I’m sure that most people who have seen/read Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell and/or remember reading 80s manga might also have a recollection of his other work, Appleseed. It’s rather similar in theme and style to the former, but its female lead, Deunan, has better fitting costumes that have the added bonus of actually looking like something a soldier would wear in a war zone:
But of course, because it’s a Shirow work, it also features scenes where her costume (and other characters) is of the Unrealistically Tight but “Still Sexy” variety as well as spine benders and crotch huggers:
The new anime reboots (going from Appleseed XIII, Ex Machina, and Alpha) have chronologically progressed from mostly keeping her original costume intact to “I give thee a cleavage window, a bared midriff, and a set of completely pointless suspenders and corset thing because fuck you”.
And speaking of Alpha…
I’m sure that not even vacuum sealing yourself into that monstrosity would be enough to explain where a human waist goes or why a butt has to lifted so damn high.
If I wasn’t told it was a costume, I would have assumed the figure on the left was some sort of humanoid robot.
I can certainly understand why they want to get rid of the 80s hair, that’s a tad dated. But I really don’t think that this is really an improvement:
Which probably explains Deunan’s expressions in all the promo shots:
I’m sure that most people who have seen/read Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell and/or remember reading 80s manga might also have a recollection of his other work, Appleseed. It’s rather similar in theme and style to the former, but its female lead, Deunan, has better fitting costumes that have the added bonus of actually looking like something a soldier would wear in a war zone:
But of course, because it’s a Shirow work, it also features scenes where her costume (and other characters) is of the Unrealistically Tight but “Still Sexy” variety as well as spine benders and crotch huggers:
The new anime reboots (going from Appleseed XIII, Ex Machina, and Alpha) have chronologically progressed from mostly keeping her original costume intact to “I give thee a cleavage window, a bared midriff, and a set of completely pointless suspenders and corset thing because fuck you”.
And speaking of Alpha…
I’m sure that not even vacuum sealing yourself into that monstrosity would be enough to explain where a human waist goes or why a butt has to lifted so damn high.
If I wasn’t told it was a costume, I would have assumed the figure on the left was some sort of humanoid robot.
I can certainly understand why they want to get rid of the 80s hair, that’s a tad dated. But I really don’t think that this is really an improvement:
Which probably explains Deunan’s expressions in all the promo shots:
I particularly like how, in this interview about a dress of all things, Gwendoline addresses the reason why Captain Phasma’s armor is so striking.
“…normally the kind of female characters that we see in films, we see the way in which they’re made flesh. We see the outlines of their body. But this is a character who is wearing armor, and as a consequence we are forced to judge her or interact with her… form a relationship on her character and due to her actions.”
This is the power that you give characters when you don’t lean on sexualized tropes, objectification and the false idol of “sex sells”.
I particularly like how, in this interview about a dress of all things, Gwendoline addresses the reason why Captain Phasma’s armor is so striking.
“…normally the kind of female characters that we see in films, we see the way in which they’re made flesh. We see the outlines of their body. But this is a character who is wearing armor, and as a consequence we are forced to judge her or interact with her… form a relationship on her character and due to her actions.”
This is the power that you give characters when you don’t lean on sexualized tropes, objectification and the false idol of “sex sells”.
While we touched upon the subject of male empowerment before, we never discussed it in detail. Also, our tone in sexy male armor posts shifts a lot between sarcasm and talking straight, so can I understand the confusion.
Let’s start with why BABD even posts examples of “empowered men”.
To us, the intent of showing men in skimpy/sexualized armor is satire through contrast. The “Women NEED to be sexy (read: show a lot of skin and do sultry poses)” mentality is so deeply ingrained in our culture that many just assume it to be the natural order of things, that “sexyness” is inherent part of the female gender. But not of the male one.
And while there’s slow shift towards giving women more varied representation, men (who have
otherwise
very diverse presence) rarely get to be the overtly sexy characters. And those who are usually get to be the villains, which feeds into “evil is sexy” trope as well as to villain gay coding, both ugly concepts that should die.
We have yet to see genuine, non-incidental sexy male empowerment in mainstream media that doesn’t come off as some sort of mockery.
~Ozzie
Also worth remembering that a lot of our commentary on sexy male armor is tongue-in-cheek parody of the kind of rhetoric we regularly receive in our ask box, in reblogs and in broad-spectrum posts that conflate us with other critics.
Because let be clear, if we tried to keep the “sexy male armor” tag stocked with images I came across naturally through my typical cishet male surfing, it wouldn’t happen every Friday or even every month.
But it seems we will never stop hearing that eighteen years ago a game with a villain in briefs was released, fourteen years ago a unpopular video game protagonist did a nudey run and sometimes they get funny feelings during the glimpses of male butt in spandex – so clearly the market is constantly over-saturated and it’s only fair every game have c-string clad warrior women in it.
Hey, I’m just wondering, is the “male empowerment” a bad thing? Maybe I am just missing some of the subtleties, but, if I may be frank “So what?” I went through a few pages of the tag “Sexy Male Armor”, and I’m not sure what I should feel. From your tone, you often seemed like you were trying to show these costumes in a negative light. On the other hand, I saw JoJo and DIO, so I knew you weren’t saying they were bad.
While we touched upon the subject of male empowerment before, we never discussed it in detail. Also, our tone in sexy male armor posts shifts a lot between sarcasm and talking straight, so can I understand the confusion.
Let’s start with why BABD even posts examples of “empowered men”.
To us, the intent of showing men in skimpy/sexualized armor is satire through contrast. The “Women NEED to be sexy (read: show a lot of skin and do sultry poses)” mentality is so deeply ingrained in our culture that many just assume it to be the natural order of things, that “sexyness” is inherent part of the female gender. But not of the male one.
And while there’s slow shift towards giving women more varied representation, men (who have
otherwise
very diverse presence) rarely get to be the overtly sexy characters. And those who are usually get to be the villains, which feeds into “evil is sexy” trope as well as to villain gay coding, both ugly concepts that should die.
We have yet to see genuine, non-incidental sexy male empowerment in mainstream media that doesn’t come off as some sort of mockery.
~Ozzie
Also worth remembering that a lot of our commentary on sexy male armor is tongue-in-cheek parody of the kind of rhetoric we regularly receive in our ask box, in reblogs and in broad-spectrum posts that conflate us with other critics.
Because let be clear, if we tried to keep the “sexy male armor” tag stocked with images I came across naturally through my typical cishet male surfing, it wouldn’t happen every Friday or even every month.
But it seems we will never stop hearing that eighteen years ago a game with a villain in briefs was released, fourteen years ago a unpopular video game protagonist did a nudey run and sometimes they get funny feelings during the glimpses of male butt in spandex – so clearly the market is constantly over-saturated and it’s only fair every game have c-string clad warrior women in it.
– wincenworks
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(As well as engineering the video does touch on medical procedures, psychological experiments performed on animals and themes like kidnapping, murder and execution. Also some Nazi imagery and a very brief appearance of a homophobic slur.)
Round 4 sumitted:
Have you seen this? It’s an interesting lecture by Mike Hill about using functional, industrial principles and meaning in your designs to make a world more rich and believable. In the first part of the lecture, he talks about the difference between deeper satisfaction and pleasure buttons, with “The Last of Us” being an example of deeper layered design and “Candy Crush” being an example of instant pleasure button pushing. It’s funny how he stresses the importance to think about how things work and make them believable, since it also perfectly applies to bikini armor.
Bikini armor designs are nothing more than simple, instant pleasure designs. It’s a very simple, lazy form of gratification.To use his words, it’s short term, forgettable and contextless.
In contrast to that: believable, functional, deeper designs of female characters (and their armor) would bring much more depth to games and film and long term happiness and meaning.
I wonder how many bro-ncept artists are watching this lecture and think “yeah yeah I need to make that robot more believable” and then draw a girl in a bikini next to it though…
The video is quite long but definitely worth sitting through if you’re aspiring towards doing design of any sort.
A key point covered is that if you want people to get immersed and invested in your work then it needs to be internally consistent. You don’t need to be 100% realistic, but you need to consider the message behind design decisions and their relationship with your overall production.
Whether you consciously remember it or not doesn’t really effect the impact, it’s just really more about whether you were looking for it. You might not notice it, but your brain will.
