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The Squad, with about four liters of estrogen added, and little to no loss in testosterone. Alternately, the Lovely Angels after a recruitment drive.
The Amazon Brigade is an elite fighting unit, often the best of the best or damn near close to it, that is composed entirely of women. This being about fiction, they're usually at least moderately attractive. Naturally, they should never be underestimated, for they can and will kick your ass, potentially easily.
Common with Humongous Mecha anime, and Science Fiction in general, especially if they use fightercraft in their universe. Occasionally show up in Fantasy works as well, usually as the personal guard of a wealthy and powerful ruler.
In a Bishoujo series, they are probably the main characters, their existence in this case due to the Pink Bishoujo Ghetto policy. May include The One Guy for good measure.
Not to be confused with Estrogen Brigade.
Contrast The Smurfette Principle. If the Brigade is composed of Mauve Shirts, they are also known as The Shrike Team.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- The AMP in Silent Moebius
- The Shrike Team in Mobile Suit Victory Gundam
- The three test pilots for the Astray mobile suits in Gundam SEED.
- The
Troye Treue (German for "loyalty") Unit in Super Robot Wars Original Generation and it's not just "coincidence" like many others; the unit is, for some reason, for females only.
- Sailor Moon and the Sailor Senshi.
- As well as many of their villains. The Four Sisters, The Witches-5, the Amazoness Quartet (because the Amazon Trio were actually guys), and the Sailor Animates.
- The titular Otome of Mai-Otome, although there is a Techno Babble explanation for their powers being exclusive to female virgins. While an Otome usually works alone, doing her Master's bidding, the Five Columns (who have no Master) are an actual team.
- Much of the Gall Force OVA series, since the original series revolved around a One Gender Race.
- The Build Angels from Koutetsushin Jeeg, a Revival of Go Nagai's Kotetsu Jeeg.
- The crew of the Nirvana and its predecessor in Vandread, by necessity.
- The entirety of the alien group trying to capture C-ko in Project A Ko ("Now call off your men!" "Men?").
- The Knight Sabers in Bubblegum Crisis.
- Team Warrior from the various incarnations of the Burn Up anime franchise.
- Fanon in regard to the Dirty Pair frequently implies, for reasons we can only guess at, that the entirety of the 3.W.A.'s field-agent personnel are female.
- Integra, Accela, Sylvia and Celica make up the R.U.C.'s PROCEED squad in Solty Rei.
- Simoun (They are technically not female, being "maidens" lacking a permanent sex, but they look the part.)
- The three female pilots on the Nadesico worked as an Amazon Brigade (Amazon Flight, really) before joining the crew, and usually act as a unit while Akito or Akatsuki are off doing their own thing during the series. The ship's bridge crew is a couple of non-commissioned adjutants and one girly XO away from this trope as well.
- The team of robotic killer loligoth maids in Coyote Ragtime Show. A lot more awesome than it sounds.
- The Silver Eyed Witches of Claymore are all female. Infusing Yoma flesh into guys... did not work out.
- Hitomi Landsknecht's unit in ICE. Well, she doesn't have much choice, ever since all men of Earth died out...
- Even though they were hastily formed, the titular android Sentai Koi Koi 7 (there are only six members, though...), fulfill this trope.
- The 6th Mobile Division of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS definitely qualifies, as an archetypal military unit in a Pink Bishoujo Ghetto (although they do have two guys and a dog-boy, technically.)
- The Bridge Bunnies aboard the Macross.
- The 501st Joint Fighter Wing, a.k.a. the Strike Witches from the show of the same name.
- The Valkyrie Team on the Brittanian side in Code Geass, although they didn't get much screentime before Kallen killed them.
- The main characters of Burst Angel form one of these.
- Pretty Cure is always either this or Lovely Angels. Futari Wa Pretty Cure Splash Star, notably, featured a four-woman Amazon Brigade made of two pairs of Lovely Angels.
- All these examples, and not a single mention of the Delmo Corps from Agent Aika?!
- Halibel from Bleach has an all-female Fracción. They almost kill Matsumoto, Hinamori and Hisagi, but are obliterated by Yamamoto. Halibel is currently fighting Hitsugaya
- The Galaxy Railways has the all-female Spica Platoon.
- Mahou Sensei Negima has the War Maiden Brigade of the Ariadne Magic Knights in the Magic World.
- Negi's Nakama also applies, especially in both anime series, where Kotaro doesn't exist.
- Fate's all-female group of partners also counts.
- Simeon's girl squadron in NEEDLESS, consisting of Setsuna, Mio and Kuchinashi. Don't be fooled by their cuteness.
- The Red Tails Gang from Beelzebub are an all female gang of Delinquents known as the strongest ladies of Kanto, and for good reason too! Their leader Kunieda Aoi, nicknamed the Queen, is responsible for keeping the men's "grubby hands" of the other girls. Their weapons range from guns, to baseball bats, to bokken.
- The Uruha Oto from Flame Of Recca.
Comic Books
- Birds Of Prey.
- A villainous example: Darkseid's Female Furies in the DC Universe.
- Any armed group by default in Y The Last Man. The best example is probably the IDF special forces led by Alter; the actual Daughters of the Amazon are fairly disorganized and gang-like.
- Why, the Amazons, of course.
- Actually, the buggers were more like mooks.
- And their Alternate Company Equivalent, the Coda warriors of Wildstorm Comics.
- A short-lived offshoot of Marvel's Avengers, the Lady Liberators; but they were secretly being manipulated by the Enchantress.
- Another Marvel group, the Femizons, from a future militant Lady Land society. When that timeline was erased, a present-day misandrist named Superia tries to create her own Femizons a few centuries early by gathering supervillainesses and female Mad Scientists to repopulate the world, right after she sterilizes everyone else, of course.
- The Grapplers were super-strong wrestler/criminals. Uh, okay.
- Femforce from AC Comics, which seems to exist mainly as an outlet for its creators' and readers' fetishes.
- The Sisterhood of Steel, from the comic of the same name.
- The Black Panther's Royal Guards, the Dora Milaje.
- The Star Sapphire Corps from Green Lantern.
- The recently formed Sisterhood of Mutants in X-Men
- The Black Dahlias from The Order, who Veda described as "Tim Burton sponsors a women's golf team."
Film
- Missy, Chrissy, Justice and Sissy in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Of course, they're more a band of sassy jewel thieves.
- Fembots attack!
- In Star Wars, we have the Mistryl Shadow Guard, a group of whip-wielding mercenaries from doomed civilization.
- Also in the EU, the Hapes Consortium, an interstellar cluster of Amazons whose (formidable) army and navy was solely composed of females.
- Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction talks about a TV pilot she shot called Fox Force Five. Her character's specialty was knives.
- Angel's Revenge, a movie lampooned on MST3K, was Quentin Tarantino's inspiration for this.
- Also, in Kill Bill, 3/5 of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad is female.
- Pussy Galore's Flying Circus from the James Bond film Goldfinger.
- Mrs. Smith's agency in Mr And Mrs Smith.
- The St. Trinian's field hockey team.
- The title group in D.E.B.S.
Literature
- In Marion Zimmer Bradley's retelling of The Iliad from the perspective of Kassandra, we have...well, the real Amazons, insofar as they can be called real. By the end of the book, they more or less die out, logical with the feminist bent of the novel and the way that the cult of patriarchy was sweeping the nation.
- The Fish-Speakers in God-Emperor of Dune. Later, the Honored Maitres appear in Heretics of Dune. Although it's not their main purpose, when necessary the Bene Gesserit can fight with nearly superhuman capability. Justified in the first case by Leto II's belief that the maternal instinct would prevent the Fish-Speakers losing themselves to bloodlust and quests for power.
- The Maidens of the Spear and Elayne's personal bodyguard in the Wheel Of Time books.
- The Discworld novel Monstrous Regiment features a squad consisting entirely of Sweet Polly Olivers.
- Although the first clue is right there in the title: John Knox once wrote a pamphlet called "The First Blast Of The Trumpet Against The Monstrous Regiment Of Women."
- The protagonist of The Assassins Of Tamurin is recruited for a secret organization of this type.
- Isaac Asimov's short story "Shah Guido G." features an all-female police force known as the Waves. However this really had nothing to do with the plot, being part of a clumsy and long-drawn-out build up to a punning punchline.
- In the Larry Niven novel The Integral Trees, the Triune Squads are made up of women who refuse to marry, women who love women, or those who are "women" by courtesy only. They are sent to patrol the Trunk, a hazardous and seemingly pointless duty, to make up for not doing their "real" duty to the tribe by providing children.
- The Chicks In Chainmail comedy-fantasy anthology series has numerous stories of all-female military units and warrior societies; along with stories of Sweet Polly Oliver, the lone Action Girl, Little Miss Badass, or Mama Bear, with nary a Mary Sue or Red Sonja in sight— unless it's funny, of course.
- In The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge Special Corps agent James Bolivar "Slippery Jim" DiGriz lands on a planet once run by women (until they were usurped by a male revolutionary party working in cahoots with galactic invaders). He teams up with the resistance – former members of the military who are of course fit, shapely young amazons – much to the annoyance of Jim's lethally-armed and dangerous wife.
- The shrykes from The Edge Chronicles. Not quite a One Gender Race, but the ladies hold the upper hand in... well, everything.
- The Longwing dragon captains in the Temeraire series could be a sort of Amazon Brigade—Longwings almost exclusively select female captains (it is implied that on occasion one will accept a male grudgingly, but none have been shown yet).
- Percy Jackson And The Olympians has the hunters of Artemis, a group of girls that travel with the goddess Artemis and are allowed to live immortally without aging as long as they remain maidens for ever. They happen to be extremely handy with a bow, and are stong fighters all around.
- The Queens' Wing can be a pretty effective Thread-fighting force in the Pern novels, particularly once they caught on to how easily a queen dragon can boss around any other color.
Theatre
- You better not forget those flying horse-riding shieldmaidens in the winged helmets from Die Walküre.
Live Action TV
- The three main members of Charlie's Angels, in either the TV series or the movies.
- Another villainous example: The Hanarangers of Kakuranger
- The Slayers after season 7 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
- A recent episode of Stargate Atlantis featured an Amazon Brigade as most of the muscle in the episode.
- Star Trek Enterprise was the first to reveal that the Orion women, far from being the slaves portrayed in the other series, actually control their civilization with a male-attracting pheromone that gives other women headaches. The only one unaffected by them is Tripp
Tabletop Games
- The Sisters of Battle in Warhammer 40000, as pictured above, a Church Militant force consisting largely of Girls with Psycho Weapons. They aren't that elite too, having uninspiring stats for units that are wearing powered armour. In a slight subversion, many of them are unattractive, particularly the higher ups (battle in the 41st milennium does horrors for your complexion... and facial structure... and general health, really). The setting's Howling Banshees are also examples... mostly.
- This editor would like to point out to the above that the illustration for this trope - indeed, most pictures that he's seen of the SOBs - doesn't really match the above description in terms of fugliness.
- It's art. You sure you want accurate depictions of what goes on in this setting? The Chaos books are bad enough as it is...
- Also, The fighters and gangs of House Escher in Necromunda. The house itself is nearly a One Gender Race, being that the males are all rather stunted.
- From the fantasy counter-part, the Witch Elves certainly qualify, being all-female, attractive, chain-mail bikini wearing, deadly fighters. Of course the fact that they are also completely insane genocidal drug-fuelled maniacs is just the icing on the cake.
- Even in a world with The Masquerade running full steam (replete with conspiratorial MIBs), Mina Devlin calling her shocktroops the "Wichita Witches" raised a few eyebrows. Of course, only women need apply.
- Rifts Free Quebec has mastered the creation of the uber-powerful Glitter Boy powered armour. Female pilots lobbied for years to get their own distinctive style of armour. Enter the Glitter Girl recon/special forces unit. More dangerous than the male variant due to the pilots being older and more experienced. Notable squads inclued the Harlots, the Harpies, the Vixens, and the Riot Girls.
- And don't forget the Blind Warrior Women, who look simply irresistible.
- And the city of Manoa in South America, with literal Amazon brigades.
- Talislanta has the Danuvian warrior-women.
- Werewolf: the Apocalypse had the Black Furies, a tribe made up entirely of female Garou who worshipped Artemis as an aspect of Gaia. Of course they'd associate with men for production of new children, but male offspring were passed on to other tribes.
- The Sisters of Mercy from the Feng Shui supplement "Glimpse of the Abyss" are a convent of Nuns With Guns based in the Netherworld who hunt down and kill those whom their Mother Superior deems to be deserving of the respite of death from the suffering the Sisters believe that life is. Of course, those whose names end up on the Rolls of Mercy and are targeted for "deliverance" often aren't so keen on dying. Also from "Glimpse of the Abyss" are the Shiva Squadron, a band of distimed eight-armed warrior women who have made it their mission to hunt demons.
- Legend Of The Five Rings has two examples in the matriarcal Utaku and Matsu families. The Utaku family (formerly known as the Otaku family) has the Shiotome, or Battle Maidens, an elite unit of shock troops that ride into battle on horses the size of Clydesdales. The Matsu family's elite Lion's Pride is an all-female unit of samurai women that specializes in finding and killing the enemy general and his command staff.
- Exalted has the Brides of Ahlat, the Southern God of War. Completely female, sworn to remain virgins, and symbolically wed to Ahlat himself. They're consider to be Elite troops and thus not to be messed with.
- Exalted also has the Tya, a group of women in the West who reject the usual gender roles for the region to take on Men's. They are treated in society more as men than women, actually.
- In 2nd Edition Dungeons And Dragons, several of the "Complete Class" supplements included an Amazon character kit.
- Mage Knight included a subset of Amazon figures in one of its more Steam Punk factions, the Black Powder Rebels. They weren't necessarily more powerful than any other group or faction (except for the Amazon Draconum, which was borderline broken.)
Video Games
- The various incarnations of Team England (later simply renamed the "Women's Team") in The King Of Fighters.
- The Night Elf Sentinels in Warcraft take it one step further by having their entire military composed of women. The male elves pursue study and druidism, and act only as support units in-game.
- In Return To Castle Wolfenstein the SS has an all-female force called the Elite Guard.
- In Spellforce, all elven units are female.
- Except Titans, who are ents. Apparently their treemen aren't different.
- Pegasus Knight armies (in most cases) in the various Fire Emblem games.
- The Knives of Artemis from City Of Heroes.
- In Final Fantasy IX, Alexandria's army consists almost entirely of women. The only males are the Knights of Pluto, a squad consisting of a mere 9 men, including playable character Steiner, who serves as their captain.
- The military of the city of Toroia in Final Fantasy IV likewise consisted entirely of women.
- Metal Gear Solid 4 has two Amazon Brigades:
- The Gerudo have all-female fighting forces - mostly because bar Ganondorf their entire race is nothing but women.
- Xenogears has Dominia's all-girl robot pilot squad.
- Final Fantasy X 2. Your party is one.
- Some players (like me) try to get one of these going in any game that gives a party, whether one you fill with your own rolled characters (Wasteland), or with a cast (Final Fantasy XII. Some games make this easier than others.
- Luna's subordinates in Soul Calibur 3's Chronicles of The Sword (while there name is never stated, one of the chapter name implies they are the "Guardians of the Moon") are 4 elementally themed female minions (Luna is obviously female as well).
- They're called the Klessirpemdo. Lupi (Fires of Hell), Heal-Do (Water of Origin), Elua (Wind of Creation) and Aege (Earth of Foundation), plus their leader Luna who is probably meant to be Spirit/Aether or something.
- Any unit led by a female in Yggdra Union.
- Unreal II: The Awakening features such a brigade in the form of all-female "mercenary" cyborg squadrons, the game's toughest Mooks. An in-game dialogue maintains that females are naturally ruthless and that that has been the reason behind the creation of these squadrons.
- Diablo II starts the player out in the Rogues' camp (a reference to the female-only Rogue class from original Diablo). Everyone permanently living there is female, from the blacksmith Charsi to the matronly high priestess Akara to the guard captain Kashya. They're staying in the camp because they had been evicted from their monastery after Diablo's minions took over and mind-controlled half their numbers, whom you fight throughout Act I, and who are also all female.
- The Blood Roses, an order of female knights, in the PC adventure game Siege of Avalon.
- The Aeon military in Supreme Commander comes very close-game background states that Aeon women are just plain better at battlefield command, with very few males qualifying for command. Possibly a coincidence, but the foremost commanders of the UEF and Cybrans are women as well.
- Mass Effect - The Asari race is entirely female (but capable of procreating with either sex of ANY species), as such the Asari huntresses function as the military units. Due to the extreme long age of the Asari (they live longer than a thousand years) Huntresses train for a hundred years before they go on active duty. They function more as ninja and commandos rather than a straight up army. As such it isn't a very large group, though all Asari have Biotics (the ME universe's equivalent of psychic powers). The warrior Turian race (where military service is the entire society and military service is directly responsible for citizenship) have a saying, "The Asari huntresses are the best warriors in the galaxy. It's a good thing there aren't that many of them".
- Clan Ritz from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance consists of all vieras and Ritz.
- Prima Donna from Final Fantasy Tactics A 2 has 2 vieras and 2 grias, and all of them are female.
Webcomics
- In El Goonish Shive, Ellen, Grace, and Nanase form a temporary Amazon Brigade during the Painted Black arc.
- The entirety of Earth's military in Angels 2200. (A plague having wiped out most of the male population, there are no adult males on Earth or most of Earth's colonies.)
- The Amazons of Chasing The Sunset. Their foremothers were ordinary women who took up combat to save themselves: by the time we meet them in the comic, they are blue-skinned warriors who reproduce asexually.
- An internet offshoot of Marvel UK's Warheads series, Loose Cannons
 tells the tale of an experimental all-female group of Warheads (paramilitary units sent through spacetime wormholes to gather technology and magical artifacts for the Corrupt Corporate Executive leaders of the sinister MysTech; think Stargate SG-1 as mercenary raiders hired by a cabal of evil sorcerers) called the Virago Troop— who bring back more than they bargain for from an After The End future.
- Haven's Guard in Earthsong form an Amazon Brigade, including The One Guy, Zaebos.
- Jewel Vixens
- The Amazons of Amazoness! To be expected, since their whole population is female.
- Outsider has the Loroi, a species of space elves with an all-female military. Justified, since only one in eight Loroi are born male, which they consider a basic adaptation for a warrior species, since it allows them to create some massive population booms where necessary, or avoid overpopulation by restricting access to males.
- In Baldurs Gate II: Throne Of Bhaal, one of the three guardians for the final seal is an entirely female group composed of Y'tossi (a marilith), Nalmissra (a succubus), The Hive Mother (a beholder), Amerilis Zauvwir (a drow cleric), The Huntress (an archer) and Xei Win Toh (presumably a kensai).
- In Erfworld, the Archons of Charlescomm. Yes, that makes them Charlie's Archons.
Western Animation
Real Life
- The 40-woman Amazonian Guard◊ of Muammar al-Gaddafi (may his spellings be many)
- Also known as the Green Nuns.
- Not to mention the famous Dahomey Amazons, or Mino, who composed a third of the Dahomeyan Army in the 19th Century. Fanatically dedicated and intensively trained, they were nearly unbeatable for three and a half centuries, until the invention of the machine gun made industry more important in war than bravery.
- Not sure if this one is Literature or Real Life or if this really counts as an Amazon Brigade since they were never recorded as seeing combat; When military genius Sun Tzu was trying to sell the King of Wu on hiring him as an advisor, the King put a group of his concubines under Sun's command to train as a test of his skill. He split them into two teams, assigned each team a captain (His Nibs' two favorite concubines) and explained the commands, but they laughed and didn't take it seriously. So he tried again, repeating the commands and explaining what they mean. Still nothing but giggles. So he beheaded the two team captains. The ladies immediately obeyed every command and ran through every drill perfectly. When the King complained at losing his lady loves, Sun Tzu snarked in his face about the costs of real warfare. He got hired anyway. (Technically, they lost members in action, while under military command, so they might be considered an Amazon Brigade)
- If we're counting nonhumans, bees. The nonbreeding female workers sacrifice their lives with a sting, so that the vital Queen and her male consorts can survive.
- Bees don't die if they sting other insects. But if they sting mammals (humans frex), their sting sort of sticks in the skin, they can't pull it out again, and thus have to die.
- Some aphids have a similar system to bees, in which a single female aphid gives birth to dozens of clones of herself. While a few later produce sons and breed sexually, the majority of the clones are cannon fodder: either actively fending off predators from the colony, or just surrounding the breeders so they'll be eaten in their stead.
- Also, spotted hyenas are Nature's version of this trope.
- There were three all-female combat Soviet Air Force units in World War Two, which together flew a total of 30,000 combat sorties, produced 30 Heroes of the Soviet Union (the highest honour available) and 2 fighter aces. The most famous of these was the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, nicknamed the Night Witches by the Germans. Not only did they fly over 23,000 sorties and is said to have dropped 3,000 tons of bombs, it was also the most highly-decorated unit in the Soviet Air Force at the time, receiving 23 Heroes of the Soviet Union awards. Not only that, they flew horrifically out of date, wood and canvas bi-plane bombers originally constructed for training and crop dusting.
- There were also numerous female Soviet snipers (one, Lyudmila Pavlicenko got 309 confirmed kills before being pulled off the front line and used for propaganda purposes), and occasionally tank crews. Let's also not forget the Israeli armed forces. However, both are cases of desperation in a way; the Soviets mobilized almost totally to repel the Germans, while the Israelis are surrounded by hostile neighbors, against whom they have a demographic disadvantage, having a smaller population and significantly lower birthrate; it's also a heavy-militarized country in general. (Fun fact: If China maintained an armored corps that had the same ratio to the size of the general population as Israel, it would have more than a million tanks.)
- In Iraq there was the Lioness Squad.
Web Original
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