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alt title(s): Breast Plate
"Why would they give her such skimpy armor that can only protect such a small portion of her body?" "How would I know? Maybe those are the only parts of her that are vulnerable!" — some aliens, Robotech
Armor worn by female characters in medieval settings is implausibly designed to bare and/or flatter their secondary sexual characteristics, often voiding its protective qualities. A big patch of cleavage over your heart is like a beacon for every archer in the kingdom. For the arrows.
Oftentimes the armor seems perfectly workable except for one area, as in a female warrior decked out with heavy boots, a chest plate, shoulder pads and gauntlets. All she has from the bottom of her ribcage to her knees is a pair of lambskin panties.
Female magic wielders are not immune, either. They never wear armor, but the dresses they wear into battle seem more appropriate to Frederick's of Hollywood than the Forest of Sherwood, especially if they're a vamp as well.
Variants:
- A metal coconut bra.
- Leather fetish gear with metal studding.
- A literal Chainmail Bikini.
- Shaped and polished breastplate that mirrors the anatomy it protects (Historically, Greeks and Romans often did this for male armor, but it would cover the entire chest and back).
- Relatively realistic armor, with a sizable flash of cleavage.
- Armored spike-heel gogo boots on otherwise bare legs.
- Chain Mail that fits snugger than spandex, showing off every body detail. Men are found wearing this too. Essentially Spy Catsuit with extra form-accentuating facture layer on top, and the only partially justified variant.
If played for laughs, it's usually "justified" by... ahem... distraction bonus. Though assigning blame to munchkins beyond Fourth Wall works just as well.
Form Fitting Wardrobe is the Super Trope for this.
See Stripperiffic, Fanservice.
Almost the exact opposite of Twenty Four Hour Armor. And not much of a concern, protection-wise, if Armour Is Useless.
It is unclear whether the amount of cleavage is proportional...
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- .hack// gives an interesting variation to this trope: both male and female swordfighter classes can go very light on actual armor (Bear and Orca famously sport only a shoulder guard, man-skirt, and boots, and are covered more in ink than in clothing). Wavemasters, the mages, are typically fully covered in robes or dresses, while other classes fall somewhere in between - comfortable clothes that bare the chest, navel, a low neckline, or whatnot.
- An odd exception to the rule is Hokuto, a Wavemaster that wears skimpy robes. It raises the possibility that the Heavy Blades could cover up if they so wished.
- An application of Fridge Logic takes this one step further. In the games, Heavy Blades are able to wear any kind of armor there is — from the lightest armor, the robes (for Wavemasters), to the heaviest armor. Usually when encountered in-game, the Heavy Blade is wearing the heavy armor, so one must wonder just how effective this armor is, even if equipping any given armor seems to do nothing to the character's model itself.
- All of this could be justified of course, since .Hack portrays exactly the kind of game where this trope is played straight. Realistic armor in this case would have seemed very unrealistic.
- Characters in "The World" have a pre-designed avatar that they create at the start of the game. Armor usually doesn't show up, so your character just appears however they want to appear. Bear and Orca may look mostly naked, but they're still fully equipped with body armor.
- In fact, most characters don't change appearance unless they complete a special event that lets them. Balmung was awarded his wings for defeating The One Sin event, while Orca, his partner, chose to just stay the way he looked. Haseo on the other hand, is granted a new appearance due to special events exclusive only to his specific class.
- Mew Zakuro in Tokyo Mew Mew, despite it being a shoujo series. To balance it out, most of the men that fight wear short-shorts and/or exposed navels like she does.
- Also famously Lampshaded in the first Project A-ko film when B-ko throws off her school uniform to reveal a skimpy armor bikini underneath. She is met with laughter from the student body, and A-ko's famous response "Ain't it cold in that?"
- And then hilariously parodied further and subverted in the second movie, where B-Ko's father wears the exact same suit.
- The Bronze and Silver Cloths of Saint Seiya are suits of armor that cover only a few bits of their owner's anatomy, leaving entire areas (such as the whole abdomen, thighs, face, neck) exposed to the elements. The Cloths of the few female Saints also have very prominent, breast-shaped breastplates which, more often than not, cover only the breasts themselves rather than the chest.
- Played out beautifully in Wolfs Rain. Yes, Jaguara does wear armor that clearly displays her "assets" to anyone she might allow to be in her presence... so guess where Darcia finally skewers her?, granted she was trying to seduce him, but she also anticipated a battle with the wolves.
- Somewhat subverted in Claymore. The warriors wear minimal armor, but their breastplates cover their breasts entirely and their armor is worn over a two-piece full body suit. Of course, most of the Fanservice comes from the Awakened.
- Averted in Berserk: female humans who go into battle (particularly flashback!Casca and Farnese) do so in full armor. Female Apostles... well, they don't need it.
- Possibly averted in Ghost In The Shell. Like many anime female Action Girls, Motoko Kusanagi does get naked, but it's explained straight away that she needs to in order for her "thermoptic camouflage" to work. (Her naked skin bends light waves so she becomes essentially invisible.)
- It's actually a skin-tight suit with all sorts of wiring in it. You can see the seams in a few scenes, and it gets torn in the climactic battle. It's rather similar to the one she wears in Stand Alone Complex on occasion, though why the animators decided to color it with almost exactly the same tone as her skin is a mystery.
- Leina from Queens Blade fits rather snugly into hers. Seems like there would be painful chafing involved.
- Cecily Cambell of The Sacred Blacksmith wears one that's literally shaped to fit her form precisely, including her Most Common Superpower (and it's rather fragile). And apparently she doesn't wear padding underneath.
- Somewhat suberted by the fact that her fellow male knights wear a costume with similar plate coverage.
- Both subverted and played straight in Fairy Tail. Erza's everyday armor covers her torso entirely, however she has a seemingly endless amount of armors that she can transform into that often leave little to the imagination. Then there's the matter of how she transforms into the armor...
- Vaguely, slightly justified in that they are ''magic'' armor, each giving their wearer a specific power-up, and the ones that explicitly up defense do cover her body. Purgatory armor, for example, covered her entire body except for her head in heavy-duty spiked plate armor. Also, she didn't design any of those outfits.
Comics
Films
- In Dungeons And Dragons the movie, the elven ranger sports a breastplate. With nipples.
- Male example: George Clooney's Batsuit, complete with Batnipples. Mmmyeah, that's just what it was missing.
- And yet averted for Batgirl's costume in the same movie.
- Dulcea in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie and Divatox in Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie. Divatox was covered up for the TV series, but Dulcea was a movie-only character.
- The first movie isn't in continuity anyway.
- Probably one of the stranger examples is Susan in the 2008 Prince Caspian film. Right around the beginning of the main battle, she saw fit to change into a chainmail shrug and a leather chestplate. Despite the fact that she has yet to really have any need of it.
- The Angels in the second Charlie's Angels movie wear bullet proof vests similar to the CSI Verse example above, but hey, it's a Charlies Angels movie. They are contractually unable to wear anything unsexy.
- Rare Male Example: "SPARTANS! TONIGHT! WE DINE! AT CHIPPENDALE'S!" Likewise the Classical Greek "heroic nudity" tradition it draws upon.
- Towards the end of the 1981 Arthurian legend film Excalibur the witch Morgana appears to be dressed in nothing more than a sheet metal corset.
Literature
- In the Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan, Elayne's personal bodyguards wear such armor precisely to make people think they are less dangerous than they really are.
- There is some humor on this subject when the City Watch in the Discworld novels starts recruiting female members and needs to find uniforms that fit them. This eventually becomes a running joke as the City Watch starts including members of all shapes and species, so being "in uniform" means wearing whatever parts of a uniform one can.
- Although in this case the breastplates are not actually revealing and skimpy, just modified to accommodate cleavage. (There had been no women in the watch before, and the breastplates were all forged centuries ago to a standard pattern...)
- "The main difficulty that Angua presented was that someone was going to have to take a, well let's be honest, a breastplate down to the armorer and get thim to beat it out really well here and here."
- Previously, the introduction of a barbarian heroine in The Light Fantastic caused the narrator to muse, "Now, there is a tendency at a point like this to look over one's shoulder at the cover artist and start going on at length about leather, thighboots and naked blades," before acknowledging that, like the later female members of the Watch, she was wearing sensible chainmail. (The cover artist in question, Josh Kirby, always drew Discworld heroines to fit the trope anyway, because it's Traditional.) The TV adaptation does invoke the trope not only with the barbarian heroine and an earlier character who Rincewind has to fight (although Liessa Dragonrider actually wears less in the book).
- Well, it'd be humanly impossible for Liessa to be wearing less than she was in the book. Not because of the Moral Guardians, but because the average pet dog is wearing more than Liessa.
- The skinny, flat-chested witch Magrat, on the other hand, borrows the fearsomely bosomy breastplate of the mythical Queen Ynci the Terrible to go and battle elves, and as a result ends up much more fearsome herself.
- There's also Vena the Raven Haired, a Xena pastiche who, like Cohen, is pushing retirement age... and still wears her old form fitting adventuring outfit.
- Let's not forget Sergeant Colon, who fits his Roman-Centurion-esque breastplate like jelly fits a mould, and Detritus, who can't fit all his muscles into his armor (which was originally made for a war elephant).
- In David Eddings's Belgariad, the armor worn by Queen Ce'Nedra is hopelessly impractical. Though in the opposite direction of the other examples here, it is intended to be a purely dramatic costume more than anything, because she never plans to actually see combat herself. Being very short and slightly built, Ce'Nedra is well aware that she'd be fortunate to survive a hand-to-hand fight with a healthy adolescent, let alone trained warriors. She did, however, convince the blacksmith to 'enhance' the breastplate a good deal beyond her actual, petite figure (though not to the ludicrous degree she initially demanded).
- In the Belisarius series of alt-history/time travel novels by David Drake and Eric Flint, Belisarius' wife Antonina finds herself in the position of being the titular commander of a military unit, due to her close friendship with Empress Theodora. Although she originally tries to wear ordinary armor, the weight of it soon makes her switch to a custom-made ceremonial cuirass and accessories instead. Ironically, although Antonina's figure is anything but petite the blacksmith still put in "enhancements", to the point where things bordered on the ridiculous.
- Characters in the series routinely joke about Antonina's "obscene cuirass", to the point where it verges on Lampshade Hanging.
- Lampshaded in John Ringo's ''There Will Be Dragons'' where Bast the Wood Elf, asked why she runs around in a Fur Bikini, asks "Do you know how many men I've killed who froze looking at my tits?"
- The character in a later novel wears a skin-tight suit of "carbon nanotube", effectively impenetrable, and effectively transparent.
- A modern Conan story had Conan teaming up with a woman in a chain-mail bikini who explains that she knows that opponents are going to attack the bare areas and her fighting style is to counter those attacks.
- Azure Bonds subverted this somewhat, the heroine wore a suit of chain mail that exposed her cleavage. However when an enemy went to attack it they found out that it was enchanted chain mail that projected a force field over the 'exposed' area. Not too surprising, as this piece was provided by Vain Sorceress who just could not resist flaunting the body that resembled her own so much. However, in the first book Alias mostly wearing normal chain shirt (despite what the cover would tell you). She was dressed in that one in the very end and only in the third book she starts regularly wear "Cassana's armor". She apparently kept it because with enchantment it was just better than her normal (plate-based) armor and obviously less bulky. Her bodyguard (paladin) complained at how unmodest it is, but gave up after year or so.
- The Dancing Gods trilogy by Jack L. Chalker literally has a magically-enforced law that "weather and climate permitting, all beautiful young women must be scantily clad". This means the female barbarian character must compromise between protection and conforming with the Rules, which have been written into the physical structure of that universe by powerful wizards.
- To make matters worse, all women were constantly scantily clad. After all, to be demurely clad was to state outright that you weren't beautiful, as only non-beautiful women could wear such clothes. Any woman not scantily clad might as well have been wearing an "I am ugly" t-shirt.
- Of course, the whole series is a parody of fantasy tropes, which is why such bizarre things are written into natural law.
- The subject of an entire series of short-story anthologies lampshading and parodying the concept: Chicks in Chainmail, edited by Esther Friesner.
- The Action Girl character in Martin Scott's Thraxas series is always shown wearing a chain mail bikini. Subverted, perhaps, in that her day job is a barmaid and the outfit is intended to get her tips, not protect her in battle.
- Lampshaded in Phyllis Ann Karr's A Night at Two Inns, in which a sensibly dressed warrior woman watches a scuffle between Captain Ersatzs of Conan and Red Sonja, and is appalled by "Sonja's" impractical attire.
Live Action TV
- Xena Warrior Princess, of course, but Xena's own armor is not a particularly heavy offender.
- Female Klingon warriors in Star Trek The Next Generation wear the same armor as the males, except with a noticeable hole.
- Unfortunately averted in Star Trek Voyager on the rare occasions we see B'Elanna Torres in Klingon dress. Her chest is completely covered.
- Though during Worf and Dax's wedding in DS 9 season 6, Dax's Klingon dress does have a rather large hole there.
- The Valkyries in Charmed dress in revealing leather outfits. And of course, when the Charmed sisters have to rescue Leo from being captured by these Valkyries, naturally the plan they come up with involves Dressing As The Enemy.
- Somewhat justified in Cleopatra 2525, where the heroines had force fields for protection.
- Stella Bonasera and Calleigh Duquesne from the CSI Verse wear low-cut versions of the Bullet Proof Vest.
- Played with in Reno 911. One episode had the female police officers getting specially designed (and low cut) bulletproof vests, which they all liked until one of them asks another officer to test her vest by shooting at it. Surprisingly enough, even the armored parts of the vests wouldn't stop a bullet.
- Jessica Steen, who played Pilot on Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, jokes about the improbable bosom sculpted into her Power Suit's chestplate. On the other hand, at least it was a full chestplate with no holes in it.
- Found in, of all places, Scrubs. The episode "My Princess", a fantasy retelling of the show, features Carla and Turk mashed together into a single monstrous creature that wears armor, the female half of which falls under this trope. Complete with a nipple.
Tabletop Games
- In some Dungeons & Dragons settings one can get the ultimate variant: armor not even "revealing", but completely transparent. Of course, this means the stripperifficness level is defined solely by the underwear. Sure, a suit of glassteel (sort of enchanted glass) is expensive, but it's as strong as steel with only half of the weight. *
And as such it encumbers much less. Avariel, Nimbral guards and other flying warriors love this stuff.
- Alias from the Forgotten Realms novel Azure Bonds (see above) and its related computer game Curse of the Azure Bonds is depicted in artwork with a plunging v-neck chainmail top. It worked much better than it looked, though.
- This trope was parodied and Lampshaded in the "Boom's Garden" chapter of Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue, a spin-off Forgotten Realms product which gave detailed game statistics for loin guards, corsets, spiked collars and the proverbial chain-mail bikini. (Most cause penalties to movement and/or attacks, rather than enhancing armor class.) Also parodied in an April issue of Dragon Magazine, where a joke article on minor secret societies included the Wizards of the Black Teddy: an all-female offshoot of Krynn's Black Robes, who dress like dominatrices in defiance of High Sorcery's usual dominance by stuffy old men.
- This trope was ubiquitous in early D&D product art, and continues to this day, albeit somewhat less gratuitously. One infamous Dragon Magazine cover was withheld from comic store magazine-racks, due to its depiction of a virtually naked sorceress crouched on a rock at night.
- The D&D 3.5 supplement Dungeon Master's Guide II
Electric Boogaloo gave us the gloryborn armour from the Heroic Domains of Ysgard, which is explicitly designed to look extremely impractical (without being impractical in the least, because it's magic). You can guess how things turn out.
- There is an available enchantment called "Glamered" that makes armor look like other clothing without losing its protective properties. Theoretically it could be used to make practical armor appear impractical. Maybe looking Stripperific can give you a bonus to diplomacy checks?
- The latest version of the sourcebook (d20 system) Portable Hole Full of Beer ("The Book of Neurotic Fantasy") features chainmail bikinis as actual items. Among such things as poodlemancers, weapuns and Awaken Bellybutton spells, they don't even stand out. That would be why the company made Chainmail Bikini; feats shown on sample pages include Exotic Armour Proficiency, Improved Naked Defense and My Face Is Up Here.
- One of the items in the Table Top RPG Teenagers from Outer Space is a battle bikini. Inspired by the ones worn by the Dirty Pair, it also comes with a BFG, built-in mini-missile launchers, jet boots, and a force field to compensate for the limited protection one would normally get from an armored bikini.
- The much-maligned "chainmail bikini" ended up in the Munchkin card game, with the expansion Unnatural Axe.
- Munchkin Blender has a variant, the "revealing costume", which gives a +3 Bonus. This bonus increases by 1 each time a character changes gender.
- The fantasy role playing game Hack Master spoofs this trope with an item called the "chainmail bikini of remote eye-gouging." This bikini is not only enchanted to provide actual protection, but the wearer can say a magic word that causes it to cast an eye-gouging spell on anybody staring at it.
- GURPS has, since at least the third edition, included a sidebar option called "Bulletproof Nudity". It's noted as being suitable only for cinematic or silly games, but includes armor bonuses ranging from 1 for a few strategic patches of skin to 8 for complete nudity... but only for attractive characters!
- I believe this first appeared in GURPS Lensman.
- The GURPS 3rd Edition Magic Items books included the Chainmail Bikini "for body-proud barbarianettes" in two forms — a suit of chainmail with Invisibility spells on parts of it to make it look like a bikini; and a true bikini with magical-force-field-style protection on the exposed areas (they also had a male version, the Macho Leathers, which was a jockstrap and some other straps that provided the same protection as a full suit of armor — Equal Opportunity Fanservice ).
- 4th Edition retains this with a few modifications. It applies only to characters with above average Appearance and limits the bonus to +2 (+3 for a topless woman). For some reason it also makes the characters run and swim faster.
- Warhammer 40000 the Sisters Repentia units from the same army run around in rags or scraps of parchment, while Dark Eldar Wyches fight in Alien Polymer Bikinis because their superhuman reflexes make heavy armor unnecessary.
- Imperial Guardsmen actually have a variation of this. Seriously! While their flak armour is essentially their entire battledress uniforms, parts of the "standard" flak armour of the Cadian Shock Troopers are more heavily armoured — namely the chest, shoulders and shins◊. Perhaps the designer(s) just felt it was better off to leave the abdomen more flexible.
- Thats because its meant for Trench Warfare, meaning they keep their lower bodies in the trenches while only popping their heads out to shoot.
- The Sisters Repentia is somewhat justified, as these are sisters who have become disgraced, thus go into battle with the intent of dying in battle, thus absolving their sins through death (death is a fairly common punishment in the Imperium). And if you are actually wanting to die, running around buck naked a battlefield filled with axe-wielding psychopathic super-soldiers and continent leveling building sized tanks is a good way to do it. The fact that their bikini armour offers more protection that a guardsman's flak vest (4+ save over 5+), however...
- And the male wyches wear even less.
- The Sisters of Battle avoid this trope. Their power armor covers as much of their body as the Space Marine armor, except with less protection due to not being as-super soldiers. Penitent Engines, however, are dressed in what appear to be sheets.
- Sisters still have the impractical breast-shaped bulges in their breast plates.
- Well, nobody cares whether a Penitent Engine lives or dies. That's what they're there for.
- How has normal Eldar and Slaanesh NOT been mentioned? The former have jump suits with cast iron (well, wraithbone if you wanna get technical) bras. The latter have cast iron port holes so their breasts can hang out!
Video Games
- Outrageously commonplace in videogames, and usually the defensive abilities of armour correlate with the amount of flesh exposed.
- In World of Warcraft the armor for the female Warriors/Paladins makes them look as if they've just come from Victoria's Secret. One egregious example is the "Warrior's Embrace" early level 50s chestplate, which fully covers male avatars and is only a pair of breast-covering plate domes on female avatars.
- Ditto for all the plate leggings.
- Blizz seems to be somewhat aware of this; The newer armour sets in the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions have been somewhat more modest, with only the occasional partially bare midriff seen in Wrath.
- Considering that Wrath takes place on the far northern continent where most zones are covered in snow, Blizzard really didn't have much choice.
- Sure they did.
- Something of a reward to players of Burning Crusade was that their armor got less revealing as it went up into the epid tiers.
- It isn't just the plate — some of the leathers make for downright-slutty Huntresses, and then there's two of the most-notorious words in the cloth domain: Black Mageweave.
- And all of this gets somewhat ironic when considering that these armor sets make up a distinctly small minority of the options when certain races are frequently portrayed in the game's concept and promotional art with quite a lot of skin showing, in particular Night Elf women and Orcs.
- Male orcish clothing isn't much more covering in lore. They're a race of barbarians for the most part. Most NP Cs that in Ogrimmar are wearing the bare minimum.
- Night Elves in lore don't tend to wear plate armour at all. Their fighting style relies on use of stealth and ranged weapons, so they don't have much use for heavy armour. Trying to sneak in the middle of a forest while wearing a full plate armour is rather difficult.
- Theres also some inversions, such as a pair of pants that is is practily grass panties on both male and female charcters.
- Also, when females are covered up, their breasts Still Bounce
- Rouge the bat from the Sonic series has a Heart-shaped breast plate that exposes LOTS of clevage. It was totally intentional.
- Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has the scantily clad Witch Elf class. Body armor pieces include the "halter" and "corset" series. Dark Elf Sorceresses also get hit with this. Averted with nearly every other class, as the female and males both wear practical armor. Particularly noticeable with the Dark Elf Black Guard class; the lack of feminine contours on their armor makes it impossible to tell the genders apart. The reason, of course, being that the models for the particular professions in the original game are like that.
- This might be the main point of the Valis series. Yuko's armor has consistently been illogically skimpy, being pretty much a bikini and (if it counts as armor) a skirt. Cham/Char in the third game has slightly less impractical armor.
- Strangely, the third game's magic user is dressed in a full robe.
- Also strangely, in the fourth game, Lena starts off with more modest clothing, even if it's still impractical as battle armor. However, when she gets special armor that grants her temporary invincibility (until it takes enough damage), that special armor turns out to be as skimpy as (or possibly skimpier than) Yuko's.
- This whole thing was parodied in the Super Deformed Syd of Valis, where the Super Star is a bikini.
- Image◊ from the SegaCD game Popful Mail.
- The Final Fantasy series, as expected, uses this trope a lot.
- Dressing in a one-piece swimsuit and some shoulderpads was practically standard for the SNES era's female characters.
- Even the male characters weren't safe from this. Look at the artwork for Guy, a character from Final Fantasy II. He may have even pioneered the style.
- The Kingdom of Troia in Final Fantasy IV has an all-female army, who wear leotards as their official uniform. The sprite used to represent them is identical to that of the dancers in other places, resulting in this reaction when the player speaks to one of the guards in the castle: "Dance for you!? How dare you! I am a shieldmaiden of the Epopts, not some two-gil performer!"
- In Final Fantasy VI, Terra and Celes (the strongest characters in the game) wear something akin to battle swimsuits/leotards according to the official art (Celes, in particular, wears a strapless green swimsuit with shoulderpads, a cape, and a belt. Terra's is red and doesn't even have a cape.) In-game, the strongest suit of armor is the Minerva Bustier.
- In the official artwork by Yoshitaka Amano which inspired the remake cutscenes actually has Terra wearing a mini dress with leggings and Celes in yellow and blue leather armor. Terra's outfit is almost justified due to her abilities. The only character who dresses in metal armor in the Amano artwork is Cyan who is a knight.
- Most female Jobs in Final Fantasy Tactics wear armor and/or clothing appropriate to the occasion, usually covering them entirely —from the full set of armor worn by female Knights, and Dark Knights, Squires, Meliadoul, and Agrias, to the elaborate robes of Oracles and Mediators. However, Geomancers and Mimes wear an overshirt and boots, Dancers wear a skirt and a midriff-baring top, and Monks wear a strapless leotard.
- To be fair, the men of those job classes don't get off much better. Male Geomancers wear a
skirtkilt and a tiny vest, leading to the joke that as a Geomancer you can cover your legs or your chest, but not both. Male Monks have the usual tiny vest and pants. Male Mimes and Bards (the equivalent of Dancers) do end up more covered, though.
- Ritz's artwork in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance appears that she wears a breast plate.
- In Final Fantasy IX, while the male Knights of Pluto get to clank around in plate armour, the Queen's all-female guard tends to invest in helmets, boots, and one-piece swimsuits. Not often where 'show some leg' meets 'oppressive imperial army'.
- Of course, then Kuja has to go and show them all off by wearing a thong.
- In Final Fantasy X, Yunalesca dons a metal bikini, with the top exposing a generous amount of cleavage and the bottom being a thong.
- And then there's the monstrosity that Lulu wears into battle.
- Final Fantasy XI includes a number of Harness/Subligar armor sets which, while varying a bit depending on race and gender, consist of body armor that covers some places and exposes others, and leg armor that covers only the crotch, leaving the legs almost entirely exposed or covered in skin-tight material that is usually flesh-toned (though one set in particular has navy blue material covering the legs). One particular piece of leg armor, the Republic Subligar, is the best equipment available to almost all melees over a wide range of levels, and thus is extremely common, even though players frequently express disgust and horror at witnessing Galka, male Elvaan, and male Hume models in this gear.
- Also, most melee leg-gear in the game inexplicably fails to cover the thighs when worn by the Cat Girl race, Mithra. Even "Trousers", which are shown as covering most of the lower and all of the upper leg on most models, are essentially panties on Mithra. Mage gear such as "Slacks" seem unaffected by this phenomenon. Mac Hall parodied this here and here.
- Final Fantasy XII has several examples:
- Fran appears to wear armor with all of the actually protective bits cut out.
- Nearly all the Dalmascan characters wear piecemeal plating over thin leathers or clothing, but this is quite deliberately contrasted with the heavily-armored Judges and Imperial soldiers. Considering the Archaedian Empire is a northern realm, while Dalmasca is almost entirely desert, there's a lot of logic to this one. (Try fighting in armor in temperate weather for long; it's not easy. How much worse it'd be in a desert.)
- It also contains one of the oddest subversions to this trope, as one character actually is shot fatally in an unprotected area due to wearing this kind of armor... and it's a male character. Still, the gap was notoriously small, so kudos to the archer.
- Dragon Quest III had a swimsuit armor that actually changed the pixels of a female character who wore it. Its armor class is terrible though. Fortunately, there's a randomly dropped "Magic Bikini" that provides the same stunning 8-bit resolution "fanservice" with armor for those willing to engage in Level Grinding for it.
- Made even more hilarious when worn on a jester. Since they didn't think you could get much more Stripperific than a Playboy Bunny costume, they decided to clothe them in complete dominatrix gear — complete with mask and whip.
- That's not all. Just take a look at the female warrior/soldier's outfit.◊ Made even more ridiculous by the fact that her class can wear the heaviest armor, but no matter what you put her in, she'll always look like Red Sonja. This look has actually become quite popular, and further Dragon Quest games often have this female warrior as an NPC.
- Dragon Quest VII had a 'Battle Chemise' for Maribel that functioned the same way. Decent 'armor' that distracted the monsters and made her look like she was wearing a frilly pink nightie.
- Dragon Quest VIII had not only the Magic Bikini, but a wide variety of revealing outfits for Jessica that actually changed her model's appearance, unlike her other armors.
- In the same vein, Tecmo's Secret of the Stars has a piece of armor called the Bunny Suit, which makes anybody who dresses in it look like a cute, scantily-clad Playboy Bunny — even the guys.
- The main character in The Guardian Legend wears very little in the way of body armor. Being a cyborg built specifically for combat, it doesn't matter quite as much, since she uses a personal force field to absorb the shock of enemy attacks.
- Fire Emblem usually averts this. When a female character wears armour, it's usually just as practical as their male equivalents'. An odd exception are the Pegasus knights. Strangely, they wear this sort of armor over less revealing clothing, effectively ruining any Fan Service appeal it would have had.
- Pegasus Knights wear armor that is appropriate to their method of fighting — they have very low defense and high speed and critical hits. Because they fly on light steeds, it's expected that they would wear as little armor as possible to facilitate this method of flying. The more heavily armored flying class, the Wyvern Knights, wear far more armor, have more defense, and are slower and less crit-happy as a result. In Fire Emblem, lack of armor does translate into a lack of defense.
- And with another burst of logic, their armor also reflects their stats: the flying-tank Wyvern knights have crappy magic resistance, while the faster, lighter Pegasus knights almost literally shrug magic off. They're both incredibly vulnerable to arrows, though.
- There are a few examples that they miss, however. For example, in The Sacred Stones, if you upgrade Amelia to a cavalier, she wears fully practical armor, but no helmet whatsoever, while her male counterparts have everything covered.
- Nanaly Fletch in Tales of Destiny 2.
- Judith from Tales of Vesperia. While her initial appearance as the dragon rider has her in full armor, for the rest of the game She wears what can only be described as a metal bra.
- With a few exceptions, somewhere around half of the MMORPG ads on this site use/fall prey to this. Not that the other half are much better — they're just not wearing armor, period, leaving the only question a matter of how Stripperiffic the outfit in question is.
- Including, but not necessarily limited to: Flyff, Perfect World, Shaiya, Last Chaos, Legend of Mir3...
- Julia in the game Age Of Wonders. Her armor covers most of her body, but It's shape is rather fitting. It's most likely meant to be comfortable though.
- Julia's armor is lampshaded twice during her storyline in Shadow Magic. Once by The Big Guy and once by The Vamp.
- In The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles, the titular Shivering Isles are guarded almost entirely by women in bikini armor. The male version of the armor is still a little silly, but not so revealing. Justified by the fact that they're Daedra (read: demigods) and thus are immortal and don't need much protection anyhow.
- Less flagrant in Oblivion than in most games, but still present for the few armors who have different models between male and female (like the Iron armor). The female versions tend to have plunging necklines, and leave a lot more skin showing then the male versions. Compare this◊ and this◊. It's the same armor, on the other sex.
- How have you not mentioned Oblivions chainmail armour? On a male, it's a standard chainmail shirt. On a female it's a tank top. Made out of chainmail.Check it out◊
- Also noteable, while The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind pretty much avoided this in the first place, there was the offical mod "LeFemme Armor". While it just made a few of the more common armors (iron or steel) a little more femminine on female Characters, where was also a golden one that even showed on male Characters in the feminine cut.
- Hellgate: London had the female Paladins wear a helmet, breastplate, gauntlets, and then what appeared to be a skintight leather onesie all the way down to their thigh-high high-heeled boots. And this is an organization that supposedly came out of the Catholic Church.
- Quest for Glory V puts Elsa von Spielburg in a chainmail bikini. It's an especially stupid example because not only is she a tough-as-nails warrior and a capable swordswoman in her own right, but she's spent her entire life struggling against sexism.
- D.W. Bradley seems to enjoy playing with this concept in the Wizardry series and Wizards & Warriors. Armored bras of cloth, leather, chain, and plate varieties can be found in the latter game, while in the former, characters that begin the game in the Valkyrie class (only open to females), have a fur halter and chamois skirt in their starting equipment, the Stud Cuir Bra +2 is a recurring item wearable only by women (and actually one of the best pieces of armor for female thieves and rangers for quite some time in Wizardry 6), the Amazulu of Wizardry 6 go into battle wearing fur panties and anklets (period), and the Helazoid of Wizardry 7 wear jackets consisting of sleeves and not much else.
- The MMORG Dream of Mirror Online has very different appearance for the same armour settings, based on sex and race. While humans and Sylph (sort of hovering elves) are decently protected, and Sprites (eternal children) even more, female Felins (or Shura, it depends on language) are almost naked on the crotch all the time. While wearing a full heavy armour set, there will inevitably be no pants other that a colored thong, and metal breast will bounce while running. Metal breast, bouncing. It helps a lot that female Felins are humanoid vixen. The Dancer outfit is commonly referred by players as "Whore dress". Note that male Felins, that are ugly as butt (should be humanoid dragons, and are usually flat-faced with big mouths) wear the very same outfits, but with black tights under the armour, or long gown instead of mini pants.
- The otherwise quite sensible Queen Catherine Ironfist of Heroes of Might and Magic III wears armor like this.
- In Heroes of Might and Magic V the dark elves makes for much worse. The trope is averted, however, with the completely armor-clad Isabel and Freyda, and the rest of the Haven faction.
- The Might and Magic series, on the other hand, subverts it. Your female characters will be realistically covered by their armor.
- Guild Wars: Eye of the North features a Breast Plate-wearing Norn woman named Jora on the cover; she features in a few of the quests for the expansion pack. It's notable that early concept for the character was mostly identical to her final design, except that she gained about two and a half cup sizes. It should be noted that male Norn don't even bother with the Breast Plate.
- Aside from that, the game features both female armor that would be completely suitable for battle and is not more revealing than the male version, and several variants of chainmail bikini, ranging from "slightly revealing" to "underwear."
- Though, to be fair, there is at least one male eqivalent here: male Warriors have a piece of chest armour that is essentially just a strap to hold the shoulder pieces on.
- In Lineage II, the armour on the female chracters is particualrily revealing (and silly). Possibly the most ridiculous is the starting armour for the female Dark Elf — a halter top (open in the middle) mid thigh high-heeled boots and a thong. All in black leather, of course. The most silly of this is how the Dwarven female character is covered head to toe in full plate armor with one set but the Human female gets a metal miniskirt.
- In Ninety-Nine Nights the main female character, Inphyy◊, wears quite an odd attire: she looks like the dress would leave her breasts exposed, if it wasn't for the armor plating covering them. And better not speak of the wings.
- In Command and Conquer: Kane's Wrath, the Zone Raider infantry is introduced; it's a Distaff Counterpart to the male Zone Troopers from C&C 3. The Trooper armor is bulky and boxlike. The Raider armor is significantly more form fitting.
- Lampshaded in Princess Maker 2. When you go to the armory and try to buy a very stripperiffic piece made of silk (?), the vendor tells you that it may raise your daughter's Charisma, but it covers and protects so few that it's not worth the gold you have to pay for it. You can still buy it, of course, but it DOES offer much less protection than the others.
- Prince of Persia: Warrior Within suffers this with Shadee, who wears a metal thong-type getup that redefines Stripperific. Penny Arcade covers it quite well, in addition to the Prince's generic rage.
- In Disgaea and other Nippon Ichi titles, Female Warriors are often depicted wearing full plate armor on their legs, but only an absurdly wide belt across their chest for modesty.
- Males don't get of much better.
- Though it is justified in the description for the class, where it states that Warriors wear light clothing to increase mobility, and can harden their bodies instantly.
- Valkyrie Profile and its sequel frequently features the second type; many of the female warriors are heavily armoured except for the thighs and sometimes the breasts (either normal fabric or actual exposed cleavage), and several wear armoured high heeled boots. On the other hand, some of the male warriors also have somewhat questionable weakspots...
- Many of the troopers of Valkyria Chronicles wear these, both male and female.
- The Battle Bikini is partly justified in Bikini Karate Babes: Word Of God says that the ladies get their powers from having blood of their enemies on their skin.
- The Avernum series has one male and one female Player Character graphic wearing very skimpy armor.
- How can you call those "armor"? They're just a loincloth and a bikini...
- That's the unarmoured appearance. If you look closely, the armoured appearance does have actual armour for the torso... but not so much for the legs or arms.
- Ellen of the Xbox Kingdom Under Fire titles subverts this — despite stripperific promo art, on the battlefield it's all chainmail and a piece of torso armour that actually covers everything.
- Neverwinter Nights actually has its main NPC, Aribeth, The Paladin Who Doesn't Do Anything, wearing a suit of armour cut so low as to be positively dangerous.
- In the game's second expansion pack, Deekin comments about the impracticality of such armour. Since the base game and the expansions were made by the same people, this may have been a Take That Us.
- With careful use of the level editor, it's possible to produce suits of scale mail that come complete with low-cut front and plunging back. These still provide pretty good AC, and since the value of armour is set entirely by the torso component, you can get the exact same protection from a massive tin can and a piece of metal wrapped around your lower torso. Possibly even less realistic is one of the options for leather armour — it's just a very small leather jacket held in place by very, very thin chains, and should actually have a negative AC rather than the +2 bonus it provides.
- The level editor gives six or seven different appearance choices for each category of armor, all of which have the same AC bonus and armor check penalty. At least one or two of the female selections for each category are excessively low-cut. And that doesn't even include using it to produce a cloth bikini with such high magical enhancements that it is better protection than plate armor.
- Community Expansion Pack has not only "Aribeth Armor" (description: A suit of armor strangely reminiscent of a controversial lady's...) but also "Chain Mail Bikini" (Because what fantasy RPG would be complete without one, if only to uphold stereotypes and running jokes...). Though the female variant of "Warrior Monk's Outfit", is more Stripperiffic anyway (top part looks less like a narrow cloth and more like a very wide shoestring).
- This gets even worse in some other community-produced modules. The Aribeth's Redemption series gives us the "Armor of Impossible Cleavage," which grants a bonus to Charisma and Persuade in addition to its armor bonus and leaves a completely exposed foot-wide strip down the center of the torso (it is also limited to female use only, and unfortunately (for story reasons) you can't play that module with a female character). The Dance With Rogues series has a hakpack that turns every possible suit of armor or clothing into one of these. One of the most infamous examples is the "Armor of Lolth," encountered in the middle of the second chapter, which on female characters looks like a dark reddish bra and panties (though on male characters it looks like an ordinary suit of black and red plate armor) and provides more protection than most suits of plate armor. If you wear that armor, all conversations with male characters (except for the psycho pervert character) begin with them stuttering at you.
- Lampshaded in Persona 3. The High-Cut Armor (for females only) is essentially this (although you only get to see the avatar change in the FES expansion), but your party members will be embarrassed and only reluctantly agree to wear it.
- There's swimsuits, too...
- Strangely, The Last Remnant, made by Square Enix of Final Fantasy fame (among others) subverts this. Female combatants wear actual armor with only exceptionally minor degrees of this trope.
- Let's not forget it's possible in Spellforce to get into a situation where a pair of trousers provide better protection than your normal clothing, if you're a mage...Actually, let's.
- Soul Calibur 4. The Soul series of fighting games is legendary for its female character's costumes, most of which offer little protection from sword, hammer, or ambient temperature. By contrast, new character Hilde in Soul Calibur 4 wields two weapons and wears full plate armour, making her an oddity not only in SC 4 but also fighting games in general — the armour does not, however, appear to give any more protection from damage than a cotton dress.
- This is to show off the new system, where armor can get blown off!
- Atlantica Online partially averts this. While breast plates are fairly common, even male characters have to wear them.
- Samurai Shodown has Charlotte (one intro quote is actually yelling at someone for mocking her having a breastplate). She has the breastplate, what may be gloves, and what once looked like armoured (if heeled) boots that seem to turn a bit sexier in later games. Neinhalt Sieger is a more masculine example, bearing one (HUGE) gauntlet as well as greaves and kneepads. Torso protection? His big bare Teutonic chest.
- Has anybody here seen the official artwork for Ragnarok Online? While most male classes mostly don't show any skin, ALL of the female classes except for the Acolyte love showing their legs, their cleavage and their waist. Female Lord Knights wear a mini-skirt, for crying out loud.
- Some male charcters show alot of skin. The Blacksmith type jobs are wearing a small vest and the 3rd class version of the monk has no top. the 3rd class version of Alchemist also has an exposed stomach.
- Averted in Mount & Blade.
- Averted in Age of Conan, which is especially strange considering the nudity in the game and the fact that it's based on an IP that practically invented the Breast Plate. To the dismay of the playerbase, much of the female armor in the game resembles something closer to a potato sack.
- Averted with a vengance in City of Heroes: Even though the other female costume styles tend to be well within Most Common Superpower territory, the "armor" costume sets stay out of it no matter how high you crank the "chest" setting.
- Just for clarification: NOTHING you wear will ever give you stat bonuses, so you can wear whatever you want anyways. However, females do tend to have sexier costume options than men (cleavage-enhancing outfits, see-through clothes, belly shirts), with one major exception: only men get access to "Topless with only three S&M leather straps".
- Actually averted in F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin. Although Lt. Stokes has a bare midriff, her actual body armor covers as much of her body as the ones worn by her male counterparts (designed to protect the heart and lungs, they end just above the belly button).
- Despite the name, the title character of King's Bounty: Armored Princess is not very well armored.
- Both played straight and (!) averted in Gaia Online's MMORPG zOMG!.
- The straight example is Lin in the Otami Ruins, who wears a low-cut breastplate and not much else. Arguably justified, since she is a Winged Humanoid and presumably wouldn't present a whole lot of target when flying (her brother doesn't wear much, either).
- The aversion is the female members of the Barton Guard, who wear armor almost exactly like that of their male counterparts. Gaia users have at times been surprised to find out that Alma is a girl.
- Mostly averted in the Etrian Odyssey games. The female landscnechkts (warriors) and especially defenders (paladins) wear full armor (although one of the landscnechkt models does bare her midriff), and most of the female classes wear outfits that are comparably as modest as their male counterparts (albeit Fetish Fuel in some cases). The two exceptions are the troubadours and the ronins. The troubadours look like loli belly dancers with see through pants (although it's somewhat justified, as they are a song-and-dance class). As for the ronins, one model is very modest, wearing a full kimono, while the other model wears a red hakama and metal armguards, and is topless aside from a sarashii duct-taped around her flat chest. Then again, both of the male ronins are similarly dressed, including scars across their chests.
- The box art of Arkista's Ring shows the protagonist in a metal/chainmail bikini. How did they get this past Nintendo's radar?
- Played straight in Soul Nomad And The World Eaters. If you play as a male Revya, he'll be wearing relatively modest leather armor. Female Revya, however, goes shirtless aside from pauldrons and a metal bra. See for yourself.◊
- To say nothing of the nereids, although in this case it's somewhat justified, as they're an underwater race, and one really can't move around very well in heavy armor.
- Dragon Age plays this trope fairly straight. Equip a piece of Dalish armor on a male character and it's your traditional leather armor. Equip it on a female NPC, and their midriff is exposed, and the bottom half becomes a skirt.
- Played straight with many (though not all) of the Vanquisher's armor choices in Torchlight.
Web Original
- This... motivational... poster tells why not.
- In the Whateley Universe, the superheroine Beach Bunny wears a titanium bikini as her costume. She has heat powers too and tends to burn up normal clothes and supersuits. Lampshaded when speedster Scramlber admits she tried a metal bikini once and got really bad chafing when she ran.
- Savannah, a general from Castle Age (an application on Facebook) is a posterchild of this type of "armor".
Web Comics
- Done relatively tamely and self-consciously in Get Medieval when Rylede gets her armor made◊ — it is a real suit of armor over maille, but it is contoured and has a low neckline. It hardly matters, as her opponents are all so unnerved by fighting a woman that they never even come close to hitting her. A lampshade is hung on this as well: When Canter asks how she planned on getting a suit of armor made in a society where women are forbidden to fight, she explains that the blacksmith agreed because it fulfilled a lifelong fantasy of his.
- This Secret Lives of Mobs comic parodies it.
- Subverted in the webcomic Chainmail Bikini, wherein the titular set of armor is described as "+1 to AC, +2 to charisma". Its wearer was killed off early into the comic's run, resulting in an Artifact Title.
- Phil & Dixie had a bit of fun with the idea here.
- All the female ninjas in No Need for Bushido wear very little clothing in order to distract their opponents. It works.
- By Way of Booty Bay does this a lot, particularly here◊.
- Note that while that particular picture is work safe(...ish, at least...) many of the rest of the comics are not.
- In Flaky Pastry, Nitrine's powered armor is a shining example of trope subversion - cleavage is an absurd weak spot! It is also implied Nitrine found the cleavage useless when she wore the armor because it only attracts men, not women.
- Played with during a dream sequence in Cheer: when Gamer Chick (and apparent munchkin) Lita loots a fallen Orc of his armor and equipment, what was a full breastplate on him becomes an armor bikini on her.
- Haley Starshine has reason to be glad of her high Dexterity bonus.
- Gertrude & Brunhilda in The KAMics. The author did put them in full armor once, much to the displeasure of his readers.
- This episode of Nerdcore: The Core Wars explains that the Geneva Conventions "made it a war crime to injure a female anthropoid in the area of the cleavage, stomach, or thighs. Thereby making it unnecessary for women to cover those areas in armor."
- Parodied in these two Commissioned strips.
- Penny Arcade's take on Prince of Persia's version here.
- Lampshaded in Schlock Mercenary, where female carbonan armor suits come with big guns. Bigger, in fact, than what they are supposed to contain.
- DMFA: Clan Leader Taun's armour, which is moulded and leaves her midriff and one arm bare. In fairness, though, her abs certainly look harder than steel... plus Word Of God says the armour is ceremonial. She's also an extremely powerful, millennia-old supernatural creature, so it's possible that her skin really is tougher than armour.
Western Animation
- Xcalibur's Djana had an exposed patch of skin right above her breasts, and her suit of armor fit along the curves of her body.
- Would Taarna's get-up from Heavy Metal count? What scant clothing she wears seemed to be modeled on various pieces of armor, despite being made of cloth.
Real Life
- This guy has been selling them for a living for over a decade.
- Here's an example of the variant for male soldiers from ancient Greece.
- Not to mention Beach Volleyball, the only sport to have a maximum limit on the area of skin the player can cover. And, yes, the women have a smaller allowance than the men. They do get to choose whether to use it up on the top or the bottom, though...
- In fencing, women are required to wear either plastic breastplates, or metal "ashtray" cups in their sports bras. However, these are worn underneath the jackets, so they're hardly noticable. There is a variation of this armour for men — a plastic plate which looks like stormtrooper armour — but it isn't required and is rarely used.
- The male armor of this type is a bit more commonly used in historical fencing due to the heavier and less flexible blades.
- I've recently been told about the Tactical Corset. Apparently while there's some protection for centre of mass, it seems about 50/50 judging by eyeballing it. (The others I was with who were told were eyeballing that part too, but for other reasons.) Accessories reccommended include an "Interrogation Pouch", shown with flogger.
- At an SCA event a few years back, the at least 6' tall Queen of the West was spotted in golden breast plate armor. With nipples. It was for show and not fighting, but still...
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