There’s scant grace in Dead or Alive, a 23-year-old fighting game series which now languishes in quarantine from the wider fighting game community.
Dead or Alive 6 is one of the two fighting games that I play these days:
Street Fighter V, released three years ago, is a blockbuster matchmaking game with a busy online multiplayer base.
Dead or Alive 6, released six months ago, is a glitchy wasteland which hosts a peculiar fandom (which now, unfortunately, includes me).
Previously, I’ve written about Street Fighter V as my dominant gaming obsession. But I play Dead or Alive 6, too, despite its central perversions (which now, unfortunately, we must discuss.)
There’s great sexual tension in fighting games, which sensationalize — and often sensualize — the combat sports which inspire their ensemble characterizations. Crucially, and unlike most combat sports, fighting games permit male fighters and female fighters to mingle in competition.
These games are not realistic. To describe the character designs in Dead or Alive 6 or Street Fighter V as fanciful would be stating the obvious about a video game.
In Street Fighter V, Rainbow Mika, a wrestler, introduces herself underboob-first, and she finishes matches with an aerial ass attack. The Street Fighter V character who offers the most costume options for the player to choose, Chun-Li, can wear Crocs and underwear (though the in-game store describes them as “pajamas”) into combat. Even the smallest woman, Ibuki, a ninja, fills a D cup.
Thus, the concern of today’s newsletter emerges.
The men in Street Fighter V are no more or less realistic than the women. Dhalsim is a teleporting yogi who breathes fire. Zangief is a bodybuilder cosplaying as a wrestler. Abigail is a hulking figure so top-heavy as to suggest his own physical impossibility given gravity’s constraints.
The fighters in Street Fighter V are all combat athletes, e.g., boxers, who are typically much leaner than the most popular fictionalized depictions, e.g., Street Fighter, tend to suggest.
Balrog, a boxer, resembles a bodybuilder. So, too, does Sylvester Stallone in Rocky. In truth, most boxers are lean fighters who train to avoid developing such a stocky and inefficient physique.
For players who’ve never studied a combat sport, Capcom might struggle to communicate the physical supremacy of Street Fighter characters in any realistic sense. So the character designers exaggerate size and virility as a universal shorthand.
Capcom gives Chun-Li big anime titties to entice perverts, for sure, but Capcom also gives Chun-Li big anime titties to make Chun-Li large.
After all, Chun-Li’s big anime titties are drawn in proportion to her rocky arms and, iconically, her massive legs.
Obviously, Capcom could stand to design a strong woman whose powerful thighs should prove impressive enough. But Capcom thrives by a simple mantra in designing these characters: the bigger, the better.
Even Ibuki has ginormous hands and feet for the aforementioned reasons.
Despite its scrawnier female characters, Dead or Alive, developed by Koei Tecmo, forces “the bigger, the better” to top-heavy extremes.
The Millennials who don’t even play fighting games might at least recognize Dead or Alive in its most scandalous form, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, an early Xbox game as bouncy as its title suggests.
In Dead or Alive, Koei Tecmo has mastered “jiggle physics,” the term referring to bust movement in games where the designers render a character’s breasts with distinct prominence in movement.
In the 1990s, SNK pioneered “jiggle physics” in Fatal Fury 2, a popular arcade fighting game. In the 2010s, as photorealism peaks in character modeling, “jiggle physics” have peaked in absurdity.
There’s “jiggle physics” in Street Fighter, too; there’s “jiggle physics” everywhere a woman might need to move in a Capcom game.
Capcom, which publishes Street Fighter, also publishes the Resident Evil games. The first Resident Evil remake, released in 2002, updates the protagonist, Jill Valentine, with gratuitous jiggling as she jogs through the Spencer Mansion.
The Resident Evil always games have always laundered b-horror tropes and porn-grade characterization, and so of course the Resident Evil remake underscored its graphical improvements over the original PlayStation game by juggling Jill Valentine’s tits.
There are so many games dedicating so much attention to so much cleavage.
But the “jiggle physics” in Dead or Alive are not just some odd quality among many other qualities which, together, distinguish a game. The “jiggle physics” in Dead or Alive are the signature design principle in “Dead or Alive,” and many Dead or Alive players will defend “jiggle physics” unto death.
It’s tough to discuss jiggle physics, in general, without discussing Dead or Alive, the video game series which, more than any other video game series, has rendered “fanservice,” otherwise a phenomenon within genres, as a genre unto itself.
If Street Fighter exaggerates breasts, among other appendages, in order to exaggerate physical power, then Dead or Alive exaggerates breasts, with a fetishist’s particularity, in order to debase its female fighters.
No, I’m not here to scandalize about sexuality, pornography, objectification, etc. I believe sexuality and video games are, in many cases, fun. With its technical excellence, Dead or Alive elevates a certain sexuality — anime sexuality — which I regard with lifelong fascination.
I used to read doujinshi, and I still do.
To the game’s credit, Dead or Alive 6 does present vivid and interesting athletic movement. The game’s slow-mo, “break blow” animations are more tactile and exquisite than the “critical arts” animations in Street Fighter V.
But there’s more to sexual tension than simply staring at cartoon breasts, and, ideally, there’s more to fighting game characters than their heightened sex appeal.
In Street Fighter V, Chun-Li may be cheesecake, but she’s also a strong character who requires great technical proficiency to deploy her gracefully. If you play Chun-Li, you’re playing by Chun-Li’s rules, and Chun-Li’s rules are tough, but rewarding.
In Dead or Alive 6, the ditzy college student, Honoka, ranks among the weakest fighters in a game easily ridiculed, on technical merits, as brain-dead guesswork and button-mashing for amateurs.
It’s a harsh characterization cultivated, in small part, by unsympathetic critics. But the reputation owes, in large part, to how shamelessly the Dead or Alive apologists trivialize the characters in their own game.
e.g., Honoka, a.k.a., “Honkers.”
Honoka suffers from limited options in combat and unbalanced design with regard to the other fighters in the game.
But Honoka ranks among the most popular Dead or Alive 6 fighters in online multiplayer, if only because her character design renders her attractive, her buttons be damned.
Honoka players can command the largest breasts and, given her animations and her costumes, the widest variety of panty shots in the game.
The women in Dead or Alive 6 aren’t all so absurd as Honoka.
Take Mila, the MMA fighter: she’s the exceptional case of a fighting game character whose physical stature does realistically agree with her fighting style. She’s slim from top to bottom, she wears athletic shorts and a sports bra.
If Mila wins a match, she strikes a fighting stance but winks at the camera. She’s sexy without being a sex doll. She’s hot, but she’s not hot in the all-or-nothing sense which would totally determine a pervert’s interest in playing her.
The nuances involved in being hot without being a sex pillow are lost on many players within Dead or Alive fandom, who interpret the developer’s modest attempts to rein in the post-volleyball excesses as a capitulation to feminists who don’t even play these games.
In Dead or Alive 6, Koei Tecmo hasn’t even discouraged the Dead or Alive player’s horniest pastimes: zooming down-blouse, stuffing the girls into bikinis, and modding female characters from other franchises into these lewd designs.
There’s Marie Rose reimagined as the Resident Evil 4 character, Ashley Graham. There’s Kasumi and Hitomi both reimagined as the Final Fantasy VII character, Tifa Lockhart. There’s Honoka reimagined as the Final Fantasy VIII character, Selphie Tilmitt. There’s also Honoka reimagined as Honoka, but nude.
In related news, Square Enix has demoted Tifa Lockhart from K cup to F cup in the forthcoming Final Fantasy VII remake. Of course, Gamergate’s apostles cite the revision as yet another capitulation to feminism.
The reasoning here reveals some contempt for women: Square Enix reduced a character’s breast size and thus, necessarily, rendered her less attractive, less authentic, less interesting.
But the passion which animates the reasoning reveals some contempt for everyone else: Square Enix means to reconsider who else, if not just some horny boys, should ideally be playing these games and idolizing these characters.
The backlash never ends.
There’s got to be a better way to advocate for the vivid, absurdist sexuality in many Japanese video games without throwing one’s lot in with Honkers. The desire to see CGI boobs glistening at the CGI beach shouldn’t require fans to regard female characters, so contemptuously, as nothing but pretext for jiggle physics.
I play Kolin and Poison in Street Fighter V, I play Orisa and D.Va in Overwatch, I prefer Tina in Dead or Alive 6, I prefer Hibana and Dokkaebi on offense in Rainbow Six Siege.
In ensemble games, I pick women so often, and these are video game women, so, of course, they’re designed to be attractive. So I can’t help but to compare my reasons for picking women with the reasons a right-wing Honoka main might offer.
I love Poison’s whole sadomasochism schtick; I love lashing out with her whip.
I love Dokkaebi’s characterization as a high-tech troll; I love hacking the defending team’s phones.
I love Tina’s wrestling holds; I love her stupid cowboy dance.
Frankly, I can admit to some childish attraction, to some great degree, in many cases, e.g., in choosing Kolin, the sexy Russian assassin whose wonky defense requires something resembling long-term romantic commitment to master.
Alternatively, I’d say learning Kolin is my way to moderate the masculine flavors in a genre which I might otherwise avoid. I’d say the same about the women in Rainbow Six Siege, the only competitive first-person shooter that I’ve ever played with any real discipline.
There’s nothing so moderate or complex about the women, apart from Mila, in Dead or Alive 6.
There are, however, those “break blow” sequences where a fighter throws a long headshot, and the opponent’s head hurls backward in slow-motion. In these climactic moments, I struggle to process my delight — especially when I’m the character reeling — in the camera’s luxurious focus.
Note the slightest jiggle in Jann Lee’s cheek.