nuttynutifications submitted:

How is it possible that Attack on Titan is not mentioned here as a positive example yet? This must be fixed. I hope that I give enough extra input to avoid making this sounding like beating a dead horse.

Lookit. Female and male characters. IN EXACTLY THE SAME PRACTICAL UNIFORM. And in an IMMENSELY popular series! Which features a gender-balanced cast and badassery divided fairly equally to the different genders.

Take notes, creators.

Some comments about the designs (also as an additional information to those unfortunate people who haven’t happened to follow this amazing, gut-wrenching series):

• The series is set to a world in which humanity is on the brink of extinction, hunted by creepy human-devouring giants called titans. The remains of the humanity live inside three massive walls, living in peace… until the outer wall breaks and the titans roam into the human territory. Cue the start of the adventure.
• These guys are soldiers who fights against the titans using 3D maneuver gear (= imagine Spiderman replacing web with a combo of grapple hooks, metal wires and a jetback) and swords to cut deep into the backs of the necks of the titans, which is the only known way to kill a titan (those things regenerate their limbs). The soldiers undergo three years of training to learn this fighting method, and not everybody passes it (or survives it).
• The light uniform makes perfect sense giving their opponents; if a titan grabs, hits or stomps you, no armor can save your life. Therefore maximizing airborne maneuverability by using light gear makes perfect sense.
• Yet they don’t use “light gear” as an excuse for fanservice! Hooray!
• Those leather straps actually serve a purpose; they use their leg movements to control their 3D maneuver gear.
• High boots are probably for protecting knees from scratches when falling (they are open behind the knee).

• Their army has a remarkable female representation. I don’t think it’s quite 50%, but not far from it. Most of the higher-rank officers appear to be men, though… but that happens with RL armies, too, for numerous social reasons I’m not listing now.

• An interesting touch is also that off-duty, many female soldiers (and female civilians) use skirts or dresses instead of pants, fitting the 19-20th century German-esque setting.

More designs like this, please!

A thing in the series that might be a tad more problematic design-wise is perhaps Female Titan, one of the more special titans (=more intelligent and hence more dangerous) in the series:

I don’t blame them for calling her “Female Titan” though; before that, the titans heroes has seen earlier looked mostly masculine or androgynous. And her appearance is a plot point later.

…though… still… muscle boobs? o___O Weird. Also that one (spoilerific) innuendo-esque scene with Eren…

For her defense, I think that the camera angles around her mostly stayed quite gender-neutral, albeit she did have her share of her ass shots. The usual ground-level position of the camera man may affect that, though.

Thankfully, we later get a special female titan who is WAY more creepy than sexy.

I’m always really confused by professional artists that seem to believe that boobs are made of muscle.  In this case I’m hoping it was some issue with having to worry about the breast tissue looking out of place on a body that is otherwise pretty much completely devoid of fat.

So it turns out we can have this in anime after all.

The possibilities really are limitless!

– wincenworks