Zhukov said:
Dude. Just... just don't.
She's wearing a fetish outfit. That's what it is. That's what it was designed as.
Yeah, I don't think it's too farfetched to call it a fetish outfit.
But that doesn't prevent it from being armor.
It's fetish armor.
Zhukov said:
Hell, you basically said it yourself:
And like I say above, I don't think women are (almost) exclusively dressed this way in any medium besides porn.
Now,
what does that tell you about what we're looking at here, eh?
That it should have an age rating of 18+, perhaps 15+.
Voulan said:
I wouldn't use the Romans as an example, though. The reason why the majority were mostly uncovered was because it was a policy that you had to purchase your own armour, and unless you were from an Elite family that had money at their disposal (which was a massive minority), your armour was going to be on the lighter side. Those that could afford good armour did so because the Romans prided prestige and presentation. If everyone could, they would be covered up more. You also have to bear in mind that they usually fought in hot climates, and had to travel by foot to their battles carrying all their weapons (again, only the Elite were able to afford horses).
Okay, fair enough, but there are plenty of standard armor sets of historical soldiers I can point to that were much less than full plate mail. I simply chose the Romans as it was iconic.
Voulan said:
And I highly doubt when an artist draws a female in armour he is considering that she is doing so to present an image of herself - notably, he is dressing her in the image he wants to convey.
That was my point. Artistic license is taken with the non traditional image, but the act of promoting that image (in this case some kind of sexualised fantasy warrior) is reasonable.
Voulan said:
But anyway, as you say, the main purpose of armour is to protect, and that outfit fails completely in all those regards. As Ellie says in Borderlands, "It's not as though the bad guys will only aim for my saucy bits."
Well I don't think it completely fails, it covers like 30%-40% of her body, so it's at least that effective. Plus I'm sure you've seen fictional scenes before where a person uses just a small bit of armor (bracers for example) to defend themselves when attacked.
Anyway I think that is all besides the point, from what I've read about said anime, the school uniform is possessed and grants her superpowers. Can you call something armor if it provides protection in the form of superpowers? I think so.
Voulan said:
Deliberately revealing the parts of the female body considered sexual is pretty much pandering, however you slice it. And I am using pandering to your definition there, as I believe it is only keeping a certain audience in mind here and appealing to them almost insultingly.
It is the artists right to appeal to whichever audience they wish, as exclusively as they wish. You are effectively advocating censorship here.
Voulan said:
I'm over generalising for the sake of the point here, in that a vast majority of female characters in most media (and extremely in anime) are deliberately dressed in this way.
You do realise you just made the same extreme generalisation again right?
Voulan said:
And in doing so, we are being invited to use the male gaze on her - a term coined by scholar Judith Butler - which allows us to objectify her as an Other.
The term "male gaze" isn't really applicable here. Well it is, but not in any useful sense.
Male gaze refers to when the audience is pushed into the shoes of a heterosexual man. If a work has been designed with heterosexual men in mind, it stands to reason that it's going to have a "male gaze."
This is no bad thing, unless you are saying that it's a bad thing to create works with heterosexual men in mind.
Which is ludicrous.
This is only an issue when the majority of fictional works have a "male gaze," when it is unavoidable.
And as much as you like to exaggerate, that's not the case.
Plus use of the term objectification in this sense (the fictional sense) is wrong, exploitative is the word you are looking for.
Voulan said:
She simply becomes a collection of body parts for us to oogle and desire. There is no other point to the outfit.
Yeah....so?
"Oh no, people are ogling that inanimate object that doesn't actually exist, call the village elders."
Voulan said:
And this kind of degradation is everywhere
Degradation of ink on paper?
Photon degradation?
Voulan said:
- if you're not seeing it as the majority, then perhaps you're not really looking for it.
If you are seeing it as the majority then perhaps you're seeing it where it isn't, or you're holding a small subsection of media as being indicative of the whole thing.
Voulan said:
If its sexiness is in a completely unnecessary context - like killing people, of all things - then it is just stupid. Especially if the men are dressed completely sensibly.
And yet you pass judgement on this character design without knowing the context.
The actions of a character are not the only thing that can be reflected in their design, fiction would be an incredibly boring thing if that were the case.
And how do you know that this kind of costume is typical of this anime? Google images doesn't think it is.
In fact google images shows us three male characters, accompanied by two female characters in much more realistic battle clothing, the same as the male characters pictured.
Voulan said:
And as you even say at the end there, women are dressed like this in porn; so what does this outfit say?
Like I said to Zhukov, that the anime it features in should be an 18+, perhaps 15+. Outside of that it proves nothing and is frankly a silly and prudish point to make.
Look at I want to make it perfectly clear. I'm not saying that this work of fiction doesn't have any content worthy of criticism, or any potential to be insensitive or offend.
But to decide that it does, simply because of a single costume design (note costume design, not character design), before the work has even been release and we've actually had an opportunity to ascertain the context, is judgmental and assumptive.
And even if it does have content worth of criticism, even if it does offend some people, that doesn't mean it has no right to exist. Or has inherent ethical issues.
