[Snowflakian]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blade Raider

If you expect people to read your full posts, please stop writing essays. Only relevant thing you said in all of that was the line about the all rider kick, which I will give you. The rest is superfluous.

Even though the OOO/Den-O movie is kind of an Alternate Universe after the time travel, I'll still give it to you since the movie seems to consider every character to be the originals rather than the AU versions. Decade is still a bunch of AU nonsense though.

PS Tackle's design is meant to be girly/sexy for the 70's. That means showing legs. It's not suppose to make since. Cutie Honey is the same, the design just doesn't objectify the legs (rather her whole body since Cutie Honey is nude a lot).

So Tackle is a Rider.

Don't really care what you think about how I write posts as I did bring up many counterpoints to your 70s argument and explained why BFJ's Miss America has the design she has which even the series itself tells you that. I also prefer being informative for anyone else that decides to visit the forums, and may be interested in joining, or become interested on reading up on characters instead of a quick two lines or adhd style clapback that's inane & forgettable anyway.

By bringing up the objectification point though you're also admitting then it is sexist reasons derived for the choices, well, in your opinion at least as the original design notes on Tackle have never been fully discussed from the creators. As I said, the only origin for her character that we are aware of from a creative standpoint was a little girl writing a letter in to the producers. (According to the wikis at least, but it's not the first time I've heard that story either.) So directly making her a "sexy fighter" seems counter productive to what the original driving intent was of her character creation. Or if you need that simplified: "You're assuming." Toei never did that directly to their Sentai brand of the time outside of Miss America which has history connotations of her design for influence and the homage she is to a classic Marvel character, which makes her an exception to and not the rule. So why they did that to Tackle does raise questions, but also has many possibilities on why outside of 'objectification' or trying to make her 'sexy.' So it is a fair question to ask and wonder about why as well as not assume their reasoning for. This was a kid's show after all. You know, the whole reason original Amazon was cancelled because of too much gore violence in a kids show and all that. So directly making a female character with a sexist design to have her legs objectified, wouldn't make logical sense to the end goal of her concept of letting girls see themselves in her.

Cutie Honey is also a little more complicated than that. Original Cutie Honey is a bit more on self-mockery of the innate sexist attitudes and hypocrisies of taboos with an emphasis of dressing up/the right clothes for any occasion and much more depth than that. It wasn't intended as one of his erotica type series, that came later with the OVAs. Original Go Nagai work is cheeky like that with how he handled tropes and themes. Then we get to the 80s OVA one that's a bit, well complicated doesn't even begin to cover it. But the original artistic intent is still moderately there through 80s grit(and potentially a venting point for the flack one of his previous series got from Parent groups). Plus we are also talking about Japan where the focus of objectification and views of human anatomy are a bit different than American or even European views. And we are also talking about the same guy that created properties like Devilman, and similar other theme inverted properties, including his theme inversion to the giant robo genre that eventually gave us Gundam and the various Mecha types we know today.

Most modern Magical girls in general have a basis from the typical school girl uniform and prettying that up so to speak. In other areas it's because of dresses and the royalty connotations of that to make them princess warriors. The outfits vary per series and story. Like original Cure Black has an emphasis more towards sports attire with also armor pads and lacrosse shin guards because of how far up her leggings go and as bulkier cylindrical style socks with knee pad like hearts, instead of being as poofy and sloped as Cure White's that's more billowy noble science princess with tassels on her knee high socks. Sailor Moon is for the regal aspect as well as intermingling the sailor style school girl uniforms of the time. Magic Knight Rayearth is their actual school girl uniforms that they were pulled into the Rayearth world while wearing. And the list goes on and on for Magical Girls and why the outfits vary per the story it's based on and the character attributes themselves. In essence for most, the idea was to say "Pretty can be bad ass." Same thing Cutie Honey focuses on. That you can be or do anything(as each outfit change also gave her the skills needed for whichever she became). The sexualizing of that is a different issue entirely. The origin of the Magical Girl genre itself is in attacking forced gender roles, and that includes attire. You can see that in many series still like Revolutionary Girl with its original basis coming from the first intellectual properties of the genre like Princess Knight. So really, even Magical Girls aren't as simple as 'surface level' what it looks like for the choices and has its own rich history associated connected to its own story for reasoning on why. One could even argue many elements of the transformation scenes themselves are about natural body acceptance, and baring down to dress up and express the real inner you or many more metaphors that can be drawn from that as is common in all media forays. While Go Nagai may have been being a bit, well, he's Go Nagai, he has his own history. Cutie Honey is also counted as one of the lead inspirations for many Magical Girl genres that followed. I don't think the creator of Sailor Moon had her intent on giving little boys sexy material by doing transformation scenes and having nudity(in the series itself the biggest scene of this at the end is because of Usagi baring it all to take on evil and fight for her future even as bleak as it may look with her thinking Mamorou is dead from a plane crash). So the aspect of Honey's nudity to her transitions may have served a different reason than what the surface level looks like to most males. Ditto to Rumiko Takahashi with her various series that often had bare breasts or her creation of Lum and her tiger striped bikini. I don't think any of them looked at it and went "gee, let's put sex on tv for little boys to stare at because men love sexy women!" Even Go Nagai in his first major work that featured nudity, pushed emphasis on cute and natural, not on sexiness or sexual overtones. His initial work focused more on the male perception of that and how ignorant it is(which still caused parent groups to throw a fit, but that's normal). Essentially his initial work had an emphasis of "men are horny idiots that'll pervert anything." His work focused more towards that women could appreciate the cuteness of themselves no matter what they wore or didn't.

With how much forethought goes into these choices across all series and art itself really, it does make why Tackle having shorts an interesting question, and yes a funny joke to poke fun at that wasn't looking for a serious answer.

And the answer to that is probably as simple as the fact they are evocative of gym shorts used in many sports. So girls can pretend they've got the strength of Tackle behind them while playing soccer or lacrosse or any other sport that uses those shorts as opposed to the reasoning of "sexy/girly" gender typing. I mean she does have the literal name "Tackle." So it's best not to assume objectification reasons without evidence to support it from the designers own words. We can propose theories, even suggest possibilities, but to say absolutes without actual basis is propagating ignorance and demeans not only the creators, but also the character's intent and internal metaphors.

And PS don't try to take ego shots. Let's keep it civil, and don't try to poke at areas you have no business or right to invade or allude to. We're friendly discussing Rider and Sentai history, as the predominate 4'' lines from Japan with high demand are in those areas. (Besides of course DB/Z/Supers, but we have Shodo for those now.) Which okay yeah, the history of various genres does play into that for the design elements both past and present. And yes, I'm intentionally making this post long because you complained about long posts, but I'm also making it informative. Like I said up above, talking about this stuff used to be a daily thing for me for over a decade and that's not even counting the genre research I've done prior to that before it was readily available on the internet. I'm well read up on this stuff outside of even what the wikis have(though I do use those for refreshers at times). And "Sexy" isn't innately bad either, as it depends on the reasoning behind it and more. It's not clear cut sexy is bad, covered is good. There are a lot of grey areas and other history to take into consideration alongside whatever the metaphors are intentionally pushing. Art is more complicated than black or white reasoning.

Oooh, but you reminded me of an interesting point. Kinda surprised Cutie Honey The Live(series) didn't get the 4'' figure treatment. Or the movie for that matter. They were both more adult aimed. The TV series more so. So you'd think they would have considered that for the fan base because of how Japan's market is typically driven.





@TheArchivist
Speaking of, how do the Drossel minis compare to hasbro 3.75''-4''? I've never had a chance to get one to see. I know the normal figmas are too big.

There are also 4'' Sailor Moon and Magic Knight Rayearth figures too. I think I might still have the Rayearth ones somewhere. They have no leg articulation though. Only arm articulation. And I think there is a 4'' microman Devilman and Lady that was made. Not sure. I know they did the various Casshern versions.

No clue on other metal heroes series, but those should get covered eventually.