The name has, heh, phallic connotations, to start with. The definitive answer, I think, is when you try to imagine her as a male character. The more I think about it, the more I see Bayonetta as something rather unusual. And the other characters don’t treat her as a sex object, which is… sort of awesome, all on its own. How Rodin pushes her, and she pushes back just as hard. The way she plays with Luka when he turns up first, and the look of sorrow on her face when he accuses her of killing his father. Her dark past, and the mysterious figures who lurk there. I’m playing through the whole game right now, and it seems like I’m seeing something new and interesting every few minutes. She makes it her own in a way that you’d simply never see in other tits and ass games. Her entire archetype, in fact, revolves around sexual power, to the point where the method of her display of power (combat) is intrinsically tied up with her display of sexuality. She makes very, ahem, interesting references in combat. Sexual Powerīayonetta shows all the tropes of being a dominatrix. Some very tight writing went into the making of Bayonetta. She says, “I can’t help it if I like the little outfits.” And there she solidifies. ![]() She was fully realized for me during one of the early cutscenes, when she’s in the car with Enzo (another character and ally) and he comments on her most recent battle at the start of the game, where she was dressed as a nun. She’s powerful, while she performs some truly ridiculous maneuvers in combat that are reminiscent of bad porn movies. That’s the interesting thing about Bayonetta – she’s established very quickly as both playful and dangerous, flirty and terrifying. It’s the way she moves, the way she talks. ![]() (Women as sex objects is nothing new, of course.)įrom the start, she gets some really astonishingly awesome, character defining lines. She’s both a sexual character and a sex object at the same time, which is… well, sort of rare, in video games at least. For a character that’s presented as nothing more than tits and ass in the marketing, Bayonetta herself seems to have a very different idea of her role and her sense of self. Much as I try, I can’t write Bayonetta off completely. Somehow, I find myself feeling charitable towards her. And yes, she’s frequently seen as nothing but tits and ass, as the marketing for her game is shameless, off-putting to me, and aimed squarely at straight men. She should lie in the same heap of rejects to which I relegated Scarlet Blade, and other indifferent games that use women as sex objects to sell themselves. ![]() Yes, she’s doing a boobs and butt pose there, and subsequently twisting her body into a shape that contortionists would not attempt without outside assistance. Yes, she shoots people with the guns built into the heels of her shoes. This, for all you non-gamer people, is Bayonetta. So, I’ve mentioned She With the Improbable Shoes before, but let’s talk about her in depth.
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