mainly include cakes, sweets, pastries, desserts, etc.
